Axios notes that someone is laundering a lot of political cash through a downtown law office in Sioux Falls.
The meaninglessly and Google-defyingly named Custom Management Services, Inc., poured $160,000 into Kelly Loeffler’s Senate campaign in Georgia—you know, the campaign Republican extremist Kristi Noem helped torpedo. According to OpenSecrets.org, CMS channeled its money into Georgia through various PACs. OpenSecrets.org lists $415K of 2020-cycle contributions from CMS to anti-liberal and big-business PACs in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maine, Iowa, Texas, and Colorado.
Custom Management Services had $750 left to obtain a certificate of authority from the Secretary of State on January 5, 2021:
Attached to this application and certificate is a printout from the Delaware Division of Corporations indicating that CMS incorporated in Delaware in 1991:
The lawyer acting as CMS’s agent, Brendan W. Reilly, is a partner at the Davenport Evans law firm in Sioux Falls. Reilly reported the actual street address and the mailing address of CMS’s executive offices is 206 W. 14th St., Sioux Falls, SD, 57104, the same address as Davenport Evans.
The application lists the same downtown Sioux Falls address for contacting the sole principal of CMS, political megadonor, 1st Financial Bank USA chief, and Dakota Dunes denizen Albert P. Hegyi. OpenSecrets reports that Hegyi gave $5,600 out of his own pocket to Loeffler in 2020, $5,000 to the Growing Georgia PAC, and $14K to Loeffler’s fellow loser David Perdue. Hegyi put $500 in South Dakota U.S. Senator Mike Rounds’s pocket, $5K in Rounds’s Norbeck PAC, and $4,228 in the SDGOP. But evidently a pragmatists, Hegyi also gave $10K to the New Jersey Democratic Party; $5,600 to New Jersey U.S. Senator Bob Menendez; $2.2K to the other Senator from New Jersey, Cory Booker; $5,600 to Virginia U.S. Senator Tim Kaine; and $5K to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Impact PAC. Hegyi also gave equal $35.5K contributions to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in January 2020… but he followed up with another $12.5K to the NRSC and $35.5K to the National Republican Congressional Committee. According to OpenSecrets, Hegyi was the 180th-biggest individual donor of hard cash in federal campaigns, giving $668K to Republicans and $150K to Democrats.
Hegyi has previously contributed to John Thune and his Heartland Values PAC, Kristi Noem, Heidi Heitkamp, Dianne Feinstein, John Tester, Tammy Duckworth, Kamala Harris (he went on a Democratic bender in August 2016).
CMS shows no hint of Hegyi’s occasional pragmatic balance; all of its donations appear to go to Republicans. Open Secrets shows that Custom Management Services has listed Sioux Falls as its address for campaign contributions to Republican groups around the country (though not in South Dakota) since 2013, when CMS gave $10K to Republican David Vitter’s Fund for Louisiana’s Future.
Don’t expect to see armored cars pulling up to Davenport Evans with cases of cash; I’m sure Hegyi and his credit-card pals have safer electronic means of transferring their sums to their conservative standard-bearers.
South Port, CN. Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of 1st Financial Bank USA. The Bank originates credit cards and provides community banking services in South Dakota. Mr. Hegyi serves as a Trustee of the National Music Museum in South Dakota. He graduated from Dartmouth College, received an MBA from Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College, and his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. 3/2014
The plaintiffs [Hegyi] are the owners of seven and one-quarter acres of improved real property located in a Residence AAA District in the Southport area of the town of Fairfield [,CN]. On January 16, 1984, the plaintiffs submitted an application to the commission for a special exception to use a portion of their property as a private landing area for a personal HELICOPTER. (Emphasis added)
The first commission meeting after the filing of the plaintiffs’ application took place on January 24, 1984…. The application was unanimously approved by the commission at an executive session on March 22, 1984. This approval was subsequently vacated by the commission at another executive session on April 10, 1984, for the stated reason that there should have been a public hearing on the plaintiffs’ application. The plaintiffs, and certain neighbors of the plaintiffs, filed separate appeals from these actions of the commission.
On May 21, 1984, the representative town meeting of the town of Fairfield passed an ordinance prohibiting private landing sites such as the one sought by the plaintiffs. Under the current regulations, the plaintiffs are clearly PROHIBITED from building a helicopter pad for their private use. [14 Conn. App. 366] ***
I once fueled a personal helicopter on a ridge home overlooking Custer State Park. Motel 6 guy used it to transit between his RC airport private jet.
Geez. Rich white guys. Thank Janklow!
Davenport Evans, 32 lawyers, likely a largest firm in the state, except for Kristi’s RAGA SDAG’s office headed by SD chief LEO AG Ravnsborg, the uncharged, unadjudicated pedestrian fatality “hit and run (back to Pierre in Sheriff’s personal vehicle)” driver. All 50 states have such offices with around 100 or more lawyers each. Republicans have harnessed most of this national legal HORSEPOWER to stay in power. Just like voter suppression!
You pay for this SD RAGA lawfirm!! The largest private law firms can’t even compete. Think SCOTUS doesn’t need to be uncaptured from RAGA and it’s mother, the GOP? Think again.
Wow, what a list:
https://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=Albert+Hegyi&type=donors
A little shocked to see the name Brendan Reilly attached to this story.
Well…Davenport Evans (Hurwitz and Smith) is an old line, blue chip, highly respected law firm, as good as it gets in Sioux Falls….they have a client here who enjoys pouring money of his own or that he bundles (?) into a variety of political campaigns…its really just a business expense for the bank….I have a feeling that Davenport Evans keeps his contribution activity on the up and up regarding federal regulations (such as they are)…just more evidence of the mess we’re in as a country without public financing of political campaigns.
Now that the Democrats have control of the Senate, he’ll probably increase his contributions to Democratic candidates…don’t look a gift horse in the mouth
…it’ll eat your “free” lunch.
Why shocked, Warren?