Koch Bros Admit Pouring Money Into Jolly’s House Race To Battle-Test Strategy
Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded Tea Party group, has been pouring big bucks into competitive Senate races, and to the recently-decided Congressional race in Florida-13 won by David Jolly.
But its agenda had little to do with the fate of David Jolly, the Republican candidate who won that race. The group’s ground troops — including those who knocked on doors, ran phone banks and reached out through social media to gauge ways to motivate voters — were part of a much greater project, with a prize much larger than a congressional seat.
Americans for Prosperity turned the Florida contest into its personal electoral laboratory to fine-tune get-out-the-vote tools and messaging for future elections as it pursues its overarching goal of convincing Americans that big government is bad government…
In Florida, the group tested the effectiveness of messages, including sentiment toward the president’s health care law. The organization’s Facebook page features photos of its grass-roots activists knocking on doors in Florida, clad in white T-shirts emblazoned with a green visage of Ronald Reagan…
Americans for Prosperity is also stepping up its ground game. The organization now has more than 200 full-time paid staff members in field offices in at least 32 states. The idea is to embed staff members in a community, giving conservative advocacy a permanent local voice through field workers who live in the neighborhood year-round and appreciate the nuances of the local issues. They can also serve as a ready-to-go field organization in future election years and on future issues — not dissimilar from the grass-roots, community-based approach Mr. Obama used successfully in 2008 and 2012.
