The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board ruled last Thursday that major corporate donors related to the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage  must be disclosed. But Minnesota’s strong disclosure laws already reveal many prominent movers and shakers behind the seven-year battle the Minnesota Family Council has waged to get the amendment on the ballot next year. High-dollar contributors include the owner of a DVD-replicating business who has given large sums to Republican causes and the chairman of a sports apparel company that’s received $2 million in defense contracts. And even staffers of the Minnesota Family Council have kicked in big money.

The Minnesota Independent took a look at lobbying reports, campaign finance filings and foundation tax records and found a large amount of money coming from a handful of people. Lobbying reports don’t include the amount of money given to a particular lobbyist, only whether the donation was more than $500 per year. And campaign finance reports are limited to funds that went toward advertising, print or other electioneering communication and activity.

Three groups have been behind the push for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The Minnesota Family Council (which also runs Minnesota for Marriage), the Minnesota Catholic Conference (a part of Minnesota for Marriage) and Minnesota Citizens in Defense of Marriage (which reformed under the banner of Minnesota Majority several years ago).

Reports show that lobbying by the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the policy arm of the Roman Catholic Church in Minnesota, is exclusively funded by the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis, unlike other organizations which have a diversity of donors.

For the Minnesota Family Council (MFC), Minnesota for Marriage (M4M) and Minnesota Citizens in Defense of Marriage (MCDM), the money is primarily from large donors. Here’s a look at some of the biggest:

Robert Cummins, Primera Technology

Robert Cummins donated $90,000 in 2005 and $38,130 in 2006 to M4M to get the marriage amendment on the ballot. He’s the founder of Primera Technology, a DVD duplicating company in Plymouth, Minn. He also gave $280,000 to the now defunct MCDM.

Cummins is a major donor to GOP and conservative groups, having given millions over the last 10 years. And it’s rumored that Cummins, along with other conservative donors, have promised Republicans big-dollar donations in 2012 if they passed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

A source recently told Politics in Minnesota that “promises must have been made to outside sources” that in exchange for getting the amendment on the ballot Republicans would get millions of dollars to help with the 2012 campaign to retain control of the state House and Senate. Cummins is notoriously shy about speaking with the media.

A very religious man, Cummins founded a Catholic school, Providence Academy, in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities. His religious faith is a driving value for his company: Primera markets specifically to churches to help spread the gospel.

Primera has done business with Pat Robertson’s Regent University, Oral Roberts University and Patrick Henry College, which was founded by the conservative Home School Legal Defense Association.

Primera has also done work for 45 state governments including Minnesota, the City of Minneapolis, over 40 US Air Force bases, Metro State University, Macalester College, the University of Minnesota system, Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Minnesota State University Mankato and the Minnesota Twins and Timberwolves franchises. Primera’s work for the state of Minnesota in 2010 and 2011 comes to just under $2,000.

Rodney Huisken, Huisken Meats

Rod Huisken made his money in the family business, Huisken Meats in Chandler, Minn. Huisken passed away earlier this year, but his legacy lives on through donations to anti-LGBT groups. Huisken and Cummins teamed up in 2007 to defeat former Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson of Wilmar by funding attack ads through anti-gay and anti-abortion groups. The Worthington Daily Globe explained at the time:

Who was behind the hateful, fear-mongering ads on the gay marriage non-issue that blared from your radio, filled your mailbox, and plastered your windshield at church on Sunday morning? You might picture pious little old ladies fearful that their grandchildren will turn into homosexuals, but you would be wrong. Most of those ads came from Minnesota Citizens in Defense of Marriage. More than half of that organization’s funding came from one wealthy man, Robert P. Cummins of Deephaven, who contributed $155,000. When his contribution is combined with the $45,000 from Rodney Huisken of Chandler, Minn., the two provided about 70 percent of MCDM’s funding. MCDM targeted about two-thirds of its statewide independent expenditures against one candidate, Dean Johnson.

Minnesota for Marriage spent roughly $100,000 attempting to get the so-called marriage amendment on the ballot. Of that total, Robert Cummins gave more than $38,000 and Rodney Huisken provided $25,000, which when combined made up almost two-thirds of the budget. Huisken provided all of the funding for Minnesota for Life. Cummins kicked in $20,000 to MCCL as that organization attacked Johnson and sponsored Michael Cruz in the primary election.

Johnson was a top target of groups during that election because he wouldn’t allow the marriage amendment, sponsored by then-Sen. Michele Bachmann, to come to a vote in the state Senate. It had already passed the House.

Huisken was also a faithful donor to Bachmann for Congress over the course of her congressional career.

All told, Huisken gave $36,000 to Minnesota for Marriage and $85,000 to MCDM, and was a reliable donor to the Minnesota Family Council’s lobbying activities until his death.

Joel Jennings, Gopher Sport

Joel Jennings is CEO of Gopher Sport, a sporting apparel and equipment company based in Owatonna. Gopher Sport also goes under the name the Prophet Corporation. Jennings personally gave M4M $15,000 in 2005, and the Jennings Family Foundation, which was previously called the Prophet Corporation Foundation, has given the Minnesota Family Council $80,000 since 2003.

The Minnesota Family Council is consistently in the top five recipients of the foundation.

Jennings also gave money to MFC’s lobbying efforts in 2010.

At least a portion of the company’s profits come from the government.

The company received more than $2 million in defense contracts between 2000 and 2010 and another $130,00 in other government contracts.

George and Barbara Anderson, Crown Iron Works

George Anderson of Roseville-based Crown Iron Works has funded the Minnesota Family Council’s lobbying efforts for years. He also made a $10,000 contribution to Minnesota for Marriage in 2006 to help get the bill passed. His wife, Barbra, is an outspoken member of the staff at the Minnesota Family Council.

Barb recently claimed credit for stopping anti-bullying efforts and claimed that the reason that LGBT students get bullied is because they have come out of the closet.

She said that it was LGBT groups that caused the bullying because more students were coming out of the closet.

“That is one of the tactics that they are using now, to say that by not legitimizing and normalizing homosexuality, we are creating an atmosphere in the schools that is hostile to quote-end-quote gay kids,” she said. “What they are doing is just the opposite themselves. They are creating an environment where these children that are sexually confused suddenly become affirmed as a homosexual or that they are born that way, and then these kids are locked into a lifestyle with their choices limited, and many times this can be disastrous to them as they get into the behavior which leads to disease and death in some cases.”

She added, “So, it’s really… They are the ones that are contributing to an atmosphere that can even increase bullying as more kids get into this kind of a lifestyle.”

She made that statement on the radio program of Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality, a group the Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed a hate group.

Ron King, real estate developer

Eden Prairie–based real estate developer Ron King has given $45,000 to Minnesota for Marriage over the last seven years.

“I have a faith that moves me to make decisions like this,” told the Pioneer Press in 2006. “I believe our state of Minnesota and our nation need it in order to solidify family as a unit of society, integral to the continuation of a productive society.”

Last week’s decision by the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board means that large scale donations from corporations will have to be disclosed in addition to the personal donations that wealthy business owners have made in previous years. The Minnesota Independent will be reporting on the money behind the campaigns surrounding the amendment to ban gay marriage in the coming weeks.

Vance Opperman has been a major player in Democratic politics in Minnesota for four decades. In 1968, after helping lead opposition to the Vietnam War in Minneapolis, he was elected chair of the Hennepin County DFL. The recent law school graduate was just 25 years old.

Opperman went on to found a highly successful law firm, McGovern, Opperman & Paquin, amassing millions in the process. In 1991 the National Law Journal named him one of the 100 most influential attorneys in the country. But the majority of Opperman’s fortune came from the 1996 sale of West Publishing, the legal publishing behemoth, to the Canadian firm Thompson Corp. for $3.4 billion.

His success translated into huge amounts of cash for Democratic candidates and causes. In 1995 and 1996, Opperman and his wife Darin gave the Democrats at least $350,000 to bolster the re-election prospects of President Clinton. A 1998 City Pages cover story referred to Opperman as “the most powerful man you’ve never heard of.”

“When I was growing up, service in public office was a high honor,” Opperman told reporter Britt Robson at the time. “And people said, ‘I am giving up something of my life to give to the community. I have chosen this as a public service.’ And they meant it when they said that, and I think other people believed it.

“Now, you have to be crazy to run for office, and if you do, most of your neighbors immediately assume you are a crook. And that should make all of us a little bit sad.”

Opperman’s apparent disgust with the cynicism of modern politics, however, has not dissuaded him from continuing to play an outsized role in DFL campaigns in the ensuing years. According to a 2003 report by the Institute on Money in State Politics, he contributed $243,640 to Democratic Party committees between 1998 and 2002 — making him the second largest political donor in the state during that time period. So far this election cycle, Opperman and his wife Darin have contributed $46,000 to federal Democratic candidates and causes, placing the couple in 27th place on the list of Minnesota’s most generous political patrons.

The top 100 givers in the state have made $4.1 million in federal political contributions since the beginning of 2007, or more than $40,000 per household. Republican donors have cut checks for $2.3 million, while their Democratic counterparts have handed out $1.8 million. To get a better understanding of the state’s most generous political patrons, the Minnesota Independent commissioned a study by the Center for Responsive Politics looking at the top 100 contributors.

In the first four installments of this series we looked at the bottom seventy members of the list, those contributing between $23,000 and $44,000. Today we examine places 21 through 30. Donors on this section of the list contributed a total of $477,523 to federal political candidates and causes during the first 18 months of this election cycle. Republican contributors dominated this section of the list, with the GOP getting roughly 70 percent of their donations.

Robert Cummins is in many ways Opperman’s GOP counterpart. He has long been one of the most conspicuous GOP rainmakers in the state. The notoriously media-shy CEO of Plymouth-based Primera Technology has helped pad the coffers of groups across the conservative landscape. He’s given more than $300,000 directly to the state Republican party in the last decade and is a key donor to influential advocacy groups like the Taxpayer’s League of Minnesota and the Freedom Club PAC, which he helped found a decade ago.

Cummins has also been the leading financial backer of efforts to ban gay marriage in Minnesota. In recent years he has contributed more than $400,000 to Minnesota Citizens in Defense of Marriage and Minnesotans for Marriage. Both organizations have advocated for a Constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex unions.

In the first 18 months of this election cycle, Robert Cummins and his wife Joan have contributed $53,600 to federal GOP candidates and causes, placing them 21st on the list of Minnesota’s top political patrons. They’ve both written checks to all credible Republican Congressional contenders, including maximum $4,600 contributions from each of them to Sen. Norm Coleman. The couple have also chipped in $20,000 to the state GOP’s coffers this election cycle.

Another name on the GOP side of the ledger that’s no surprise is Glen Taylor. The Minnesota Timberwolves owner grew up on a farm in Comfrey, Minnesota. In 1975 he purchased a Mankato printing business that he’d worked at since graduating from college and transformed it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise known as Taylor Corporation. Earlier this month Forbes estimated his current wealth at $3.3 billion. The Mankato businessman served as a Republican state senator from 1980 to 1986, rising to the post of Minority Leader.

Taylor and his wife Becky have contributed at least $48,900 to federal GOP candidates and causes so far this election cycle. That total includes $17,200 for the state GOP.

Taylor is not the only prominent Minnesota businessman writing big checks to Republican candidates. John Goodman, CEO of the Goodman Group, a Chaska-based development firm that specializes in building nursing homes and retirement communities, clocks in at 25th on the list. The Goodman household has doled out $48,150 so far this election cycle, almost exclusively to Republicans. The one exception? A $2,300 contribution to state senator Terri Bonoff, who unsuccessfully sought the DFL endorsement earlier this year in the Third Congressional District.

In 2002 Mark Davis expressed his disgust at electoral politics in an interview with Connect Business Magazine. “I am losing faith in our political system and political parties,” he said. “Now that our society has dug itself into thinking government can solve its problems, it will be hard for us to dig our way out.” But this lack of faith in government hasn’t stopped the president of Le Sueur-based dairy products company Davisco Foods International from giving generously to Republican politicians. Davis and his wife Mary have doled out at least $46,200 to GOP candidates since the beginning of 2007.

Despite the preponderance of Republican donors on this section of the list, one other Democratic name pops out: Mike Ciresi. The attorney gained notoriety for helping negotiate the state’s $6 billion settlement with tobacco companies in 1998. He has twice run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate, most recently seeking this year’s DFL endorsement to take on Coleman. Ciresi and his wife Ann have given $45,273 to DFL candidates so far this election cycle, including donations to every Minnesota Congressional contender except for Collin Peterson.

Here’s the complete list of donors occupying slots 21 through 30:

21. Robert and Joan Cummins, Deephaven, Primera Technology, $53,600

22. Tim Owens, Wayzata, Voyageur Financial Services, $50,550

23. Daniel J. Starks, St. Paul, no employer listed, $49,100

24. Glen and Becky Taylor, Mankato, Taylor Corp., $48,900

25. John and Sidney Goodman, Minnetonka, Goodman Group, $48,150

26. Mark and Mary Davis, Saint Peter, Davisco Foods International, $46,200

27. Vance and Darin Opperman, Minneapolis, Key Investment, $46,000

28. Bruce Dayton, Wayzata, retired, $45,400

29. Mike and Ann Ciresi, Mendota Heights, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, $45,273

30. John and Mary Wren, Stillwater, Lakeville Motor Express, $44,350

Previously in The Crunch:

Minnesota’s top 100 political givers: 31 to 40

Minnesota’s top 100 political givers: 41 to 50
Minnesota’s top 100 political givers: 51 to 75
Minnesota’s Top 100 political givers: 76 to 100