Conservative icon David Koch leaving business, politics
Billionaire conservative icon David Koch is stepping down from the Koch brothers’ network of business and political activities. The 78-year-old New York resident is suffering from deteriorating health, according to a letter that older brother Charles Koch sent to company officials Tuesday morning. Charles Koch wrote that he is “deeply saddened” by his brother’s retirement. “David has always been a fighter and is dealing with this challenge in the same way,” he wrote. David Koch is leaving his roles as executive vice president and board member for Koch Industries and a subsidiary, Koch Chemical Technology group, where he served as chairman and chief executive officer. Koch is also stepping down as chairman of the board for the Americans For Prosperity Foundation, the charity related to Koch brothers’ primary political organization. Charles Koch had assumed a more visible leadership role in the brothers’ affairs in recent years. He will continue to serve as the CEO of Koch Industries and the unofficial face of the network’s political efforts. Democrats have demonized the Koch brothers for their outsized influence in conservative politics over the last decade. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid regularly attacked Republicans for what he called a “Koch addiction.” Yet the Kochs have clashed with the Trump administration at times. Citing concerns about Trump’s style and substance, the network refused to endorse either presidential candidate in the 2016 election. And while they have praised Trump’s policies on taxes, de-regulation and health care, they have aggressively attacked the Republican administration’s trade policies. On Monday, the Koch network announced a multi-million-dollar campaign to oppose Trump’s tariffs and highlight the benefit of free trade. Using the money they made from their Kansas-based family business empire, the Koch brothers have created what is likely the nation’s most powerful political organization with short- and long-term goals. Their network has promised to spend $400 million to shape the 2018 midterm elections. They have also devoted significant time and resources to strengthening conservative influence on college campuses, in the Hispanic community and in the nonprofit sector. David Koch, who served as the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate in 1980, had begun focus more on philanthropy in recent years. The Manhattan resident donated $150 million to New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2015, the largest gift in the organization’s history. He has also given $185 million in total donations to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his alma mater. In an April interview with the Washington Examiner, Charles Koch described his younger brother this way: “David is much more political than I am.” Charles continued: “David is a much better engineer than I am and is much more into the arts and social life. Obviously he’s got to be or he wouldn’t live in Manhattan. And David is much more into elective politics than I am.” In Tuesday’s letter, Charles Koch said his brother’s “guidance and loyalty, especially in our most troubled times, has been unwavering.” “David has never wanted anything for himself that he hasn’t earned, as his sole desire has always been to contribute,” he wrote. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Donald Trump’s questioning of the value of data worries Republicans
Donald Trump says he plans to win the White House largely on the strength of his personality, not by leaning heavily on complex voter data operations that have become a behind-the-scenes staple in modern presidential campaigns. Shortly after Trump explained his approach in an Associated Press interview — data is “overrated,” he said — one of the presumptive Republican nominee’s top advisers tried to clarify the remarks. Rick Wiley told AP the Trump campaign will indeed tap the Republican Party’s massive cache of voter information. The national Republican Party has spent massive sums of money to develop the database since President Barack Obama‘s election set a new standard for using data in national campaigns, from deciding where to send a candidate and how to spend advertising dollars to making sure supporters cast a ballot. The back-and-forth in the Trump camp leaves Republicans and Democrats alike wondering just how committed the candidate actually is to what has become accepted wisdom among political professionals. Some Republicans worry that Trump risks ceding potential advantages to likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if he’s not willing to invest the money required to keep updating the data, and then use it effectively. “It’s a big risk,” said Chris Wilson, who ran an expansive data operation for Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump’s stiffest competition in the Republican primaries. Jeremy Bird, who worked for President Barack Obama’s data-rich campaign, said: “Flying blind is nuts.” The use of data has evolved over the past several presidential campaigns into a shorthand for using information — starting with simple lists of potential voters, then mated with extensive details about their habits and beliefs — to guide a campaign toward its ultimate goal: the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. In his AP interview, Trump discounted the value of data: The “candidate is by far the most important thing,” he said. He said he plans a “limited” use of data in his general election campaign and suggested Obama’s victories — universally viewed by political professionals as groundbreaking in the way data steered the campaign to voters — are misunderstood. “Obama got the votes much more so than his data processing machine, and I think the same is true with me,” Trump said, explaining that he will continue to focus on his signature rallies, free television exposure and his personal social media accounts to win voters over. Buzz Jacobs, who was on the losing end of Obama’s success in 2008 as an aide to GOP nominee John McCain, said Trump oversimplifies the president’s victories. “We lost in large part because Obama’s ability to use data was so much better than ours,” Jacobs said. According to South Carolina’s Republican chairman, Matt Moore: “Elections to a great degree are won on … that last 1 or 2 percent that shows up or stays home. That group on either edge turns out because of data and digital. That’s a known fact.” Republicans and Democrats with experience running campaigns question why Trump would give up a chance to reinforce with data his ubiquitous presence on television and inarguable success with large-scale rallies — a platform of personality that Clinton has yet to match. Bird, whose consulting firm now works for the Clinton campaign, said Trump is giving himself a false choice. “At a big picture level, sure, Barack Obama got the votes — his bio, his policies, his ability to communicate,” Bird said. “But we wanted to do everything we could to get him and get his message to the right people.” Jacobs, who worked this year for a former Trump rival, Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, said Trump is an outlier in being uninterested in data. The RNC and private groups, such as the billionaire conservative activist brothers Charles and David Koch, have spent hundreds of millions on their data programs since Obama’s election. “It would be silly to leave those on the sidelines,” Jacobs said. To be sure, Trump has not wholly abandoned data. His campaign spending disclosures show payments to multiple data firms, and the campaign maintains contact information collected when voters register for tickets to his rallies. Wiley, a recent addition to the Trump team who previously worked for the national party, said he is “working with the RNC, putting together a state-of-the-art program.” He predicted it would be able to match what “Obama was able to do in 2008.” But Trump’s in-house data shop is thin, and the candidate has said that he does not give priority to the ground game. Trump’s most significant loss of the primary season came in the leadoff Iowa caucuses, a victory for Cruz that was largely credited to the Texas senator’s sophisticated campaign effort to turn out voters. Wilson said he used the Cruz campaign’s data to run nightly “models” leading up to the caucuses, which predicted turnout and outcomes and allowed the campaign to adjust its approach every day. That means if Wiley and Trump’s other campaign staffers are able to persuade him to pay attention to the data, they’ll also need to persuade him to raise and spend the money to use it effectively in competitive states. “He has to be convinced,” South Carolina chairman Moore said. Then again, he said, “We’ve all been wrong about Trump for pretty much this entire campaign.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Hillary Clinton targeted in ad from group tied to Koch brothers
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday makes her first appearance in a negative advertisement funded by the wealthy Republican donors tied to billionaires Charles and David Koch. A 30-second ad aimed at Internet users in South Carolina and Florida shows headlines about the number of veterans who have died while awaiting health care. Then it shows a recent MSNBC interview with Clinton, who said of problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs, “It’s not been widespread as it has been made out to be.” “Not widespread?” text in the ad says. “Our veterans deserve better.” The digital ad, backed by at least $100,000 from Concerned Veterans for America, a nonprofit group that does not identify its donors, is timed to run as Clinton participates in a Democratic candidate forum in South Carolina. Clinton is “completely out of touch” with VA issues, which are “inarguably widespread,” Dan Caldwell, a spokesman for Concerned Veterans for America, told The Associated Press on Thursday. After Republicans criticized her remarks in the MSNBC interview, Clinton’s campaign said she was “outraged” by VA delays in providing care. Concerned Veterans for America is one of a half-dozen political and policy groups funded by the Kochs and hundreds of like-minded donors. That network is poised to spend a generous portion of at least $750 million over this year and next on issues relevant to the presidential race. The ad marks the first major paid media effort by a Koch group to ding Clinton’s 2016 candidacy. As she gains steam in a three-candidate Democratic primary, while the Republican nominating process is far from settled, GOP groups are beginning their Clinton attack efforts. The veterans ad follows a television commercial a week ago by a political group called Future 45. That ad focused on Clinton’s work as secretary of state, particularly in Libya, concluding with a narrator saying: “Responsible for a disaster. More threats. More war.” Although the group spent only about $65,000 airing the spot a few times, according to Kantar Media’s CMAG ad tracker, there are signs that more Clinton attacks are on the way. On Monday at a New York fundraiser for Republican opposition group America Rising, headlined by 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, donors were encouraged to support Future 45, an attendee told the AP. The attendee was not authorized to share details from the private event and requested anonymity. Republican hedge-fund billionaires Paul Singer of New York and Kenneth Griffin of Chicago are among those who have already written six-figure checks to Future 45, a fundraising report filed in July shows. The group’s name references the 45th president, who will be elected next November. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
No surprise: Tea Party activists prefer Ted Cruz over Jeb Bush
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was the hands-down favorite of an Americans for Prosperity gathering this weekend, if the number and volume of ovations during the speeches of five presidential candidates who addressed the summit of Tea Party activists was the measure. At the other end of the spectrum was former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a newcomer to events financed by conservative industrialists Charles and David Koch. Bush was attending his first national conference of Americans for Prosperity and was greeted with respectful but restrained applause by a group that rose essentially out of Republican dissatisfaction with federal spending under his brother, President George W. Bush. Cruz, the Tea Party favorite since his 2010 election, sparked deafening cheers in the Columbus Convention Center auditorium even before he took the stage. During his speech Saturday, he went on to promise to ‘‘repeal every word of Obamacare,’’ and “rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal.’’ Each of Cruz’s lines was met with applause and cheers from the more than 3,000 activists. Bush, who spoke a day earlier, worked hard but earned far fewer cheers from the antitax, economic conservative audience from around the country. David White of Marietta, Ohio, was unimpressed with Bush. ‘‘He did not articulate any plan for what he intends to do as president,’’ he said. ‘‘He used his time to try and rearrange perception of his record in Florida.’’ Bush did stress his experience during eight years as Florida governor, noting tax cuts, reduction in the state government workforce, and an overhaul in the state’s education system. Cruz, on the other hand, laid out an agenda that consisted entirely of undoing actions taken by President Obama. The event is significant because it provides an opportunity for presidential hopefuls to impress the conservative group, which spent more than $30 million in ads against Obama’s reelection in 2012 and has activists, donors, and organizers in 36 states and an operating budget for 2016 of roughly $125 million. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who can trace his 2010 Senate election to Tea Party support, received hearty cheers, but less robust than Cruz, while taking a more policy-focused approach than Cruz’s more political stump speech. ‘‘The first thing we must do is become globally competitive again,’’ Rubio said. ‘‘That’s why we talk about tax reform. That’s why we talk about regulatory reform.’’ The two-day conference was also an opportunity for exposure for lesser-known candidates such as Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who rank low in national polls among the field of 17 candidates. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
