Remember South Dakota’s Initiated Measure 10? That measure put on the ballot and promoted by the now defunct organization, the South Dakota Conservative Action Council.

One of the primary goals of the poorly worded measure was to get rid of “pay to play politics.”  This measure was mainly funded by out-of-state organizations, most of which was funnelled in through the SDCAC, so it could be hidden from voter’s eyes.

One of the few donations that the measure would fess up to (as opposed to hiding it through the SDCAC) was from the Americans for Tax Reform, as you can see below…

…..where they kicked in $10,000 to end “pay to play.”

Americans for Tax Reform last December donated $10,000 to South Dakotans for Open and Clean Government to help launch the group’s successful petition drive to place Measure 10 on the ballot.  ATR’s donation is the only out-of-state contribution received by the group, which has fully disclosed all of its donors as required by state campaign finance laws.

Read it here.  Of course, no one believed that this was the only out of state donation, since the SDCAC with no visible means of support magically came up with hundreds of thousands of dollars towards the effort.

Anyway, the Americans for Tax Reform brought in their national president - Grover Norquist - to come to SD to campaign in favor of the measure. In addition to the ATU, Norquist serves on the board of the American Conservative Union.

Why is this whole “IM 10 pay-to-play” thing worth dragging back out of the muck and mire it had disappeared into?  Well, because of a recent article that is coming from the Politico website on pay to play politics in Washington:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors.  (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.

Read it here.   If you read the article, and hit some of the side links, you can see the original letter which is alleged to offer the “pay to play” for $2 million, and the later letter which came out against FedEx when they refused to cough up.  With the original letter coming out under American Conservative Union letterhead, and the second letter being written under the banners of the ACU & Americans for Tax Reform. Including Grover Norquist as a signatory to the second letter.

So, it looks like groups and individuals involved in promoting the South Dakota measure against alleged “pay to play” were involved in shaking down organizations for their own version of “pay to play.” And we still don’t know the identity of the out-of-state groups who ponied up the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the SD Measure that were funneled through the SDCAC.

If we ever will.

SDCAC’s only major player who is still around, Steve Sibson of  Sibby Online, has thus far been unwilling to disclose where they got all the cash.

But at the least, we have an ironic postscript for Initiated Measure 10’s footnote in history.

Which is a very minor footnote, at that.