Tancredo Donor Linked to White Power Group

John Elway may have given $1000 dollars to Congressman Tom Tancredo last year, but that’s nothing compared to the attention one of his donors has been getting.

Since 2000, Tancredo has received money from one individual-one individual who is now being criticized by watchdog groups for his connections with white supremacists.According to Federal Election Commission records, a man named John Tanton from Petoskey, MI, has given the Colorado representative a total of $3,000, with the most recent donation being from December of 2005.

Recently, Tanton was the subject of a study put forth by the Center for New Community, a civil rights group based in Chicago. The report found that one of Tanton’s outlets, the Social Contract Press, was being edited by Wayne Lutton, who the Center claims is an “ardent white nationalist.”

From the study:

Lutton has spoken at the biannual conference of the white nationalist group American Renaissance, is a trustee of the American Renaissance parent organization, the New Century Foundation, and is on the editorial advisory board of the Council of Conservative Citizens Citizen Informer and the white nationalist journal The Occidental Quarterly. He has also written numerous, pseudonymous articles for the Journal of Historical Review, the Holocaust denial journal founded by Willis Carto.4 Tanton has consistently supported Lutton, despite his continued involvement with unabashed white nationalist groups.

Tanton is the publisher of the Social Contract Press, and according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, another watchdog group, he is the “puppeteer” behind numerous immigration groups throughout the country-some of which the Law Center considers to be hate groups.

In a leaked 1986 memo Tanton made statements that were criticized as being racist. One example is Tanton’s words regarding white power and identity:

As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? Why don’t non-Hispanic Whites have a group identity, as do Blacks, Jews, Hispanics?

Another Tanton corporation, U.S Inc, was also found to have given $48,000 dollars to the group Defend Colorado Now since 2005, which is a significant amount of the total given in the past two years.

7/18/06 UPDATE: Companion story here >> Another Tancredo Donor Linked To White Power — ed.

Erin Rosa was born in Spain and raised in Colorado Springs. She is a freelance writer currently living in Denver. Rosa's work has been featured in a variety of news outlets including the Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle, an alternative-weekly in Northern Colorado where she worked as a columnist covering the state legislature. Rosa has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting on lobbying and woman's health issues. She was also tapped with a rare honorable mention award by the Newspaper Guild-CWA's David S. Barr Award in 2008--only the second such honor conferred in its nine-year history--for her investigative series covering the federal government's Supermax prison in the state. Rosa covers the labor community, corrections, immigration and government transparency matters. She can be reached at erosa@www.coloradoindependent.com.

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