Major news out of Georgia today. Let's bring the 2004 wayback machine ...

[beachmom]

Honestly, when I read this story in the AJC this morning, I thought it was just about some big GOP donor whose real estate company had collapsed.

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/at-reynolds-plantation-a-953476.html

Mercer Reynolds and his family had developed a luxury development 80 miles outside Atlanta called Reynolds Plantation, and with the collapse of the real estate market, it had begun to struggle in the last couple of years. In desperation, he begged the homeowners to buy the country club and golf course to keep the company solvent. The homeowners, who are mostly wealthy business people, rejected his offer. Overwhelmingly. So his company is going into receivership. In the story today, what strikes me is that it was the people of Georgia who had basically had enough of this guy. He tried to do a big development in Jekyll Island and was completely blindsided by angry residents. That deal soured and then died. Now the homeowners in a very conservative county have told him to hit the road.

What the article doesn't say a lot about is how important this man was to the Bush/Cheney 2004 re-election campaign. I did a little poking around, and found this illuminating article from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/06/13/loc_loc1campaign.html

He raised a record breaking amount of money for Bush (and the article is dated June 2004) outraising Kerry in the primary cycle at the date the article was printed ($201 million versus $117 million). The article talks about how he switched to the RNC. The point is he wasn't just another bundler. He was THE bundler for Bush/Cheney. He was in charge of all the other bundlers.

But wait -- if you venture into kind of the DU conspiracy theory type stuff (again, some will believe it, some won't), Mercer's company in TN NextLec (shown at the bottom of the Enquirer article) has ties with, ahem, Ohio IT issues. I did find a guy on LinkedIn who worked for NextLec and talked about it merging with SmartTech. So, basically, Mercer did own NextLec and it did merge with SmartTech. That is established fact. Here is where it gets murky. Not sure about this website but here is the accusation:

http://www.americancrossroadswatch.org/index.php?q=node/5

(The site is a watchdog site of Karl Rove's org American Crossroads)

Jo Ann Davidson is former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives where she pushed for energy deregulation. She was also the Republican National Co-Chair working with former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and GOP IT expert Michael Connell.

Davidson is very close with Bush Pioneer Mercer Reynolds who raised over $200 million for G.W. Bush’s re-election campaign. In 2000, Reynold’s Tennessee company, NextLec, merged with Smartech, the GOP IT company that contracted with Connell and was implicated in the manipulation of the 2004 Ohio election results, the missing White House emails and the off grid GOP email servers.

So, if one believes in conspiracies, the guy who pitched in in open and shady ways to give us four more years of George W. Bush was just paid back by the universe. He he.

(I do feel bad for the homeowners, though. I am not sure what they can do next.)

[YvonneCa]

1. I don't believe in conspiracy ...

...theories, BUT I also don't believe in sweeping illegal actions under the rug. I'm glad whenever those who knowingly participated in Ohio 2004 election 'irregulatities' get paid back by the universe. But some of them should be in jail, too, IMHO.

Ohio 2004 not only hurt individual homeowner and voters...it hurt our democratic process.

[beachmom]

2. Well, in order to believe illegal action took place, you need

to buy in the conspiracy. I have never bought into it, but a lot of good folks have. Even discounting that, this guy did the most important job -- getting the money.

Ah, and this from the excellent AllDemsOnBoard on DailyKos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/04/05/319855/-Cowards-of-a-feather-Bush-sneaks-Fox-into-the-henhouse

Thirteen other families bred multiple elite Bush donors, with three trifecta families producing three Pioneers or Rangers. Mercer Reynolds, who once bought out George W. Bush's failing oil company, is Bush's ex-Swiss ambassador and current national finance chair. The grandfathers of Mercer and Pioneer cousin James Reynolds bought the "Cracker's Neck" wood pulp plantation outside Atlanta. Along with Pioneer--and apparent family member-- Harold Reynolds, their grandsons developed the land into Reynolds Plantation, a luxury development that was the site of major fundraisers for Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns.

I have not been able to tie Reynolds with the SBVT, but that makes sense. He was an "above board" fundraiser. It was others like Sam Fox and Pickens who did that dirty work.

[beachmom]

3. Oh, and this is rich. We are talking deep, deep ties with Bush:

http://info.tpj.org/docs/pioneers/pioneers_view.jsp?id=27

Bush’s second stop on his fundraising drive for his 2004 reelection returned him to the Plantation, where he initially hoped to raise $1 million. In fact, the event raised $2.5 million after Reynolds’ cousin, James Reynolds, and follow Pioneer Eric Tanenblatt, chief of staff to Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, beat the bushes to boost high-roller turnout. Reynolds and DeWitt have deep roots with Bush. The duo owned Spectrum 7 oil company, which bailed out Bush’s hemorrhaging Bush Oil Co. in 1984. Both partners—who also own fast-food and convenience store interests—were big donors to the first President Bush and major investors in the Texas Rangers baseball team, which made George W. Bush a millionaire 15 times over. Much of this profit derived from a large equity stake that other partners in the investment gifted to Bush as well as the $135 million that local taxpayers forked out for the Rangers’ new Ballpark in Arlington.

This guy made Bush rich!!!!!!

[karynnj]

4. He goes way back with Bush

Talking of conspiracy theories, this suggests even more:
"Mercer Reynolds, who once bought out George W. Bush's failing oil company, is Bush's ex-Swiss ambassador and current national finance chair."

He was involved with W back when he was the ner' do well, nasty drunk son of Bush 1. From many other stories that buy out was a sweetheart deal - and I think the source of the money to buy the baseball team.

It is very easy to fall into deep conspiracy land with Reynolds as one of the sinister powers that be behind George W Bush.

Your links are incredible - and like you, I have no sympathy for this devil.

[wisteria]

5. I am not sure I believe in conspiracies, but I do believe that the Bush people

were willing to do anything or whatever it would take to get him reelected in 2004.