The Grand Junction Connection: Dark Money, Workers’ Rights and Elon Musk

by Jacob Richards

Wired Magazine reported, just before the election, that poorly-paid canvassers with Elon Musk’s America Political Action Committee (PAC), were subjected to numerous human and workers’ rights violations by a Colorado subcontractor–Blitz Canvassing.

According to Wired, workers were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, flown in from out of state, threatened that they would have to pay for their own lodging if quotas weren’t met, transported in the seatless cargo area of a U-Haul van and one door- knocker said that they weren’t told they were signing up to knock doors for Musk and Trump until after they signed.

An indeed.com review from a former employee posted back in 2022, illustrates that labor abuses are nothing new. “They treat their employees very poorly. They lure people to work out of state and then pay you less than they promised… I am filing a claim for unpaid wages.”

In 2024, Blitz Canvassing, according to FEC filings, was paid at least $40.288 million dollars to knock doors and stump for Trump and other Republican candidates in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, North Carolina, and Colorado by Musk’s America PAC. Blitz canvassing was the number one recipient of money from Musk’s America PAC.

Additionally, Blitz Canvassing helped collect signatures to get progressive third-party presidential candidate Cornel West on the ballot in North Carolina. 

Not unfamiliar with running astroturf political movements, Blitz was hired by the short lived “No Labels,” movement in 2022, to again collect signatures.

Often canvassing companies are ‘fly-by-night’ operations or ‘burner’ companies. They often hire seasonally employed low-wage workers. When issues inevitably arise, there is often no one to hold to account, but Blitz Canvassing has roots–roots in Colorado–roots all the way to Colorado Mesa University and to Grand Junction. 

Blitz Canvassing is owned by Josh Penry and is just part of a shady nebula of Republican political firms, owned by Penry.

Penry was the ‘golden boy’ of the Grand Valley. He was anointed at a young age by Republican kingmakers, Tim Foster and Scott McGinnis, to do great things.

In the late 1990s, Penry was the star quarterback for the Mesa State College’s Mavericks. He was even named the National Scholar Athlete of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association the year after Payton Manning won that same honor. He was the student body president and a political science major with a 4.0 grade point average. 

After college he went to learn the ropes in Washington D.C., working for then Congressman Scott McInnis.

After Penry came back to western Colorado he was elected to Colorado’s house of representatives, then he became Colorado’s youngest state senator, and was later tapped for leadership as minority leader for the Republicans. He even ran an aborted campaign to become Colorado’s governor in 2009. People in GJ speculated that he could even be president material.

And then the revolving door revolved, and Penry became engrossed in selling political influence for cold hard cash. Penry took advantage of the flood of super PACs and their dark money that became legal after the Citizens’ United ruling, which found that money was speech.

He has since built up a right-wing influence empire based in Denver, his company EIS Solutions, formerly helped extractive companies with their environmental impact statements and to lobby against oil and gas regulations in Colorado, has since rebranded into a ‘one-stop shop’ political consultancy firm, 76 Group. 

The empire that Penry was building was initially funded largley with Oil and Gas money, including Koch brothers’ funds. 

Along with his wife Kristin Strohm, who founded the Starboard Group, yet another lobbying/influence firm, the two became a ‘power couple,’ turning corporate money into a slew of front groups opposed to community efforts to regulate the oil and gas industry. 

Today, their clients include a who’s who of big business, fossil fuels companies, and billionaire funded front groups. But also, non-profits, institutions like Community Hospital and Colorado Mesa University, and even the occasional progressive groups like One Colorado (who strategically paid Penry’s firm to whip up a few critical Republican votes in Colorado’s state house house to pass marriage equality in 2014).

Today, Penry’s empire also includes ‘sister companies:’ Blitz Canvassing and Ascent Media. These three Penry owned companies are also all part of GP3 Partners, the largest public relations and political consulting consortium in the United States. 

According to their website GP3 leads the industry in “strategic know-how,” and has a “proven capacity to build strategies and execute a wide range of public affairs tactics to help our clients wage and win the toughest political and public relations fights.” 

GP3 is nominally non-partisan, in that it all spends the same, but its founder Phil Cox is well-known Republican operative.

It is the firm that candidates and parties and single-issue groups of all stripes contract to run their campaigns, knock their doors, collect their signatures, create astroturf movements, place their attack ads, and more.

GP3 and Penry are modern day alchemists turning money into speech.

This is the ‘bipartisan’ marketplace where big money and industry can buy political power and influence. Their clients all have one thing in common–deep pockets.

And GP3 Partners is where Musk turned to sway this most recent election.

Penry has had to adopt a pragmatic form of non-partisanship in this new role. He told Colorado Politics in a 2021 interview. “Our politics is broken and needs balance.” Adding, “some days you fight, some days you compromise, and in all that give-and- take you get to balance and progress.” In the same article he said he was still a Republican, but “I don’t love Trump.”

It certainly didn’t sway him from working for Trump and Musk this past election season. When asked about big money in politics, in that same article, Penry said “It isn’t ideal but in a free society it’s tough to air quotes “fix.”

Another tool in Penry’s toolbox in 2024 was a “burner” company named M2 Placement. M2 is a foreign LLC that was only registered with Colorado’s Secretary of State in September of this year. M2 Registered just in time to take millions of dollars from millionaire Kent Thriy to push Rank Choice Voting (PROP 131), on Colorado voters.

Additionally, this election cycle, M2 Placement was pushing healthcare misinformation in Indiana and running attack ads supporting Republican candidates in Florida and Georgia.

According to FEC filings, M2 Placement was paid $2.269 million to place TV and social media ads in support of Prop 131. And, of course, Blitz Canvassing was also paid $2.227 million dollars to collect the 124,238 signatures to get Prop 131 on the ballot, in the first place. Both businesses are registered to the same address in Denver. 76 Group’s address. Josh Penry’s address.

After the initial Wired story broke, the mostly black workers were fired, not paid for work they already performed, and left stranded in Michigan to find their own way home. 

Tim Pollard contradicted the worker’s narrative, telling Wired: “following the incident, some of the canvassers and contractors involved left the program, some decided to stay, all have been paid.” 

Pollard is quoted as being with Blitz Canvassing, but he is actually the managing principal partner of the 76 Group, Penry’s brother-in-law and a Mesa State Alumni. Pollard’s name does not appear anywhere on Blitz Canvassing’s website. 

But other Grand Junctionites do appear on Blitz Canvassing’s website. 

Ky Oday is listed as the Operations Manager for Blitz Canvassing. Oday both grew up in Grand Junction and graduated from Mesa State College.

Oday and Penry both played football for the Mavs. Oday was his wide receiver. They are still making plays today, not on the gridiron, but against our democracy.

Additionally, Alyssa Zambrano is a project manager with Blitz Canvassing. She is the wife of Grand Junction native and Mesa State alumni Jake Zambrano. Jake, conveniently, is also a principal at 76 Group, and can often be found lobbying at the state capitol in Denver.

Zambrano is also the legislative director for the Common Sense Institute, a non-profit run by Penry’s wife. The CSI is a conservative think tank that has been described as serving functionally as an arm of the 76 Group.

Other influence peddlers in Penry’s fiefdom that have Grand Valley ties are Beau Flores, and Luke Aubert both with 76 Group. 

This is a story where rabbit holes lead off in every direction. We can research up to K Street and the halls of power in D.C., or drill down to the nepotism and cronyism of the Mesa County Republican good ole boy network, or sideways through the shady world of ‘democracy entrepreneurs,’ that sell our democracy to the highest bidder. We at the Rev will stay on the story and see where it leads us, and of course we will share it with our readers

Requests for a statement from Penry, Pollard and/or the 76 Group have gone unanswered.

###

The Revolutionist is 100% Volunteer run and subscriber funded. We do not sell our soul for advertising dollars. Nor do we prostrate ourselves for grants from the non-profit industrial complex. We are community media. Join the community! Subscribe today at whatever rate you can and get a hard copy of The Revolutionist in your mailbox. Subscribing subsidizes free distribution copies.