Secretive conservative group holds $25K fundraiser at Edgewood

Wednesday, January 28, 2015
By David Gutman, Staff writer

david.gutman@wvgazette.com
304-348-5119
@davidlgutman

How much would you donate to a brand new nonprofit organization with no website, only one listed employee, a vague description of its purposes and only a P.O. box for an address? ... For as many as 18 people Tuesday night, the answer was $25,000.

Go West Virginia Inc., a nonprofit founded in late 2013 that helped fund Republican candidates in the 2014 elections, hosted a fundraising reception and dinner at Charleston’s Edgewood Country Club on Tuesday night. ... Tickets to the reception cost $1,000 and tickets to the private dinner cost $25,000, according to the event’s invitation. ... The club had 18 people registered for the dinner and 60 for the reception.

Mark Scott, an Elkins realty agent listed as Go West Virginia’s president on its tax filing, declined to answer questions, saying that all inquiries must go through the organization’s lawyer. ... That lawyer, Eric Lycan, a counsel for U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s recent re-election campaign in Kentucky, did not return requests for comment.

The fundraiser was organized by Rivet Strategies, which also does not have a website. Rivet Strategies is run by Allison Meyers, who in 2010 was fired by the Republican National Committee after she took members of the Republican “Young Eagles” program to a lesbian-bondage themed strip club in Los Angeles and billed a $2,000 tab to the RNC. Meyers also was a campaign consultant to Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in 2012 and gubernatorial candidate Bill Maloney in 2011.