A confidential contract obtained by The Associated Press shows that Armey
agreed in September to resign from his role as chairman of
Washington-based FreedomWorks in exchange for $8 million in consulting
fees paid in annual $400,000 installments. Dated Sept. 24, the contract
specifies that Armey would resign his position at both FreedomWorks and
its sister organization, the FreedomWorks Foundation, by the end of
November.
According to the contract, Armey's consulting fees will be paid by Richard J. Stephenson,
a prominent fundraiser and founder and chairman of the Cancer Treatment
Centers of America, a national cancer treatment network. Stephenson is on the board of directors of FreedomWorks.
Armey's exit comes as a new sign
of acrimony in conservative and Republican ranks as the party's bruised
leadership struggles with its November electoral losses and uncertainty
over how to recast its principles and issues to compete with an
ascendant Democratic Party.
Armey would not describe his
specific concerns, but he told Mother Jones magazine that the tea party
group was moving in an unproductive direction. He also indicated
dissatisfaction with the November election results, in which several GOP candidates supported by FreedomWorks Super PAC donations were beaten by Democratic Party rivals.
In an internal Nov. 30
resignation memo published by Mother Jones, Armey told FreedomWorks CEO
Matt Kibbe to remove his "name, image and signature" from all the
group's materials and Web operations. Kibbe and other FreedomWorks
officials were not immediately available for comment.
Armey, who had been with the tea
party group since its 2004 founding, is a veteran Texas Republican Party
political figure who was intimately involved in the GOP's
conservative "Contract with America" congressional movement in the
1990s. While Armey, 72, was FreedomWorks' co-chairman and intellectual
authority and at first, its public face, the younger Kibbe has been its
most active official, appearing at the group's public gatherings.
FreedomWorks flourished after a
wave of tea party House candidates swept into office in 2010, but
despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to back favored GOP
candidates in November, the group's influence appeared to wane at the
polls. Among the GOP losers supported by FreedomWorks in November were
Senate candidates Josh Mandel in Ohio, Connie Mack in Florida and
Richard Mourdock in Indiana.
Overall, tea party-influenced
House legislators fared better in the recent elections, though their
ranks thinned. At least 83 of 87 members of the tea party-powered House
GOP freshman class of 2010 ran for re-election to the House in November.
All but 11 of them were returned to office while a twelfth, Rep. Jeff
Landry, R-La., faces an uphill runoff election this month against
another GOP incumbent.
FreedomWorks' internal secrecy
and its role as a high-financed super political action committee became
an issue in the weeks before the election when federal campaign finance
documents revealed that a shadowy Tennessee-based corporation had
funneled seven donations totaling $5.28 million to the tea party group.
The amount was the largest political contribution to a super PAC in 2012
from a business group that would not identify its donor, citing changes
to campaign finance rules that allow more secretive donations.
FreedomWorks would not identify
the anonymous donor, and a Tennessee lawyer who set up the apparent
shell company, Specialty Group Inc., declined repeated requests for
comment. The Tennessee firm changed its name to Specialty Investments
Group Inc. on Nov. 28, although the group appears to advertise no
product or service. ___