Dem group targets Kochs in new ad

A Democrat-aligned group funded by anonymous donors is going after Charles and David Koch, launching a digital advertisement across key election states accusing the billionaires of casting a sinister influence over American politics.

The ad’s timing is significant. It comes amid a public relations campaign by the Koch brothers to soften their image, and signals that Democrats are going to make the duo the subject of attack ads once again in 2016, just as they did in the 2014 midterm elections. That strategy appeared to be ineffective, however, given that Republicans won control of the Senate.

{mosads}”While Charles and David Koch use the next year spending hundreds of millions to prop up their puppet candidates and attack Democrats, their actions and agenda will be on center stage,” said Regan Page, communications director for Bridge Project, the liberal group behind the campaign.

The Koch brothers — who have been famously media-averse and run the most powerful donor network in conservative politics — did their first-ever joint interview Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” 

The sit-down followed weeks of newspaper, magazine, radio and television solo appearances by Charles, and a multimillion-dollar branding campaign, “We are Koch,” to humanize their company, Koch Industries.

Launching on Wednesday afternoon, the attack ad comes just hours after Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) used a speech on the Senate floor to mock the “Morning Joe” interviewers, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, for going easy on the Kochs.

Reid, who has been a constant critic of the Kochs — famously calling them “un-American” — got in a Twitter argument on Wednesday with Scarborough, who accused Reid of aping the tactics of the anti-communist demagogue Joseph McCarthy in his public denunciations of the Kochs.

Titled “Something in Return,” the Bridge Project ad is backed by “a robust digital buy that targets ‘Morning Joe’ viewers and voters in New Hampshire, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, and Ohio,” Page said in an email.

Featuring spooky music and selectively edited clips from the “Morning Joe” interview, the commercial closes with the words: “What will the Kochs get if the Republicans win?”

During the video, Charles Koch is quoted as saying he expects “something in return” for his political donations. But what the ad leaves out is the billionaire’s next sentence where he says that what he wants is for government to “stop corporate welfare.”

“For the Kochs, politics is about money — their money — and they expect their puppet candidates to do their bidding for them after they buy them an elected office,” Page said.

The group behind the ad, Bridge Project, is a sister organization to American Bridge 21^st Century — a super-PAC founded by Clinton ally David Brock and funded by liberal billionaire George Soros, who has already donated $1 million this election season. 

The nonprofit is a frequent and fervent critic of the Koch brothers, even launching an anti-Koch website.

Like many outside money groups in the post-Citizens United era, Bridge Project is established as a nonprofit under section 501(c)4 of the tax code. 

Branded a “social welfare” organization, the group is allowed to cloak the identity of its donors so long as it promises that its primary purposes are not political. These vague parameters have been stretched almost beyond meaning in recent times by groups supporting both Democrats and Republicans.