Cigarette giant Reynolds American Inc. gave $80,000 in 2018 to the secretive group that now wants to make it harder to amend Florida’s constitution, according to tax records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.
The North Carolina-based Big Tobacco company, which makes Newport and Camel cigarettes and Vuse e-cigarettes, is the first known corporate contributor to Keep Our Constitution Clean Inc., the nonprofit that has spent more than $9 million in support of a proposed amendment that, if approved by voters, would require all future constitutional amendments to go through two statewide votes.
The proposed amendment is No. 4 on this year’s ballot.
Keep Our Constitution Clean is what critics call a “dark money” group, because it is organized under a section of federal law that generally allows it to hide the identities of its donors.
But in response to a records request from the Sentinel, the nonprofit provided a series of federal tax records, one of which shows that it got $80,000 from Reynolds in 2018. It appears to be the largest of five donations that Keep Our Constitution Clean received that year. The other donors are not identified in the records.
Read the rest of the story here.
Comments