Kochs plan $30 million ad blitz in Senate races
Groups in the political network tied to billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch have reserved $30 million worth of television and digital advertising to sway four key Senate races, officials announced Tuesday.
The Koch groups are targeting contests in Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania with the August and September buys, according to James Davis, a spokesman for Freedom Partners, the group at the center of the sprawling Koch operation. Koch groups already have spent $12.4 million to shape Senate races.
News of the advertising push comes a day after the conservative magazine, National Review, said the brothers intended to scale back their political involvement. In an interview Tuesday with Paste BN, Davis said that "the network will continue to be fully engaged in 2016's political and policy battles."
Charles Koch, the industrialist who has sought to put his free-market stamp on politics, has made it clear that he doesn't much care for Donald Trump, the Republicans' presumptive nominee, and has little appetite to engage in the presidential contest. But the stakes remain high in the GOP-controlled Senate, where Republicans are defending seats in states won by President Obama and hope to pick up a Democrat seat in Nevada held by retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who has been one of the Kochs' harshest critics.
The network already has invested heavily in the Ohio Senate race to protect Republican Sen. Rob Portman in his battle against the state's former governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat. On Tuesday, Freedom Partners Action Fund launched a $2.2 million ad, attacking Strickland's record as Ohio's chief executive. It's Freedom Partners' second, seven-figure buy in the Ohio Senate race.
The ad features "Keith," described as a businessman from Tipp City, Ohio, who decries what he said were rising taxes and job losses during Strickland's tenure.
Strickland's camp said the group was twisting facts prop up Portman, whom they called a Koch "puppet."