This year’s Conservative Political Action Conference is just around the corner, and the group organizing the event, the American Conservative Union, has given us a glimpse of the organizations underwriting the annual right-wing confab. We thought we’d go over some of the highlights.
Perhaps the most notable organization ponying up to put on CPAC this year is a Japanese blockchain company called Wowoo. The firm is a “presenting” sponsor, meaning it gave $125,000 to put on the conference, and will get a host of accompanying benefits, including promotion through official ACU email and social-media channels.
Wowoo is there to promote its new Liberty Ecosystem, a blockchain platform that it hopes to use to promote political and economic freedom, particularly in developing nations, by enabling collaboration among activists, policymakers, and business leaders. It’s an interesting idea, even in a technological field with plenty of utopian pipe dreams.
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Above even Wowoo on the CPAC sponsorship ladder is an organization called Dragging Canoe, which paid $250,000 to underwrite the conference. It stuck out at us because there’s virtually no information available online about what exactly Dragging Canoe is, and unlike other sponsors listed on CPAC’s website, there’s no link to its own website. Indeed, it doesn’t even appear to have a website.
According to ACU, Dragging Canoe is a conservative-themed resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Ian Walters, a spokesman for the group, described it as “an entertainment, shopping, eating, and educational destination dedicated to Second Amendment and conservative values.” At Dragging Canoe, he said, “conservatives can enjoy great food in a great environment without the fear of being shouted down by #resistance agitators.”
Another CPAC sponsor that caught our eye is a group called Sovereign Nations, a new conservative think-tank-type group run by executives of Sovereign Alliance, a company that hosts conservative and Christian-themed cruises. Sovereign Nations appears to have sprouted up in 2017, when it hosted a conference at the Trump Hotel in DC that sought to address questions including, “Will the United States succumb to open borders and the manipulation of George Soros?”
These are just a few of the 31 listed CPAC sponsors that jumped out at us. We’ll be following their involvement in the conference as we head to National Harbor next week to cover the event.
