It’s been a few weeks since we learned that the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity was going to get out of the political ad game and focus on the ground campaign, but that they had a new entity that would pick up the slack. This new group will attack Democratic candidates directly, but with it donors can no longer hide behind the secret wall the Supreme Court created for them. That means that the new Super PAC’s donors are publicly identified in campaign reports. Here are a few of them:
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.”
“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.”
In other words, just those regular tea party folk who are all worried about communism and have a spare couple of million lying around not doing anything. It probably won’t come as any surprise that Cameron’s Mountaire Farms has had some issues with the Environmental Protection Agency. And it’s not too hard to imagine why a hedge fund operator is all in with the Kochs.
Let’s not let the Koch brothers buy these mid-terms. Chip in $3 to kick their Republican Party out!
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This isn’t about communism. It’s not about a better vision for America. It’s not about looking out for the little guy. It’s about crippling government in the quest to maximize profits for the wealthiest. They know they can accomplish that if they can just can buy the whole government. They’ve accomplished the first step in that plan: They now own the Republican Party.
