The Koch brothers' super PAC, Freedom Partners Action Fund, is a smash hit with donors. | AP Photos Koch donors uncloaked

The deep-pocketed political network created by the billionaire conservatives Charles and David Koch this summer quietly launched a super PAC that can buy explicitly political ads supporting Republican candidates rather than the issue-oriented ads they‘d been airing for years.

The catch: For the first time, the network’s donors would be publicly identified if they gave to the super PAC.


Four months later and the results are in: The super PAC, Freedom Partners Action Fund, is a smash hit with donors. It has surpassed its fundraising goal and now says it is on pace to spend roughly $25 million on ads intended to help Republicans capture the Senate.

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POLITICO was allowed to review an advanced copy of the mandatory report the super PAC will file Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission that will formally reveal the names of some of the Kochs’ ultra-rich conservative donors. The report, combined with additional information voluntarily provided by Freedom Partners Action Fund, are illuminating, testing some of the conventional wisdom surrounding the Koch political operation.

New York hedge fund billionaire Bob Mercer wrote the largest check — $2.5 million — followed by Charles and David Koch, who each stroked $2 million checks from trusts in their names. The group received $1 million apiece from Arkansas poultry producer Ronnie Cameron, Wisconsin roofing billionaire Diane Hendricks and Nebraska trucking magnate Clarence Werner.

“I just felt like it’s time to stand up and put my money where my mouth is,” said Cameron, who made his donation in two equal checks through Mountaire Corp., the Arkansas-based poultry company he owns. Cameron donated at least $1 million in 2011 to non-disclosing groups in the Koch network, but the contribution to Freedom Partners Action Fund was far more than he’d ever given to any political committee that lists its donors. He admitted he thought long and hard “about getting the publicity because most of us are private — I work very hard to keep my name out of stuff.”

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“I just kind of decided that it was more important to support it than it was to maintain my privacy,” Cameron said. “I’m 69 years old. I’m much more concerned that my grandkids could be living under communism, or something like it, with the type of leadership that we have right now.”

While the Kochs’ political operation is often portrayed as being entirely supported by the billionaire brothers, roughly 650 donors combined to contribute the more than $15 million raised by the super PAC’s from its June creation through the end of September. The majority of the donations were smaller than the $200 threshold that triggers FEC disclosure requirements, and as such, aren’t listed in the report, which doesn’t include continued brisk fundraising this month, during which Freedom Partners spokesman James Davis said the PAC was expecting to bring in an additional $10 million.

The ability to quickly corral such a robust war chest for a type of political spending that was once dominated by the Republican Party and its big-name operatives like Karl Rove further demonstrates the Koch network’s evolution from a guerrilla band on the libertarian fringes of the right to arguably the preeminent force in conservative politics.

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That change is further illustrated by a recent strategic shift by the most robust of the nonprofit groups in the Kochs’ vast network, Americans for Prosperity. It is for the first time instructing its army of grass-roots field staff and volunteer canvassers to urge voters to reject Democratic Senate candidates on Election Day.

AFP’s $125 million spending plan for 2014 dwarfs the budgets of Freedom Partners Action Fund and the half dozen or so other groups that comprise the core of the Koch network. All but Freedom Partners Action Fund do not have to release their spending or donor information. In all, the network — which is overseen by the umbrella group that started the super PAC, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce — intends to spend a total of $290 million this year.

For context, that’s more than the Republican National Committee or the Democratic National Committee spent during the entire 2010 midterm election cycle. It demonstrates the degree to which the Koch network has come to rival the parties’ operations, complete with nonprofit arms targeting key demographics like Hispanics, millennials and veterans, not to mention groups developing cutting edge data-driven voter-targeting platforms.

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Freedom Partners Action Fund drew particular notice from Koch Kremlinologists when it was added to the arsenal. As the only super PAC in the Kochs’ orbit, it fills a specialized niche — expressly supporting Republican candidates and opposing Democratic ones — that had been largely lacking in the network, which initially eschewed partisan politics in favor of wonkier libertarian policy advocacy. While the rest of the network had spent tens of millions on ads and other communications assailing Democratic senators such as Alaska’s Mark Begich and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan for supporting President Barack Obama’s policy agenda, the groups usually stopped just short of advocating throwing them out of office.

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In exchange for the ability to take that extra rhetorical step, FEC rules require big money groups to register as super PACs, which triggers the donor disclosure requirement. It’s probably unlikely that the Koch network would have embraced voluntarily disclosure without the super PAC. But its creation came amidst a concerted campaign to engage more with the public and media by the Kochs’ multinational corporate conglomerate Koch Industries and the Kochs’ political operation — both of which have been branded by critics as shadowy and secretive.

In fact, at least one donor to the super PAC — billionaire Minnesota media mogul Stanley Hubbard — has urged fellow donors, including Charles Koch himself, to become more open with their views and political spending.

“You should stand up for what you believe in and hope that others will follow, or they’ll at least talk to you about it,” said Hubbard, whose family company Hubbard Broadcasting donated $150,000 last month to Freedom Partners Action Fund. “We have never been people who are afraid to say here’s what we believe in.”

He and Cameron both said that they made their donations partly as a show of solidarity with the Kochs. The brothers have become the targets of vituperative liberal attacks waged by Harry Reid and his allies.

“The Koch brothers are great Americans and they have demonstrated over a period of time that they’re willing to do far more than most people are willing to do for their country in terms of political involvement and giving,” said Hubbard, who attends some of the the twice annual fundraising seminars staged by the Kochs. “We’re very proud to be a part of that.”

Freedom Partners Action Fund’s FEC reports could provide additional fodder for the Kochs’ liberal antagonists. Until now, they have mostly kept their fire trained on the brothers themselves, and not the other donors in their network whose identities have periodically been revealed by leaks around the seminars.

“Reading all the stuff, you’d think that it was all the Kochs’ money,” said Cameron. “There are hundreds of people like me that are joining what they do. And their part is a great part but the biggest part they play is kind of bringing people together and educating them as to what’s going on and what the need is.”

The super PAC’s report includes a host of major donors who have attended some of the twice-annual donor summits the Kochs began hosting in 2003 but who have been less public about their political giving and their affiliation with the Kochs — such as Hendricks, Cameron, John W. Childs, Ned Diefenthal, George W. Gibbs, Robert Rowling and Dian Graves Stai.

There is significant crossover between the super PAC’s donor rolls and the 200-plus members of its parent group, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce. A nonprofit hub founded in late 2011 to collect and disseminate donor funding within the network, the group has come to host the seminars. It’s also worked to make the political operation more open and professional, helping coordinate the activities of the network’s groups to avoid overlap and maximize the impact of donor cash.

That is a major emphasis of the network and one that came under scrutiny after the 2012 election, when the component groups combined to spend more than $400 million. After Obama won reelection and Democrats retained control of the Senate, some wealthy conservatives openly questioned whether they had squandered their cash on huge checks to the Koch network and other groups, including those conceived by Rove.

The move into more overt advocacy in support of Republicans, through the Freedom Partners super PAC and AFP’s more aggressive canvassing, seems partly intended to avert another grave disappointment. It also undercuts a criticism that the Koch operation had faced within in the highly competitive world of GOP big-money politics. Rivals had privately argued to donors that the Koch operation wasn’t making the best use of its money because its groups stopped short of advocating a vote for Republican candidates or against Democratic ones.

Koch allies shrug off that criticism, attributing it to desperation from operatives who couldn’t offer a compelling case to donors about what they would do differently to avoid a repeat of 2012. The Freedom Partners super PAC is only likely to heighten the competition as it encroaches on groups like Rove’s and allows donors to treat the Koch network as a one-stop shop that now offers an outlet for almost every form of political advocacy.

“There’s a delicate balance between the idealistic causes and the pragmatic ones,” said Arizona businessman Jack Biltis. A midsized donor who co-founded a human resources company, Biltis last month donated $75,000 — which he called “my biggest contribution so far” — to Freedom Partners Action Fund. “After getting to know the people at Freedom Partners, I came to the conclusion that they support truly free market candidates and efforts but can execute a game plan to turn the plan into reality,” he said.

Koch insiders expect the move into partisan politics to continue in subsequent elections, but for issue-based advocacy to remain a focus, particularly in off years — a position that seems to comport with the sensibilities of its donors.

“I think their heart is in the issue-based orientation,” said Cameron. “And the only reason that they have taken the more direct approach right now is because of the significance of getting the Senate and the way that the senators and the money on the other side is distorting the picture.”