Sean Duffy’s reality-show-tinged family road trip has drawn sponsorships from companies including Toyota and Boeing. But at least one would-be sponsor balked at the ethical implications of seeming to buy access to President Donald Trump’s Transportation secretary, a person directly involved in the outreach told POLITICO.
The person said the company declined to get involved after being approached by Great American Road Trip Inc., the Delaware-registered nonprofit that paid for the Duffy family’s gas, car rentals, lodging and activities during the eight months of on-and-off filming.
The refusal, not previously reported, was an early sign of the ethical qualms that have come to face Duffy’s road trip, intended to be a patriotic tour across America the Beautiful on the eve of the country’s 250th birthday. A government watchdog group and Democratic lawmakers have raised a host of questions about the odyssey — including the role of the nonprofit, which is headed by former transportation lobbyist Tori Barnes.
The unidentified company declined after considering Barnes’ request for its sponsorship on The Great American Road Trip, the person involved in the outreach said. The company and the person were granted anonymity so the person could discuss internal deliberations.
“You’re paying for access through Tori’s group. This is a little too cute," said the person. The person added it was clear that Barnes’ proposal raised ethical concerns.
Barnes, a former lobbyist for the U.S. Travel Association and General Motors, rejected the person’s account on Friday, calling it “a lie.”
She added that sponsorship wasn’t a prerequisite for being able to meet Duffy during his trek.
“There are dozens of people that the Secretary met with out on the road” including port directors, small business owners and transportation experts who are “not paying partners,” Barnes wrote in an email. She called Duffy “the most accessible Secretary we have ever seen” and noted he recently held events with American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Amtrak, none of which are “partners” of Great American Road Trip Inc.
DOT on Friday provided a lengthy fact sheet to POLITICO defending the road trip series. It said that department ethics attorneys cleared Duffy’s participation; no taxpayer dollars were spent on production costs; and the Duffys didn’t receive a salary or royalties.
Besides Toyota and Boeing, sponsors of the tour include Enterprise Rent-A-Car, United Airlines and Royal Caribbean Group. Toyota spokesperson Zach Reed declined to comment. Boeing, Enterprise, United and Royal Caribbean didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The sponsored excursion across America has drawn new attention to Duffy and his wife, “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy — two former stars of the 1990s reality series “The Real World” — ever since they appeared on the network last week to promote their five-part YouTube series, which is set to debut in June. The trailer for the series, called The Great American Road Trip, includes shots of the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, subtropical palm trees and amber waves of grain — as well as an Oval Office visit with Trump, who enthuses, “What a beautiful family.” The Duffys have nine children, some of whom participated in the road trip, according DOT.
The fact sheet the department shared with POLITICO on Friday says Duffy was filming on the road for at least three days during last fall’s 43-day federal shutdown. (Air traffic controller absences snarled the U.S. aviation system during this period and Duffy advocated for lawmakers to reopen the government.) His travel for the series included “several weekends and during the children’s spring break,” the document says.
But the financial arrangements behind the tour have gotten the most scrutiny.
“That’s ethics 101”
One watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, this weekcalled on DOT’s acting inspector general to investigate whether Duffy violated federal gift and travel rules during the filming. The DOT’s inspector general office declined to comment.
A top Democrat was unsparing in criticizing the trip.
“Public officials should pay for their own vacations, not ask for handouts from the industry players that they are supposed to regulate,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Banking Committee. “That’s ethics 101. How did Duffy miss that?”
In a statement Friday to POLITICO, DOT said: “There’s one thing every American — Republican, Democrat, or otherwise — ought to be able to agree on: celebrating this country, especially in its 250th year, is a good thing. Secretary Duffy hopes everyone will load up the family, and see the country — the battlefields, the national parks, the small-town diners, the monuments that tell our story.”
DOT previously said that costs covered by the nonprofit included “gas, car rentals, lodging, and activities.” The department added that celebrating America’s 250th birthday is part of Duffy’s “official duties” and the series “is one aspect in support of those responsibilities.”
During the trip’s stops, DOT has said Duffy often conducted additional visits in keeping with his job, such as "touring air traffic control towers and assessing port infrastructure.” As with “any other official engagements,” the department has said it “covered the flight,” adding that no taxpayer dollars were spent on Duffy’s family.
Republicans who spoke with POLITICO didn’t express concerns about the trip, and some said they thought it was a net-positive.
On The Great American Road Trip’s YouTube page, a video shows Duffy walking around Wheeling, West Virginia, with one of the state’s Republican senators, Shelley Moore Capito, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee.
In two separate interviews with POLITICO, Capito said Duffy’s family wasn’t with him when she and he were together for the two-hour visit earlier this year, during which they “did a little historic thing, looked at some structures and talked transportation.”
Capito added: “I thought it was a great way to feature the country and he said he was going around in honor of America's 250. It’s less money for the taxpayer. I don’t really have a problem with it.”
Duffy is scheduled to be on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Thursday to testify before appropriations subcommittees on DOT’s budget request, where he will likely get questions on the trip.
The sponsorships didn’t come cheap.
Toyota logo, cruise ship cameos
POLITICO this week reported a pitch deck by Great American Road Trip Inc. that outlined various partnership levels — “Platinum,” “Gold,” “Silver” and “Bronze” — that would include recognition on its web page of sponsors, among other perks. Those sponsorship tiers would cost $1 million, $500,000, $250,000 and $100,000, respectively, according to the document.
Each level also would provide “VIP invitations” to “networking” or other events, with Platinum getting up to six, Gold receiving as many as four, Silver a maximum of three and Bronze being capped at only one, the document said.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Toyota and Boeing each donated $1 million to the nonprofit. Barnes declined to confirm those amounts to POLITICO or provide donation figures for other sponsors.
The trailer features a Toyota vehicle with a brief, but prominent shot of the automaker’s logo. Royal Caribbean, another sponsor, also appears in the footage.
In a separate sponsorship strategy overview reported by POLITICO, the organization hinted at an initially broader vision for the series, which will be shared on YouTube, saying it would have a “major streaming partner (e.g., Fox Nation, Discovery+, or Netflix)” and be 10 episodes long. YouTube didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The primary target audience would be “Married moms (ages 28–54) with children,” this document says. The secondary ones: “Empty Nesters (aged 50-70), married with grown children and/or grandchildren” and “Patriotic Singles & Couples (ages 25–45) who are travel enthusiasts.”
Some Democrats are interested in further examining the trip. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), the ranking member of the Senate aviation subcommittee, told POLITICO: “I’ll look into it,” adding, “That’s very questionable.”
Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, said, “I am curious about what this nonprofit organization is, and I think there are legitimate questions that [Duffy] ought to face and ought to answer.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ investigations panel, said the matter “bears scrutiny.”
When asked to respond to Democrats’ concerns, Barnes said in her Friday email that: “The Great American Road Trip Inc. is an independent non-profit with three key pillars: 1. To celebrate America’s 250th birthday; 2. To promote travel and tourism and 3. To bring a focus [to] transportation, infrastructure and the ingenuity that built America over the past 250 years and will build America over the next 250 years.
“The Great American Road Trip effort has 250+ official stops on our website, and our series visits blue states and red states alike. This effort is solely intended to inspire Americans to get out and see America,” she said.
Federal tax records may eventually shed more light on the nonprofit’s operations. But Barnes said in a Wednesday email to POLITICO that the organization’s initial Form 990, a document that outlines details about tax-exempt entities, “is not yet due” with the Internal Revenue Service, so Great American Road Trip Inc. has “not yet filed it.” The organization says it’s a 501(c)(4).
A "memorandum of agreement" between the department and the nonprofit describes the organization as a donor to DOT — and says its gift is “support” for the department’s celebration of the semiquincentennial. It would do that through “hosting a website, using social media channels, building a series that could live on YouTube for the inspiration of all Americans ... and funding for events and family participation.” The New York Times first reported the document. DOT provided it to POLITICO.
The memo also says the nonprofit acknowledges that it will receive no “favorable consideration for any future federal financial assistance, action, contract, or other financial award.”
The organization’s individual sponsors didn’t sign the memo. But Barnes and a senior adviser at DOT, Leslie Windram O’Shaughnessy, did.
Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.
from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/Hxqpr2m
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment