Two people who've served in leadership roles in the Republican Mayors Association also have connections to companies that got money from it, according to public reports filed with the IRS.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson founded the association shortly after he was reelected in 2023. Its stated mission is to get Republican candidates elected at the local level.
Mike Demkiw is the communications and research director for a Maryland-based company called Strategic Partners and Media, LLC. Demkiw also serves as the executive director of the Republican Mayors Association.
Strategic Partners received more than $60,000 from the association.
And an early-January 2024 press release announced Mary Elbanna as a member of the association’s national board. She operates a consulting company called Adept Strategies, LLC.
It got more than $14,000 from the RMA since it was founded.
KERA reached out to Johnson both at City Hall and the law firm where he works for comment. KERA also requested comment from Demkiw and Elbanna about their affiliation with companies being hired by the RMA, as well as the RMA. None responded.
Elbanna’s name was mentioned on the RMA’s website up until June 2024, but no longer appears there.
Adept also received money directly from Johnson’s city of Dallas campaign fund, according to city records. From mid-May 2023 to late-December 2023, Johnson paid out more than $110,000 for consulting services to Adept, The Dallas Morning News reported last year.
Additionally, Johnson paid another roughly $14,600 to Adept Strategies in 2024 from his office holder account at City Hall, according to campaign finance records.
Elbanna and Johnson’s relationship goes back years. She interned in Johnson’s office when he was a state representative, became his mayoral campaign manager in 2019 and then his chief of staff from 2019 to 2022, according to her Linkedin profile.
Adept Strategies was formed just days after Johnson was reelected for a second mayoral term, according to state records.
KERA News recently reported Johnson’s Republican Mayors Association has spent a small fraction of its hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, directly on candidate campaigns and political committees.
The consultants who appear on the RMA’s reports may be doing legitimate work supporting Republican candidates across the country. But experts told KERA News that unless the firms being paid explicitly reveal where the dollars are going — tracking the money is basically “a closed door.”
Insider transactions?
The Republican Mayors Association files as a 527 political organization. Such organizations are usually focused on an issue — in this case, getting conservatives elected.
A 2024 ProPublica investigation found that “these 527 groups limit their direct support to political candidates, removing them from the jurisdiction of the FEC or similar state agencies and leaving their regulation to the IRS.”
“So, there are some political organizations that raise money from the public that only file with the IRS,” Brett Kappel, counsel at Harmon, Curran, Spielberg and Eisenberg, a law firm specializing in giving legal advice to nonprofit organizations, told KERA.
But there are some situations where a 527 organization may need to file more detailed reports. Kappel said if the group has over a certain threshold of “unearned” cash (such as revenue from interest or dividends), it must file a 990 document — a form most nonprofit charities file annually.
And that form includes disclosures about insider contracts, Kappel said.
“If the executive director of the 527 has a fundraising firm and the 527 is paying the fundraising firm what they would have to disclose that on the…form 990,” Kappel said “And any organization that files a form 990 is also subject to IRS requirements about what are called beneficial transactions, which is basically insider deals.”
Kappel said that would require the 527 group’s board to come up with conflict-of-interest policies. If a potential issue comes up, the group’s board could vote to accept a contract or not.
“That's a long, convoluted answer, basically saying that in some cases insider transactions...can be prohibited,” Kappel said.
But other times they’re approved. Kappel said, hypothetically, if a member of a 527 group’s board of directors has a printing company, and the organization needs fundraiser programs printed — it would be beneficial to use the resources at hand.
"The board of directors can say yes, even though this is an insider contract, it's in the interest of the organization to waive any potential conflict of interest because in fact, we're getting a benefit, we're getting a discount,” Kappel said.
And he added that those types of approvals aren’t always “shenanigans or people trying to enrich themselves.”
Financial questions
But some financial transactions involving 527s have raised eyebrows — and even prompted the attention of prosecutors.
A 2019 report from the Campaign Legal Center — a nonpartisan legal organization focused on American democracy — and in collaboration with Axios found that a 527 organization connected to a former Trump insider was funneling money back to that insider.
David Bossie, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, urged Trump’s base to support the Presidential Coalition, “purposely to support state and local candidates in furtherance of the Trump agenda,” according to a 2019 report from the Campaign Legal Center, in collaboration with Axios.
“Instead, the group has spent most of the funds raised on more fundraising, largely direct mail marketing and telemarketing,” the report found.
“And $659,493 went to two affiliated organizations also run by Bossie, Citizens United and Citizens United Foundation. Those payments included a salary for Bossie himself.”
The report found that most of the Presidential Coalition’s donations came from “small-dollar and elderly donors.”
In 2023, federal prosecutors in Manhattan handed down subpoenas for recorded fundraising phone calls from five 527 nonprofit organizations, according to reporting from The New York Times.
The Times profiled the five nonprofits and found they had “raised $89 million since 2014, mostly from small-dollar donors who answered fund-raising robocalls.”
“But about 90 percent of the money raised was used to pay for more robocalls. Another 3 percent was paid to three political operatives from Wisconsin, who appeared to be the driving force behind all five groups,” the 2023 article found.
“Only about 1 percent of their money was spent to help candidates, via donations, advertisements or targeted get-out-the-vote operations.”
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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