Colorado Rising Action Executive Director Michael Fields speaks during a “Commitment to Colorado” news conference at a Sinclair gas station on Monday, August 9, 2021, in Denver. He was surrounded by Republican officials.
Olivia Sun/The Colorado Sun
A deep-pocketed conservative political nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors funded almost every major Republican political group and effort in Colorado last year, according to a tax document obtained by The Colorado Sun that for the first time reveals the breadth of the organization’s influence.
The document reveals that Unite for Colorado distributed $17.2 million in 2020, including $375,000 to the Colorado Neighborhood Coalition, a nonprofit that lobbied Colorado’s redistricting independent commissions this year on behalf of Republican interests. The once-in-a-decade redistricting process may alter the state’s political landscape.
Unite for Colorado also donated nearly $1.4 million to Ready Colorado, a conservative education nonprofit that has backed Republican statehouse candidates and influenced policy at the Capitol. And it sent $310,000 to the Public Trust Institute, a nonprofit that filed ethics complaints against former Gov. John Hickenlooper that complicated the Democrat’s 2020 U.S. Senate bid and were the focus of many of Unite for Colorado’s TV ads against him. That spending was previously unreported.
Unite for Colorado’s financial details were revealed in a Internal Revenue Service 990 form filed by the organization for the 2020 tax year. The document shows the group brought in $18.5 million last year, making it one of the most moneyed and prolific spenders in Colorado politics.
Read more via The Colorado Sun.