[Vision2020] An Acorn Whistleblower Testifies in Court

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An Acorn Whistleblower Testifies in Court
The group's ties to Obama are extensive.
By JOHN FUND

Acorn, the liberal "community organizing" group that claims it will
deploy 15,000 get-out-the-vote workers on Election Day, can't stay out
of the news.

The FBI is investigating its voter registration efforts in several
states, amid allegations that almost a third of the 1.3 million cards
it turned in are invalid. And yesterday, a former employee of Acorn
testified in a Pennsylvania state court that the group's
quality-control efforts were "minimal or nonexistent" and largely
window dressing. Anita MonCrief also says that Acorn was given lists
of potential donors by several Democratic presidential campaigns,
including that of Barack Obama, to troll for contributions.

The Obama campaign denies it "has any ties" to Acorn, but Mr. Obama's
ties are extensive. In 1992 he headed a registration effort for
Project Vote, an Acorn partner at the time. He did so well that he was
made a top trainer for Acorn's Chicago conferences. In 1995, he
represented Acorn in a key case upholding the constitutionality of the
new Motor Voter Act — the first law passed by the Clinton
administration — which created the mandated, nationwide postcard voter
registration system that Acorn workers are using to flood election
offices with bogus registrations.

Ms. MonCrief testified that in November 2007 Project Vote development
director Karyn Gillette told her she had direct contact with the Obama
campaign and had obtained their donor lists. Ms. MonCrief also
testified she was given a spreadsheet to use in cultivating Obama
donors who had maxed out on donations to the candidate, but who could
contribute to voter registration efforts. Project Vote calls the
allegation "absolutely false."

She says that when she had trouble with what appeared to be duplicate
names on the list, Ms. Gillette told her she would talk with the Obama
campaign and get a better version. Ms. MonCrief has given me copies of
the donor lists she says were obtained from other Democratic
campaigns, as well as the 2004 DNC donor lists.

In her testimony, Ms. MonCrief says she was upset by Acorn's "Muscle
for Money" program, which she said intimidated businesses Acorn
opposed into paying "protection" money in the form of grants. Acorn's
Brian Kettering says the group only wants to change corporate
behavior: "Acorn is proud of its corporate campaigns to stop abuses of
working families."

Ms. MonCrief, 29, never expected to testify in a case brought by the
state's Republican Party seeking the local Acorn affiliate's voter
registration lists. An idealistic graduate of the University of
Alabama, she joined Project Vote in 2005 because she thought it was
empowering poor people. A strategic consultant for Acorn and a
development associate with its Project Vote voter registration
affiliate, Ms. MonCrief sat in on policy-making meetings with the
national staff. She was fired early this year over personal expenses
she had put on the group's credit card.

She says she became disillusioned because she saw that Acorn was run
as the personal fiefdom of Wade Rathke, who founded the group in 1970
and ran it until he stepped down to take over its international
operations this summer. Mr. Rathke's departure as head of Acorn came
after revelations he'd employed his brother Dale for a decade while
keeping from almost all of Acorn's board members the fact that Dale
had embezzled over $1 million from the group a decade ago. (The
embezzlement was confirmed to me by an Acorn official.)

"Anyone who questioned what was going on was viewed as the enemy," Ms.
MonCrief told me. "Just like the mob, no one leaves Acorn happily."
She believes the organization does some good but hopes its current
leadership is replaced. She may not be alone.

Last August two of Acorn's eight dissident board members, Marcel Reed
and Karen Inman, filed suit demanding access to financial records of
Citizens Consulting Inc., the umbrella group through which most of
Acorn's money flows. Ms. Inman told a news conference this month Mr.
Rathke still exercises power over CCI and Acorn against the board's
wishes. Bertha Lewis, the interim head of Acorn, told me Mr. Rathke
has no ties to Acorn and that the dissident board members were
"obsessed" and "confused."

According to public records, the IRS filed three tax liens totaling
almost $1 million against Acorn this spring. Also this spring, CCI was
paid $832,000 by the Obama campaign for get-out-the-vote efforts in
key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission,
the Obama campaign listed the payments as "staging, sound, lighting,"
only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
revealed their true nature.

"Acorn needs a full forensic audit," Ms. MonCrief says, though she
doesn't think that's likely. "Everyone wants to paper things over
until later," she says. "But it may be too late to reform Acorn then."
She strongly supports Barack Obama and hopes his allies can be helpful
in cleaning up the group "after the heat of the election is gone."

Acorn's Mr. Kettering says the GOP lawsuit "is designed to suppress
legitimate voters," and he says Ms. MonCrief isn't credible, given
that she was fired for cause. Ms. MonCrief admits that she left after
she began paying back some $3,000 in personal expenses she charged on
an Acorn credit card. "I was very sorry, and I was paying it back,"
she says, but "suddenly Acorn decided that . . . I had to go. Since
then I have gotten warnings to 'back off' from people at Acorn."

Acorn insists it operates with strict quality controls, turning in, as
required by law, all registration forms "even if the name on them was
Donald Duck," as Wade Rathke told me two years ago. Acorn
whistleblowers tell a different story.

"There's no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances," says
Nate Toler, who worked until 2006 as the head organizer of an Acorn
campaign against Wal-Mart in California. And Ms. MonCrief says it is
longstanding practice to blame bogus registrations on lower-level
employees who then often face criminal charges, a practice she says
Acorn internally calls "throwing folks under the bus."

Gregory Hall, a former Acorn employee, says he was told on his very
first day in 2006 to engage in deceptive fund-raising tactics. Mr.
Hall has founded a group called Speaking Truth to Power to push for a
full airing of Acorn's problems "so the group can heal itself from
within."

To date, Mr. Obama has declined to criticize Acorn, telling reporters
this month he is happy with his own get-out-the-vote efforts and that
"we don't need Acorn's help." That may be true. But there is no
denying his ties with Acorn helped turbocharge his political career.
Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122533169940482893.html