Men Linked to Corporate Donations to Pro-Romney Super PAC Have Long History of Donating to Romney

By Brad Hooker on September 13, 2011 4:50 PM

Earlier this year, three donations of $1 million each were given to a super PAC supportive of the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The super PAC was called Restore Our Future. These large sums may not in and of themselves have raised eyebrows. But the identities of the donors certainly did.

One of the donations came from the company W. Spann LLC. NBC News reported that the organization was established in March by a Boston lawyer, but that corporate records gave no information about the owner. Nor did the company exist at the listed address. Furthermore, W. Spann LLC was dissolved on July 12, two weeks before the Restore Our Future PAC reported the donation on its first campaign finance filing to the Federal Election Commission.

The other notable $1 million donations came from two Utah companies: Eli Publishing and F8 LLC. When a local Utah reporter from Fox 13 visited the address listed for both companies on Restore Our Future's FEC filing, he found only an accounting firm not affiliated with the pro-Romney PAC.

Corporate documents filed with the state of Utah say that the owner of Eli Publishing is Steve Lund, the co-founder and former chief executive officer of Nu Skin, a skin care and nutrition company in Provo. According to Fox 13, Lund made the donation "through a corporation he created to publish a book years ago because donating through a corporation has accounting advantages."

Meanwhile, F8 LLC, was founded by a lawyer named Jeremy Blickenstaff, who also has ties to Nu Skin and is Lund's son-in-law.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling last year, corporations have been freed to donate to political committees like super PACs. But federal law prohibits donating in the name of another person.

Upon learning of these mysterious corporate donations, the government watchdog groups Democracy 21 and Campaign Legal Center filed complaints with the FEC and asked the Justice Department to investigate whether the corporations "illegally masked the actual donors of the contributions."

Under the pressure of official investigation and intense media scruntiy, one individual -- Edward W. Conard -- stepped forward and told Politico that he was the man behind W. Spann LLC. He asked Restore Our Future to amend their paperwork with the FEC to list him, rather than W. Spann LLC, as the donor -- an action that the super PAC took last month.

Conard had been a managing director at Bain Capital, a company Romney had helped create. According to research by the Center for Responsive Politics, he's also been a prolific campaign donor.

Lund, of Nuskin and Eli Publishing, too, has a long history of making significant campaign contributions, although Blickenstaff, of F8 LLC, does not, the Center's research indicates.

Since the 1994 election cycle when Conard made his first federal campaign contributions -- $2,000 to Romney during his unsuccessful U.S. Senate race against incumbent Democrat Ted Kennedy -- he, along with his wife, Jill, have donated $295,850 to federal candidates and committees, according to the Center's research. Ninety-nine percent of this money has benefited Republicans.

Over the years, the Conards have actually donated $55,900 to Romney's campaign committees and leadership PACs, the Center's research shows. No other candidate has collected more money from the Conards...

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