How things relate to one another: The Dennis Muchmore story

by: Eric B.

Sun May 25, 2008 at 12:00:11 PM EDT

What do Cliff Taylor, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, Nestle, Eagle Mine, and George Bush all have in common?  Why, it’s Dennis Muchmore, longtime Lansing lobbyist.

I first winced a couple of years ago when I first heard the name Dennis Muchmore, when he was named to head Michigan United Conservation Clubs.  You see, the name Muchmore, Deb Muchmore, was familiar to me as the name of the P.R. flack for the Ice Mountain bottling facility in Mecosta County. Later, she added the Kennecott Mine Project to her client list. Indeed, she and Dennis Muchmore are wife and husband.

Today, among other things (we’ll get to those later), Muchmore is the head of MUCC, an organization perhaps best known as the principle driver behind the state’s bottle deposit law.  The most notable thing about MUCC’s history has been its willingness to break ranks with … well, whomever, and go its own way.  In recent years, as some of it’s more pre-eminent presidents have passed away, the group’s reputation has become that it is essentially a tool of the Sportsmen for Bush crowd, people who say they like to kill things with guns and eat them, but that the shape of the environment isn’t so important to them (supporting President Breaks Everything He Touches is an easy fit).  Indeed, not only have the Muchmores given money primarily to Republicans (Deborah Muchmore, who used to be Deborad Wudyka back when Ice Mountain was Perrier instead of Nestle, gave two grand to him in ’04, as did he … and someone bearing the name Dennis Muchmore and listed as a consultant for DHR International gave the RNC $2,100) over the years, but Dennis Muchmore himself was a Bush Pioneer in both 2000 and 2004 (that is, he raised more than $100,000 for Pres. BEHT).  Muchmore isn’t just a Lansing lobbyist whose firm previously defeated a public smoking ban and who raises lots of money for terrible presidents while also presiding over one of the state’s most influential outdoors advocacy groups, but he’s also a vice president of a proposed ethanol project in the Gratiot County city of Ithaca.

But, why today do we concern ourselves with Dennis Muchmore?  Because he’s putting his fund raising talents to work for Cliff Taylor.  Muchmore is apparently part of the host committee (which itself includes Joe Schwarz and Tim Walberg) for a fund raising event in Jackson at the end of the month.  Speaking there will be Steve Forbes.  $500 gets you in the door, $3,400 gets you and a guest a seat at a special roundtable with Taylor.

I could leave open to contemplation of why the head of what is supposed to be the head of a non-partisan outdoors group is raising money for a supreme court candidate notable for his anti-environmental positions and reckless rulings that have given the state’s supreme court the reputation as one of the most tainted and worst across the country, but we already have the answer.  The head of MUCC is raising money for Cliff Taylor (and other Republicans) because he’s primarily just a lobbyist and is very good at it.