Taxpayers for Liberty: Who Is This Group Playing in U.S. Senate Race?

Update: Scanned copy of the March 5 Taxpayers for Liberty letter posted below.

Yesterday I received a strange mailing from a group called Taxpayers for Liberty. (Many of my fellow conservative, politically-active Colorado friends likely received the same.) It’s a self-described 501c4 organization with a Denver P.O. Box and an executive director named Andrew O’Neill — I’m almost positive it’s not this Andrew O’Neill.

I will take time later today to scan and post the four-page letter, along with the attached questionnaire and reply form, so you can see the mailing for yourself. It looks a lot like your standard political fundraising letter, with short paragraphs and heavy on underlined text and bullet points. Suffice it to say, the group Taxpayers for Liberty is very fond of Ken Buck, while railing on Jane Norton for not returning the questionnaire and Tom Wiens for filling out the questionnaire identically but having a voting record, or something like that.

Let me add here that the Taxpayers for Liberty questionnaire leaves a lot to be desired in its ability (or lack thereof) to meaningfully distinguish candidates from one another. For the most part, the 12 statements are largely factual in nature and focus on perspectives of existing problems without proposing or suggesting what type of solutions are needed. So at best, the answers might tell us all the candidates agree on the nature of the problem. Okay … then what?

So who is Taxpayers for Liberty? A search on the Colorado Secretary of State website finds the group originally was registered last November to one Sue Rehg of Loveland, a Republican activist and currently listed as a Larimer County co-chair of Ken Buck’s campaign. Last month the group switched registered agents to Denver attorney Adam Kehrli, no doubt to help make sure the language of the letter complies with electioneering regulations on 501c4 groups.

But this information only leaves many other questions unanswered — such as how large the group’s list or expenditure is. I’ve contacted representatives of the three leading Republican U.S. Senate campaigns to see if they have any insights or reactions to offer. But if anyone else out there has valuable information to add, please feel free to add to the intrigue.

Here’s a scanned copy of the actual letter. Click Fullscreen for an easier read:
?March 5, 2010