Lefty Dark-Money Group Drops $500K Attacking The Koch Brothers

Charles (left) and David Koch.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhCDK1OCRlc">kochmbmproductions</a>/YouTube; Globe Photos/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The left’s assault on Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists marshaling as much as $400 million for the 2012 elections to elect Republicans and defeat President Obama, just got ratcheted up. Patriot Majority, a liberal advocacy group comprised of a super-PAC and nonprofit outfit, announced it will spend $500,000 on two new national TV ads assailing the Kochs for trying to “buy this year’s elections and advance their agenda.” The ads, which will run on CNN and MSNBC, are the opening shots in a national campaign targeting the Kochs that will span multiple elections, according to the group.

Here’s the 30-second ad:

Patriot Majority’s nonprofit arm, which does not disclose its donors, bills the anti-Koch ads as part of its broader “Stop the Greed Agenda.” The campaign will include national TV ads, online ads, and direct mail. Craig Varoga, president of Patriot Majority, says the campaign is aimed at counteracting the Kochs’ free-market, limited-government advocacy. “The Koch brothers have been pursing this greed agenda for more than 20 years, and no one could succeed in stopping it in just a matter of months,” he says. The campaign, he adds, “is a long-term project that will continue for as long as it takes to stop their agenda.”

Varoga says his organization has conducted polling and focus groups around its Koch campaign. According to Varoga, what his group found was that many people hadn’t heard of the Kochs, but that once informed of them and their preferred policies the reaction was sharply negative. “When citizens learn how much they’re spending and what they support, they’re appalled,” he says.

Phillip Ellender, a Koch Industries spokesman, said in an statement that the Patriot Majority ads are dishonest and an “attempt to shut down free speech”:

Rather than run on their record and engage in a principled discussion about the critical issues facing Americans today, the president’s allies instead choose to attack and demonize private citizens and job creators who disagree with them on the direction this country is going. The ads are dishonest and at odds with some of this country’s most cherished values—that Americans have a First Amendment right to challenge politicians and that voters make up their own minds about competing ideas. This attempt to shut down free speech should be troubling to all Americans. Koch has a long history of standing firm for the principles of economic freedom and we will continue to do so, in spite of the ongoing attacks.

The Kochs, with their exclusive donor retreats and pro-business ideology, have built one of the largest big-dollar donor networks in American politics. The $400 million to be reportedly deployed by the Koch network this election cycle will fund a web of nonprofit groups buying ads and mobilizing voters around the country. Americans for Prosperity, founded and partly funded by David Koch, plans to hammer Obama with $25 million in TV ads this fall calling for the president’s removal while also registering voters in battleground states such as Florida.

As Mother Jones reported last year, the Kochs have made it their mission to boot Obama out of the White House in November, and have pledged to deploy the millions raised through their network as effectively as possible. “We’ve had a lot of tough battles,” Charles Koch told attendees of a 2011 donor retreat. “We’ve lost a lot over the years, and we’ve won some recently…And I pledge to all of you who’ve stepped forward and are partnering with us that we are absolutely going to do our utmost to invest this money wisely and get the best possible payoff for you in the future of our country.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate