“Your Help Really Makes a Difference”: Inside Patrick Morrisey’s 2015 Pitch to Utility Donors at the Greenbrier"

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“Your Help Really Makes a Difference”: Inside Patrick Morrisey’s 2015 Pitch to Utility Donors at the Greenbrier"

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In the August of 2015, Patrick Morrisey — then West Virginia’s Attorney General, today the state’s 37th Governor— stood in a room at the Greenbrier resort and made a frank request of the energy, financial-services, and healthcare executives in front of him: keep writing the checks.UtilitySecrets.org obtained audio of that fundraiser, hosted by the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). Morrisey was joined by his counterparts from Utah and Montana, Sean Reyes and Tim Fox. In remarks that run only a few minutes apiece, the three Republican AGs explained — in unusually plain language — what donors get in return for their generosity, and how they coordinate with one another and with the national organization that helps re-elect them.The audio recording would be striking on its own. What gives it weight is that it lands inside a structural story that political scientists have been documenting in the peer-reviewed literature for years. In a 2017 study published through Marquette University, political scientist Paul Nolette argued that state attorneys general have become “a more entrenched part of the national policy landscape,” with “coalitions of mostly Republican AGs aggressively challeng[ing] Obama Administration initiatives such as the Clean Power Plan” and successfully “limited, delayed, or curtailed Obama’s regulatory agenda, particularly during his second term” (Nolette 2017).The Greenbrier audio is, in effect, the campaign-finance correlate of the legal strategy Nolette describes. This post walks through both.What Morrisey Told the RoomSpeaking to a crowd that, by his own description, included representatives “in the financial services industries, healthcare, energy, across the board,” Morrisey framed his office as a turnaround story for industry:“I think people used to look at West Virginia and maybe want to run in the opposite direction in terms of the business climate there, but through our office and some of the changes in the legislature, we’ve really been able to … start turn things around.”He then ticked through his EPA-litigation résumé, anchored on the Clean Power Plan stay his coalition had won at the Supreme Court earlier that year:“We helped lead the charge against the president’s Power Plan, obtaining the stay. In West Virginia, that’s as good as you can do. When you’re fighting for coal miners and their families … if you can get a stay of the President’s top initiative that matters. If you can get a stay of the Waters of the United States rule, that matters.”And then came the ask. Not the kind of generic ask that surfaces in stump speeches, but a specific, transactional appeal aimed at the executives in the room:“The only way I get to stay is through your incredible generosity, so thank you all for coming today. Thanks for your support and if you haven’t written a check, I’d be grateful if you could; if you have already maxed out, if you would consider talking to some of the executives and people that you know, I would be appreciative of it. … I do have a very rich opponent and while we match up very well on the issues, you know it helps to have a little bit more in the way of resources in order to counteract some of those TV buys. So your help really makes a difference.”He closed by name-checking the rest of the RAGA roster on hand — “General Fox, General Reyes, and obviously you know about the great leadership of Chairman Schuette” — and thanked the room “for coming to the Greenbrier.”The Pitch from Reyes and Fox: “You Won’t Go Broke”Tim Fox, Montana’s then-AG, made the coordination explicit. The product on offer was not a single state’s legal docket. It was a 27-, 28-, 29-state coalition acting as one:“When we collaborate and get together … with Patrick Morrisey and push back against the federal government, or get together and write a letter to the federal government or whatever it is, we make a difference when there is 27, 28, 29, 30 or more attorneys general; people listen, people watch, and it makes a difference. So thank you for supporting each of our attorneys general in RAGA, and thank you for supporting me. You won’t go broke, and it’ll be one of the best investments you’ll ever make.”Sean Reyes, who later went on to become the subject of the CMD records lawsuit over his RAGA and Rule of Law Defense Fund correspondence, was more colorful — and more direct about who was holding the checks:“If you have checks for us, I’m taking Missy to the Supreme Court but Alan will be here and Erica can help us out as well. … Just remember that when you are writing those big corporate checks, you’re standing there with me in the ring of a bunch of gangbangers from fifth grade, that’s how I feel with you.”Three AGs. One coalition. One ask.The Scholarly Backbone: Why “27, 28, 29” Wasn’t BlusterTim Fox’s coalition arithmetic is exactly the dynamic Nolette documents in...

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