AFP2

new node 5/14

see astro / Tea Party

see bus tour hot air

see tim phillips

oops 2x

capt bak 1021

htmlprovably

===

WALKER recall, david koch, cfg, mconnell

===

2025

https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&context=lawreview

Uncharitable Think Tanks 207

Institution—also led in the earlier one, with only slight shifts otherwise.229 • From 2010 on, the top funders were Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, and the Scaife, Bradley, and Koch family foundations. The Devos family foundations rose to join the ranks of the top ten. • Grants channeled through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund accounted for 13.7% of the total. • 74% of all contributions came from completely unidentified sources. • }:}:

After AEI, Heritage and Hoover, the largest recipients were Cato, the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Mercatus Center, the Acton Institute, the State Policy Network, the Reason Foundation, Heartland, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. From 2003 to 2018, Brulle and his co-authors tallied total gifts to this cohort of $9.77 billion 230—a sum that refutes the mistaken notion that charitable giving is small dollars, and influential only at the margin. Now for the thought experiment.

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BOGUS ACA TOWN HALLS MOJO

Town Hall Protests: Astroturf 2.0? – Mother Jones

This summer, town hall meetings to discuss health care reform have turned into battlegrounds—with fist fights, belligerent protestors, and at least one lawmaker reporting a death threat. Some Democrats have blamed the chaos on astroturf operations: fake grassroots groups funded by special interests. But are the forces whipping up the anti-health care frenzy really astroturf—or a new form of corporate-funded campaigning?

Most astroturf operations are semi-covert activities, precisely targeted at vulnerable or undecided lawmakers. Tried-and-true practices include phone banks in which paid callers posing as concerned voters read from prepared scripts, or phony citizens groups with few members, if any, but plenty of industry money to bankroll television ads and mailers. Particularly unscrupulous operators might mobilize a narrow constituency—like conservative Christians—on behalf of their corporate clients. The idea is to create the impressionof grassroots activism, but rarely to seriously attempt to influence broader public opinion. Michael Scanlon, a colleague of disgraced uberlobbyist Jack Abramoff, once captured the logic succinctly: “Simply put we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them.”

By that standard, some of the groups orchestrating town hall protests against Obama’s health care reform have adopted a new, hybrid model—one that blurs the lines between astroturf and grassroots activism. As far as it’s possible to tell, their financial base remains heavily dependent on corporate interests, and some of their tactics are familiar, too. But instead of furtively targeting selected lawmakers, they’re also mounting highly visible outreach efforts via public forums and Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools. In the process, they’re picking up at least some genuine support. It remains to be seen whether they can attract large numbers to their cause, but already they’ve helped to hijack the health care debate at a critical juncture. Here’s MoJo‘s guide to the major groups and their backers.

Americans for Prosperity

Americans for Prosperity is one of the most prominent groups opposing the Obama administration’s two key domestic policy goals: health care reform and cap and trade. The organization presents itself as a grassroots movement that espouses limited government. But a large portion of its money comes via staunch free-market conservative David Koch, part owner of Koch Industries, an oil and gas conglomerate that is perhaps the largest privately owned company in the US, with holdings in medical device and pharmaceutical companies.

Koch helped found AFP in 2003 and serves as chairman of its affiliated foundation. Its president is Tim Phillips, a master of the art of astroturf. Along with Ralph Reed, he cofounded Century Strategies, a PR and consulting firm known for effectively renting out Reed’s evangelical Christian allies to its clients—not to mention clients of Jack Abramoff. In 1999 and 2000, Century mobilized anti-gambling evangelicals to protest proposed casinos—but didn’t know Century was working for an Abramoff client, a casino-owning Indian tribe hoping to vanquish its competition. In a memo, an Abramoff colleague noted that Century’s Christian connections would ensure a “political effort that truly resembles a people’s movement” without the signs of a “paid political operation.”

This year, AFP is devoting its deep resources and strategic prowess to organize protests at Democratic health care town hall meetings, where activists hold signs like “Sorry Grandma, No Health Care for You.” But unlike most typical astroturf operations, AFP’s efforts seem intended to gather a broader base of supporters. To that end, the group makes use of social networking sites to reach out to potential followers. It posts information about local events and organizing strategies for its nearly 4,500 fans on Facebook, who share YouTube videos of protests. More than 1,000 people rallied at an August event in Scottsdale, Arizona, organized by AFP; the local fire department was called to handle overflow.

AFP sponsors two other groups advocating against the Obama administration’s proposed reforms, innocuously titled Patients United Now and Patients First. Both fund ads that make misleading claims. One Patients United Now television ad wrongly asserts that “Washington wants to bring Canadian-style health care to the US.” Patients First also launched a 13-state bus tour that wraps up at the end of August. At one stop a speaker compared proposed reforms to the Stalin and Hitler regimes because they would lead to “physician-assisted suicide”—a blatantly false claim. But these outlandish accusations have proved convincing to some: More than 206,000 people have signed Patients First’s petition opposing current health care reform proposals.

FreedomWorks

FreedomWorks is headed by former GOP House majority leader Dick Armey, who left government in 2003 and became a heavy-hitting lobbyist for DLA Piper, whose numerous corporate clients include pharmaceutical firms.

FreedomWorks grew from a group called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 and whose resume includes orchestrating “grassroots” opposition to cigarette taxes on behalf of Philip Morris. In 2006, the Washington Post reported that the group had once duped nearly 16,000 people into swelling its membership rolls: Brokers for a company called Medical Savings Insurance Co. pitched patients on discounted insurance, and those who signed up automatically became members of Citizens for a Sound Economy. (A small part of their monthly bill also went to the group, eventually netting it more than $600,000.) In 2003, a spokesman acknowledged that two-thirds of the organization’s money came from corporations, as well as corporate-funded conservative foundations. The next year, CSE morphed into FreedomWorks. Last year, the organization was identified as the creator of AngryRenter.com, an amateur-looking website presented as a spontaneous effort from ordinary Americans opposing government mortgage relief for homeowners.

The arrival of the Obama administration has ushered in a busy year for FreedomWorks, which played a pivotal role in engineering “tea party” protests against government spending. The group distributed organizational tips and talking points and helped to coordinate gatherings around the country that garnered breathless media coverage. FreedomWorks operatives have urged followers to mimic the tactics of the grandfather of community organizing—and inspiration to Barack Obama—Saul Alinsky.

This summer, FreedomWorks is using those tactics to defeat health care reform. It claims a membership of more than 770,000 people and an email list of 400,000 readers. Its website provides numerous resources, including an “August Recess Action Kit” to aid supporters in exposing “the real intentions and the economic ramifications of the Cap and Tax and health care reform legislation on the table.” FreedomWorks has plotted locations of town halls on Google Maps; one memo encouraged supporters to “rattle” lawmakers at these forums. FreedomWorks is also sponsoring a march on Washington on September 12.

In mid-August, Armey abruptly announced that he was leaving DLA Piper after a flurry of media reports raised questions about whether FreedomWorks activities were related to the goals of the firm’s big pharma clients.

Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights

The Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights describes itself as a “nonpartisan, grassroots coalition of patients, healthcare professionals, advocacy groups, and engaged citizens.” Its source of funding is unknown. However, according to Think Progress, PR for the organization is managed by the DCI Group, a political consulting firm with a long history of rustling up phony advocacy groups to serve the interests of its corporate clients.

DCI’s managing partners have deep experience in the political dark arts. Tom Synhorst, for instance, is a former associate of Ralph Reed (as well as a former aide to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa). Synhorst and fellow founding partners Doug Goodyear and Tim Hyde spent years working for or with the tobacco conglomerate RJR Nabisco, where they supported “smokers’ rights” groups.

In the 1990s, DCI generated fake “citizen” letters opposing the breakup of Microsoft, then under investigation for antitrust violations. At least two of the letters were from dead people. During the Bush years, DCI created fake “grassroots” groups to champion one of the administration’s pet causes, privatizing Social Security. And in 2005, Freddie Mac paid DCI $2 million to drum up opposition to a bill that would have reined in the mortgage giant and its sister, Fannie Mae—three years before they nearly collapsed under the weight of their subprime loans.

Its resume also includes several health care campaigns: In 2002, DCI was hired by the Health Benefits Coalition—an HMO trade association—to defeat a proposed “patients’ bill of rights” in Congress. In 2003 and 2004, DCI worked with Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) to pass the GOP’s Medicare prescription drug bill, going so far as to pay health care consultants to find elderly people to speak positively about the proposal.

The face of the Coalition to Protect Patients Rights (CPPR) is Dr. Donald J. Palmisano, a former American Medical Association president whose idea of protecting patients’ rights consists of trying to limit their ability to sue doctors for malpractice. A longtime shill for the tort-reform movement, Palmisano sits on the board of the Doctors Company, a medical liability insurance company, and founded a claims review company that serves physicians and hospitals.

This year, CPPR’s efforts to kill health care reform are more visible and more ambitious than many previous initiatives linked with DCI. It is aggressively seeking supporters for the anti-reform cause via press events, op-eds, a Facebook page, and its Twitter feed, which so far has a modest 1,485 followers. (Sample tweet: “POTUS says you will be able to keep your insurance…but will your insurance survive competition with a public option?”) CPPR has also organized a group of doctors to tour the country warning of the perils of single-payer care. At one recent press conference that it sponsored, a physician said that in countries with government-run health care, the “sickest patients” are denied treatment.

60 Plus

60 Plus presents itself as a “grassroots senior citizen organization.” Although it claims to be nonpartisan, it was formed with help from stalwart conservative direct-mail king Richard Viguerie and refers to its honorary chairman Roger Zion as “one of Washington’s leading spokesmen for the conservative cause.” This year, it’s run a more traditional astroturf operation opposing the administration’s health care proposals.

During the Bush administration, 60 Plus was linked to several dubious political campaigns, and had ties to Jack Abramoff. The investigation of the lobbyist revealed that in 2001, Abramoff told one of his clients, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to give $25,000 intended for Tom DeLay’s political action committee to 60 Plus, although the tribe’s primary interest was in gambling legislation. (A lawyer for the tribe said that Abramoff advised them that the donation would help the tribe win clout with the Republican leadership in Congress.)

But for several years Big Pharma was 60 Plus’ major benefactor. According to a 2006 investigation by the AARP Bulletin, the pharmaceutical industry accounted for “virtually all of [60 Plus’] largest contributions” in the early years of this decade. In return, the group lobbied hard against state laws that would have reduced prescription-drug prices. On one occasion, the industry hired Bonner & Associates (a Washington strategic operation currently being investigated by Congress for forging letters opposing cap and trade and sending them to lawmakers). Bonner paid callers to read from scripts that identified them as members of 60 Plus and urged citizens to tell their governor to veto the legislation. Pfizer later admitted to funding the calls. Ken Johnson Sr., a vice president of PhRMA, told Mother Jones that the organization has not given 60 Plus any money since 2004.

This year, 60 Plus has been tirelessly working to torpedo Obama’s health care reform with a series of misleading and alarmist ads. On August 10, 60 Plus released a television ad warning that “The government—not doctors—will decide if older patients are worth the cost.” A recent mailing from 60 Plus told recipients that proposed changes to Medicare would mean “longer wait times at hospitals and doctors’ offices, less money for new treatments, restrictions on care, prescriptions and what’s best for you—the patient!” And a flyer distributed in Nebraska by 60 Plus features a picture of ailing elderly people and quotes Obama out of context saying, “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”

Conservatives for Patients Rights

CPR was founded by discredited hospital executive Rick Scott, who has emerged as perhaps the most dogged opponent of a Medicare-style public option that would cover uninsured Americans. To sell its message, CPR has enlisted the services of the same PR firm that brought you the Swiftboating of John Kerry: CRC Public Relations. So it should come as no surprise that its million-dollar ads on television and talk radio feature highly questionable assertions to scare citizens into sticking with the status quo. In one ad, an announcer ominously intoned that reform “could put a bureaucrat in charge of your medical decisions, not you.” A CPR flyer referred to the public option as “Patient Enemy #1.”

Scott claims that he will spend as much as $20 million dollars to defeat health care reform—he has already kicked in $5 million of his own funds to jump-start CPR’s media blitz. As Mother Jones has previously reported, he owns an urgent care company called Solantis. That gives him a direct incentive to block the expansion of health insurance coverage. To that end, CPR has sought to whip up frenzies at town hall forums during the August congressional recess, issuing alerts for meetings around the country and posting video footage of heated exchanges on its website. Earlier this month, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs denounced CPR for “organizing and manufacturing that anger.”

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2x?

note no mention of KOCH

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/us/politics/21climate.html

no lnx

JASPER, Ind. — At a candidate forum here last week, Representative Baron P. Hill, a threatened Democratic incumbent in a largely conservative southern Indiana district, was endeavoring to explain his unpopular vote for the House cap-and-trade energy bill.

It will create jobs in Indiana, reduce foreign oil imports and address global warming, Mr. Hill said at a debate with Todd Young, a novice Republican candidate who is supported by an array of Indiana Tea Party groups and is a climate change skeptic.

“Climate change is real, and man is causing it,” Mr. Hill said, echoing most climate scientists. “That is indisputable. And we have to do something about it.”

A rain of boos showered Mr. Hill, including a hearty growl from Norman Dennison, a 50-year-old electrician and founder of the Corydon Tea Party.

“It’s a flat-out lie,” Mr. Dennison said in an interview after the debate, adding that he had based his view on the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and the teaching of Scripture. “I read my Bible,” Mr. Dennison said. “He made this earth for us to utilize.”

Skepticism and outright denial of global warming are among the articles of faith of the Tea Party movement, here in Indiana and across the country. For some, it is a matter of religious conviction; for others, it is driven by distrust of those they call the elites. And for others still, efforts to address climate change are seen as a conspiracy to impose world government and a sweeping redistribution of wealth. But all are wary of the Obama administration’s plans to regulate carbon dioxide, a ubiquitous gas, which will require the expansion of government authority into nearly every corner of the economy.

“This so-called climate science is just ridiculous,” said Kelly Khuri, founder of the Clark County Tea Party Patriots. “I think it’s all cyclical.”

“Carbon regulation, cap and trade, it’s all just a money-control avenue,” Ms. Khuri added. “Some people say I’m extreme, but they said theJohn Birch Society was extreme, too.”

Whatever the party composition of the next Congress, cap and trade is likely dead for the foreseeable future. If dozens of new Republican climate skeptics are swept into Congress, the prospects for assertive federal action to control global warming gases, including regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency, will grow dimmer than they already are.

Those who support the Tea Party movement are considerably more dubious about the existence and effects of global warming than the American public at large, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted this month. The survey found that only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters said that global warming is an environmental problem that is having an effect now, while 49 percent of the rest of the public believes that it is. More than half of Tea Party supporters said that global warming would have no serious effect at any time in the future, while only 15 percent of other Americans share that view, the poll found.

And 8 percent of Tea Party adherents volunteered that they did not believe global warming exists at all, while only 1 percent of other respondents agreed.

Those views in general align with those of the fossil fuel industries, which have for decades waged a concerted campaign to raise doubts about the science of global warming and to undermine policies devised to address it.

They have created and lavishly financed institutes to produce anti-global-warming studies, paid for rallies and Web sites to question the science, and generated scores of economic analyses that purport to show that policies to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases will have a devastating effect on jobs and the overall economy.

Image

Their views are spread by a number of widely followed conservative opinion leaders, including Mr. Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, George Will and Sarah Palin, who oppose government programs to address climate change and who question the credibility and motives of the scientists who have raised alarms about it.

Groups that help support Tea Party candidates include climate change skepticism in their core message. Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and largely financed by oil industry interests, has sponsored what it calls a Regulation Reality Tour to stir up opposition to climate change legislation and federal regulation of carbon emissions. Its Tea Party talking points describe a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions as “the largest excise tax in history.”

FreedomWorks, another group supported by the oil industry, helps organize Tea Party rallies and distributes fliers urging opposition to federal climate policy, which it calls a“power grab.”

“Any effort to make electricity and fuel more expensive or to cap or regulate CO2 will only exacerbate an already critical situation and cause tremendous economic damage,” FreedomWorks says on its Web site.

The oil, coal and utility industries have collectively spent $500 million just since the beginning of 2009 to lobby against legislation to address climate change and to defeat candidates, like Mr. Hill, who support it, according to a new analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a left-leaning advocacy group in Washington.

Their message appears to have fallen on receptive ears. Of the 20 Republican Senate candidates in contested races, 19 question the science of global warming and oppose any comprehensive legislation to deal with it, according to a National Journal survey.

The only exception is Mark Steven Kirk, the Republican Senate nominee in Illinois, who was one of only eight Republicans to vote for the House cap-and-trade bill sponsored by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats. (One of the other Republican “yes” votes was cast by Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware, who blames that vote in part for his primary election defeat by Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party candidate and a global warming skeptic.)

A large majority of Tea Party-supported House candidates also doubt global warming science and oppose energy legislation designed to address it.

Mr. Young, the Indiana Republican nominee trying to unseat Mr. Hill for the Ninth Congressional District seat, strongly opposes cap and trade and other unilateral measures to combat global warming.He says he is uncertain what is causing the observed heating of the planet, adding that it could be caused by sunspots or the normal cycles of nature.

“The science is not settled,” he said in an interview in his headquarters in Bloomington, Ind. And he said that given the scientific uncertainty, it was not wise to make major changes in the nation’s energy economy to reduce carbon emissions.

A third candidate in the Indiana Congressional race, Greg Knott, a libertarian, said he accepted the scientific consensus on climate change but opposed a nationwide cap-and-trade system as the answer.

Lisa Deaton, a small-business owner in Columbus, Ind., who started We the People Indiana, a Tea Party affiliate, is supporting Mr. Young in part because of his stand against climate change legislation.

“They’re trying to use global warming against the people,” Ms. Deaton said. “It takes away our liberty.”

“Being a strong Christian,” she added, “I cannot help but believe the Lord placed a lot of minerals in our country and it’s not there to destroy us.”

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/26/david-koch-donald-trump/

lee f

in other instances, the propaganda techniques bordered on comical. One television advertisement featured an actor who played “Carleton the eco-hypocrite,” who sought action on global warming only to enrich himself and cause “massive unemployment.” Another Americans for Prosperity campaign depicted the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate policies represented as a Big Brother-style power grab, falsely claiming that “carbon cops” would arrest Americans and regulate churches under the guise of combating global warming. The campaign toured throughout the country with free food and an inflatable bounce house for children shaped as a giant green police car to illustrate the point....

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ref 11/5/09 not epa?

https://thinkprogress.org/astroturf-in-action-right-wing-billionaire-david-koch-pays-for-40-buses-to-haul-in-protesters-518e8aed42f5/

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the corporate front group founded in the 1980s by Koch Industries billionaire David Koch, worked closely with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to orchestrate the anti-health reform rally today.As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, AFP has been encouraging right-wing activists to board their buses — free of charge — to attend the rally. While AFP does not disclose all of its corporate donors, foundations controlled by David and Charles Koch provide millions in yearly funding, and David continues to chair the AFP foundation and preside over AFP’s annual convention.

ThinkProgress found at least a dozen AFP staffers standing at their designated bus drop off point near the Capitol, handing out signs, directions, talking points, petitions, and donuts to protesters. Many of the people who work at AFP are longtime Republican operatives, like Ben Marchi, the AFP Virginia director who previously worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee and forRep. Tom Delay (R-TX). Victor Zapanta produced this video report of AFP staffers talking about their exploits at the rally today:

AFP STAFFERS: We have 25 buses just from Pennsylvania, New Jersey we probably have 5 or 6 from Maryland.

AFP STAFFERS: We have about 40 buses coming.

Watch it:[vid]

Koch’s AFP has a long history of marshaling “grassroots” support for GOP objectives. In the early 1990s, AFP, then known as Citizens for a Sound Economy, worked secretly with then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) to organize angry crowds following the Clintons as they touted their health reform bill. Industry money from health insurance, telecommunications, oil, and other companies has flowed freely to AFP over the years to help AFP promote an agenda of boosting the rich, stripping consumer safeguards, and maintaining corporate monopolies. Phillip Morris rented out AFP from the Koch family, contributing millions to the organization in exchange for AFP to build opposition to tobacco regulations.

AFP’s daily activities are managed by Tim Phillips, an infamous astroturf lobbyist who built a career using Christian front groups to wage stealth campaigns. For example, his work includes fighting under the radar to promote energy deregulation for Enron and helping Jack Abramoff clients continue forced abortion sweatshops in the Northern Mariana Islands.

Will the media report on the true driver of today’s rally? Or will they leave David Koch out of the equation, despite his hand-in-glove involvement.

Update:

This afternoon on the House GOP’s live webcast, Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) praised the anti-health reform protesters for arriving to the Capitol without any assistance paying for the buses. He also said no central organization was orchestrating the effort:

LATTA: Some stakes took over 20 buses […] You know, they’re not rabble-rousers.KINGSTON: Who paid for them?LATTA: They all paid for themselves. You know, these people came down on their own.

Watch it:

ref tim p 404

http://dnserrorassist.att.net/search/?q=http%3A//wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/05/29/afp-timphillips-astroturf/&r=&t=0&bc=

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/tim-phillips-the-man-behind-the-americans-for-prosperity-corporate-front-group-factory-8437d7fa8a7e/

lee f 5/09

he rate at which the Koch Industries funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP) churns out front groups to promote its right-wing corporate agenda sets the organization out among similar conservative “think tanks.” This week, AFP created their latest front group called “Patients United Now,” an entity set up to defeat health care reform. Patients United follows a familiar pattern AFP has used for their other front groups: create a new stand alone website, fill it with lines like “We are people just like you” to give the site a grassroots feel, and then use the new group to recruit supporters and run deceptive advertisements attacking reform. This “astroturfing” model has been used by AFP to launch groups pushing distortions against other progressive priorities:

— The “Hot Air Tour” promoting global warming skepticism and attacking environmental regulations. — “Free Our Energy,” a group promoting increased domestic drilling. — The “Save My Ballot Tour,” a group that pays Joe the Plumber to travel around the country smearing the Employee Free Choice Act. — “No Climate Tax,” a group dedicated to the defeat of Clean Energy Economy legislation. — “No Stimulus,” a group launched to try to stop the passage of the Recovery Act.

Notably, AFP was also instrumental in orchestrating the anti-Obama, anti-tax tea party protests in April.

With nearly 70 Republican operatives and former oil industry spokesmen working behind the scenes of AFP’s various fronts and disclosures that point to ever increasing oil and corporate donations to the group, one must wonder, who is guiding this massive front group factory? The answer is Tim Phillips, the President of AFP who has built a long career of inventing fake grassroots causes. In Phillips’ official biography, there appears to be over a 10 year gap — but that period was when Phillips developed his very first astroturf groups to do everything from smearing his opponents with anti-Semitic attacks to laundering money for criminal lobbyists.

Click More To Read The WonkRoom’s Investigation Of AFP’s Tim Phillips

As a Virginia-based political consultant, Phillips got his first big break managing the campaign of Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). After serving as Goodlatte’s chief of staff for four years, Phillips joined former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed in 1997 to create an astroturf lobbying and campaign consulting operation called Century Strategies. The firm promised to mount “grassroots lobbying drives” and explained its strategy as “it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard — and by whom.”

After being recommended by Karl Rove, Century Strategies signed its first major corporate client — Enron. Phillips and Reed were paid $380,000 to mobilize “religious leaders and pro-family groups” to push energy deregulation in Congress and on the state level, a policy shift that led to the energy crisis and economic meltdown of 2001. The Washington Post reported that the pair informed Enron that they had leveraged their relationships with members of Congress and “placed” articles in prominent papers like the New York Times.

Part of Phillip’s role at Century Strategies was to manage the firm’s direct mail subsidiary, Millennium Marketing. In 1998, now disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff hired Phillips’ firm to pressure members of Congress to vote against legislation that would have made the U.S. commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands subject to federal wage and worker safety laws. A federal report “found that Chinese women were subject to forced abortions and that women and children were subject to forced prostitution in the local sex-tourism industry.” Nonetheless, Phillips sent out mailers claiming Chinese workers “are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ” while on the islands, and many “are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand.” The mailers then encouraged the recipients to contact lawmakers and ask them to oppose the Marianas labor reform legislation.

The Marianas stealth lobbying effort was not the only time Phillips worked with Abramoff. Reed and Phillips conspired to generate conservative Christian outrage towards gambling at Indian casinos in a cynical plot to encourage those same tribes to hire Abramoff to lobby on their behalf. In some cases, Phillips’ anti-gambling crusade would simply be part of an effort to kill off competition to Abramoff’s clients. And while Phillips and Reed postured to be motivated by anti-gambling Christian values, the pair helped launder lobbying money from an Abramoff Internet gambling client called eLottery.

Though Phillips and Reed are best known in the campaign consulting world for engineering the dual victories of Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Republican Gov. Sonnie Perdue in Georgia (by associating images of with the incumbent Democratic senator), the pair can also be credited with the most below the belt tactics ever seen in modern Republican primaries. The duo “spearheaded” the telemarketing and direct mail efforts for George Bush against John McCain in the 2000 primaries. It is widely believed that Century Strategies executed the mass mailers and robo-calls which accused McCain of fathering an illegitimate child with a black woman, using the image of McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh.

Phillips’ brass knuckled hits on fellow Republicans almost prevented the only Jewish Congressman in the GOP caucus from ever being elected. Phillips set up a 527 called “The Faith and Family Alliance,” a group supposedly designed to support conservative and Christian causes. But like his other front groups, Phillips used the Family Alliance to simply slime his political opponents with an organization that appeared to represent a grassroots community. The Richmond Times Dispatch reported that Phillips was hired by State Sen. Stephen Martin to manage his direct mail campaign against State Del. Eric Cantor in the 2000 Republican primary for the Congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Tom Bliley (R-VA). Phillips used his Family Alliance to blast robo-calls and mass mailers claiming Cantor did not represent “Virginia values” and that his opponent was the “only Christian in the contest.”

Larry Sabato, a political analyst and the director of University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, noted:

A despicable, underground campaign that was unquestionably anti-Semitic nearly beat Cantor in the GOP primary for U.S. House to succeed Tom Bliley in June 2000. Cantor had been heavily favored over state Sen. Steve Martin, but in the end he won by a couple hundred votes. Now the national and state GOP appears grateful for its lone Jewish House member — but the Republican base and some Christian groups almost insured his defeat. I’m amazed that Democrats and even Republicans haven’t raised this matter.

Indeed, after the Phillips’ anti-Semitic attacks, Cantor went from being high in the polls to barely winning the primary by a mere 264 votes. Phillips still holds rallies — under the umbrella of AFP — to boost his old client Sen. Martin.

Phillips managed to escape most of the controversy that eventually embroiled his partners Reed and Abramoff. Working under the slush fund provided by oil baron David Koch — with a salary approaching $300,000 a year and at least a $7 million annual budget — Phillips continues to lead AFP in building front group after front group to advance his radical right wing agenda.

320

kentucky Koch Group Opposes Saving Hospital – Patient Care and 2,000 Jobs at Risk

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:{Americans for Prosperity-Kentucky is so far the lone group weighing in against a state loan to save Louisville’s Jewish Hospital that has strong bipartisan support.:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:

AFP "Not Dealing With Any Candidates, Political Parties or Ongoing Races"

AFP consists of two legal entities.

One is a "social welfare" organization incorporated under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, a group legally permitted to engage in some political activity and which serves as the conduit for most of AFP's ad spending on the national level.

The other is the AFP Foundation, a "charity" organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Much of AFP's $10 million in spending during the Wisconsin recalls came from its 501(c)(3) charitable arm, despite facing an absolute bar on political intervention. (The $900,000 AFP has spent on Walker ads so far in 2014 has also come from its charitable wing.)

AFP did not report its expenditures in 2011 and 2012, so the precise breakdown of spending between the 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) is not known, but AFP's Wisconsin leaders went out of their way to claim the group's activities had nothing to do with elections.

"We're not dealing with any candidates, political parties or ongoing races," AFP's Wisconsin director, Luke Hilgemann, told a Hudson, Wisconsin online news site in late May of 2012. It was apparently a coincidence that the AFP Foundation hadlaunched a ten-city bus tour, shipped 80 paid staffers into the state, and sent hundreds of AFP canvassers door-to-door in the weeks before the June 5 recall election. "We're just educating folks on the importance of reforms."

As activists began circulating petitions for Walker's recall in late 2011, the AFP Foundation launched a huge television ad buy that carefully avoided naming Walker, yet promoted his signature anti-union legislation and budget cuts with the slogan "It's Working!" The "Its Working" ads pushed a message consistent with that of the Walker campaign, ran through the spring of 2012, and cost the AFP Foundation an estimated$3.7 million. (This campaign came on the heels of AFP's "Stand With Walker" ads in Spring of 2011, as protests were at their peak; however, that spending appears to have come from AFP's 501(c)(4) arm.)

As the June 5 election day pulled closer, AFP brought in staff and volunteers from around the country. AFP's ten city bus tour included mobile phone banking, where volunteers read from a script that included lines like, "did you know that Governor Walker's reforms have saved taxpayers more than $1 billion?" Businessweekreported that "AFP ground troops knocked on 6,500 doors in the three days before Walker prevailed," carrying Samsung tablets loaded with voter information, maps, and scripts. Just before election day, AFP volunteers distributed door hangers that pictured Walker and Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, under the message "Policies That Work for Wisconsin."

At an AFP national convention held in Washington DC a few months after Walker survived the recall, Hilgemann boasted of his group's role in Walker's reelection -- describing how they "beat back the liberal hordes that had taken over" the state with ads, rallies, bus tours and canvassing -- but again emphasized that "we don't advocate for politicians."

AFP Foundation May Violate Tax Law if It "Improperly Coordinates or Colludes" With 527 Group Like the RGA

Taken alone, the AFP Foundation's activities pushed the envelope on impermissible political intervention by charities. The Center for Media and Democracy noted this at the time, and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign filed an IRS complaint in 2011 asking the agency to investigate.

Yet if the AFP Foundation coordinated with the Republican Governors Association -- organized under Section 527 of the tax code, a provision designated for political groups -- it almost certainly would have violated rules barring political intervention by charities.

According to the IRS, a charity like the AFP Foundation "might indirectly intervene in a campaign or operate for a substantial nonexempt purpose if it improperly coordinates or colludes with" a 527 group such as the RGA.

Improper collusion can include "coordinating the content, timing, or distribution of information materials," or distributing one another's materials.

"While coordination may often be difficult to prove, any public statements or private memoranda . . . indicating coordination between the officials or agents of the two organizations would be damaging," the IRS has stated.

Cox calling AFP a "tremendous partner" at the secret Koch summit was not the first time an RGA official made such a reference. Four months after the recall election, then-RGA Chair Bob McDonnell said:

"We spent $9 million in Wisconsin . . . the combination of the Walker team, Americans for Prosperity, the NRA (National Rifle Association), formed a formidable grass-roots coalition."

Separate Investigation under State Law into Campaign Coordination

Cox's possible admission of coordination between the RGA and the AFP Foundation comes amidst a separate criminal coordination investigation in Wisconsin.

For more than a year, a bipartisan group of Wisconsin prosecutors have been examining whether Walker and his campaign violated state campaign finance law by coordinating with independent groups like Wisconsin Club for Growth during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections. Under Wisconsin law, expenditures coordinated with a candidate are counted as campaign donations, and must comply with disclosure laws and contribution limits.

The alleged coordination between the Walker campaign and outside groups like Wisconsin Club for Growth could be a violation of Wisconsin campaign finance law. In contrast, if the RGA and AFP-Foundation improperly coordinated with one another, it would mean that AFP violated federal tax law.

Wisconsin prosecutors may not looking at federal tax law violations. Yet, both the RGA and AFP have reportedly received subpoenas in the state criminal probe, and the RGA's name has recently been mentioned in connection with the investigation. Taken together, the allegations indicate how closely many Republican groups worked together during the recalls.

According to newly-unsealed court documents, prosecutors allege that the Walker campaign -- in addition to coordinating with Wisconsin Club for Growth -- worked with the RGA-run Right Direction Political Action Committee in 2012, which ran at least eight ads attacking Walker's opponent Tom Barrett.

Prosecutor Francis Schmitz, a former federal prosecutor with Republican credentials who voted for Walker, alleged in court filings that agents of the Walker's campaign "were regularly conducting meetings and conference calls with the RGA to discuss campaign strategy, including polling.” Schmitz also alleges that the campaign worked closely with the Republican State Leadership Committee which, like the RGA, receives Koch funding.

David Koch Is Top Funder to Both AFP and RGA

David Koch and the privately-held Koch Industries have been major funders of both AFP and the RGA.

AFP does not disclose its donors, but documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy show that David Koch -- who founded the group -- has been its top single donor in some years, giving as much as $1 million annually during the early 2000s. Koch Industries has also been a top AFP donor, giving nearly $1 million in 2000 and 2001. It is not known how much Koch Industries or David Koch may have provided to AFP in more recent years, as the group has played an increasing role in elections and its budget has grown exponentially. David Koch, as well as top Koch Industries executives, are on the AFP Foundation's board of directors.

David Koch is also one of the RGA's top donors. In 2010, David Koch wrote a $1 million check to the RGA, as the Center for Media and Democracy noted at the time, and in 2012 he gave $2 million. (The RGA reported spending $5 million getting Walker elected in 2010, and another $9 million during the 2012 recall.) In the first half of 2014 Koch has donated $3.75 million, and Koch Industries has chipped-in another $525,000.

Cox acknowledged this financial backing when addressing the Koch summit in June.

"I want to thank David specifically for his very strong support of the RGA and AFP’s great partnership over the last four years," he said.

http://motherjones.com/print/149261 Michigan DARK $ state CoC launders $

DARK $

UPDATE:April 28 — The legislation passed out of the Ways and Means Committee on a party line vote with all Republicans in support and Democrats in opposition. Prior to the vote, committee members were sent another letter in support of the bill. This letter came from Phillip Ellender, president of Koch Public Sector, the official lobbying and PR arm of the Koch brothers.

PREVIOUSLY:

WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress are trying to decrease the already scant amount of disclosure for politically-active nonprofits — known as dark money groups. The legislative effort is unsurprisingly supported by the main political arm of the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) is expected to introduce a bill in the Ways and Means Committee that would eliminate the requirement for nonprofits to make a non-public disclosure of their donors to the IRS when they file their annual tax forms. The donor disclosures — known as the Schedule B report — are not released to the public, but the list of donation amounts with the donor names redacted are released.

The bill is supported by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the dark money donor hub run by the Koch brothers. The Kochs operate a vast political empire that mostly operates through nonprofit organizations that do not disclose their donations.

“This bill is an important first step toward reaffirming Americans’ right to free speech while protecting them from threats and intimidation because of their personal beliefs,” Mark Holden, Freedom Partners chairman and lead lobbyist for Koch Industries, said in a statement.

Roskam’s legislation comes amid a court case involving the donor list of another Koch brothers outfit,Americans for Prosperity Foundation. California attorney general Kamala Harris had sought the donor list of the organization for non-public review to ensure that it was abiding by California laws. A federal court, however, agreed on April 21 with Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s argument that this was a violation of its First Amendment rights.

Campaign finance reform and transparency proponents issued a letter calling on members of the Ways and Means Committee to oppose Roskam’s bill. Those backing the letter include Brennan Center for Justice, Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, CREW, Democracy 21, Public Citizen, Sunlight Foundation and Rootstrikers.

“Eliminating the existing requirement for disclosure to the IRS of donations to 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups would open the door wide for secret, unaccountable money from foreign governments, foreign corporations and foreign individuals to be illegally laundered into federal elections through 501(c)(4) groups,” the letter reads.

:{==

NBCC's Op-Ed Campaign Follows Similar Attacks On The Clean Power Plan From Fossil Fuel Front Groups

Americans For Prosperity State DirectorsAreRunning Op-Ed Campaign Attacking Clean Power Plan.At least 16 newspapers across the country have published nearly identical op-eds from state leaders of Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which misleadingly cite statistics on electricity prices while calling for state legislatures to fight back against the Clean Power Plan. Every newspaper Media Matters reviewed except one failed to disclose the group's ties to the oil industry: AFP was founded, and continues to be largely funded, by the oil billionaire Koch brothers. *Media Matters*, [3/25/15]

Beacon Hill Institute And State Policy Network Also Seeking To Undermine EPA Climate Plan With Op-Ed Campaign.The Beacon Hill Institute (BHI) partnered with members of the State Policy Network (SPN) to jointly produce sham studies and op-eds that dramatically inflate the Clean Power Plan's projected cost without even analyzing the EPA's actual proposal. As of April 13, 11 newspapers in four states had published op-eds written mostly by executives from SPN groups or state legislators, but none of the op-eds disclosed the fossil fuel industry funding behind them. Both BHI and SPN have financial ties to the Koch brothers, and the reports themselves were funded by a group run byRichard Berman, a corporate PR executive who has solicited millions in funding from the oil and gas industry. *Media Matters*, [4/13/15]

The values and voices of America's diverse communities are too often excluded from the news media.

afp v TP!

pro-solar conservative group in Florida cleared a major hurdle this week in its journey to make solar more accessible in the state.

Floridians for Solar Choice reached 72,000 signatures on a petition that seeks to allow Floridians to purchase solar power directly from other consumers — something that isn’t currently allowed in the state. That number of signatures clears the way for the petition to be reviewed by the state’s Supreme Court, which will decide whether or not the petition’s language legally qualifies it to be a ballot initiative for Floridians in 2016. Getting its petition on the 2016 ballot is the main goal for Floridians for Solar Choice.

“We are thrilled to reach this important milestone,” Tory Perfetti, founder of Floridians for Solar Choice, said in a statement. “It shows broad support among Florida’ families and businesses for removing barriers to commerce in solar power.”

The petition for the initiative seeks to “encourage and promote local small-scale solar-generated electricity production and to enhance the availability of solar power to customers.” Under Florida’s current law, only utilities can sell electricity directly to consumers. Florida is one of only five states in the country with a law like that, and solar advocates say that it’s holding the Sunshine State back from its solar potential. If the ballot initiative is successful in 2016, businesses and property owners in the state would be able to produce up to 2 megawatts of solar power and sell it directly to consumers.

If the state Supreme Court does approve the petition’s language for a ballot initiative, Floridians for Solar Choice will still have some work to do. In order to get on the ballot in Florida, an initiative must collect 683,149 signatures from Floridians in at least seven congressional districts by February 1. Any delays in the Supreme Court’s approval of the petition means there’s less time for Floridians for Solar Choice to collect signatures. Already, supporters have expressed frustration that the state took too long to acknowledge that they had received enough signatures for Supreme Court review.

Perfetti’s group began circulating the petition in January, and he said at the time that he received “overwhelming” response to it. Perfetti and Debbie Dooley, a tea party activist who founded the original chapter of Conservatives for Energy Freedom in Georgia, say that they’re tackling solar in Florida because increasing access to the energy source makes sense from a conservative standpoint.

“Free market and the freedom to choose — those are core conservative principles,” Dooley told ThinkProgress in January. “Unless you cherry-pick your principles, if you’re a true conservative, this is something that resonates with you. I think the residents are fed up with the government telling them who to purchase their power from.”

Floridians from Solar Choice has gained multiple backers of the ballot initiative. The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) voiced its support of the initiative earlier this week, and it’s also gained the support of the Tea Party Network, the Christian Coalition, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, the Florida Retail Federation, theSierra Club, and other groups.

“This fight is about consumer choice and private property rights — cherished, long-standing American principals that we strongly support as an organization and an industry,” Rhone Resch, president and CEO of SEIA, said in a statement. “We urge Floridians to sign this critically important, freedom-of-choice petition, allowing it to be placed on next year’s ballot.”

Conservative group Americans for Prosperity has attacked the initiative, however, sayingthat it’s “about money, and using government and taxpayers to prop up the solar industry.” Supporters reject that claim, saying the measure isn’t calling for solar subsidies or mandates; instead, it simply wants to make it easier for Floridians to gain access to solar.

The Koch Party

The Koch's Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit dark money group that does not disclose its donors, is reported to have spent some $77 million on competitive Senate and House races, says a spokesman. The Koch's new Freedom Partners Action Fund, a super PAC that discloses some of its donors, spent some $25 million. Not all Koch candidates won their races, but the Koch were ranked big winners in the Sunlight Foundations post-election"return on investment" analysis.

This $100 million does not count all the Koch-tied groups, their personal contributions or all contributions of the Koch network of funders which may top the $300 million*Washington Post estima*te. As a point of comparison, the DNC and the RNC combined spent $300 million this election cycle.

Koch bucks purchased over 44,000 TV ads (and that was an early count). Americans for Prosperity told Floridians that Charlie Christ was for renewable energy (gasp!), not because it created jobs, reduced pollution and protected the beautiful Florida environment, but because Christ wanted to hike people's utility bills.

And the Kochs purchased a ground game that puts the Chicago machine to shame. "In many places, [AFP] has more trained and paid operatives than the traditional political parties have. Nowhere is this more obvious than Florida, where the group has 10 offices, its single largest field operation," reports Salon.

In the hotly contested North Carolina Senate race between Kay Hagan and ALEC stalwart Thom Tillis, AFP "had 45 paid staffers who knocked on 186,000 doors and made at least 1 million phone calls," says the *Washington Post*.

The Kochs are not your average oligarchs, they are a political party.

The Koch Platform

The Koch Party platform was not determined at any founding convention by a vote of average Americans. It was drafted behind closed doors at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) by some of the world's most powerful lobbyists representing Exxon Mobile, Peabody Energy, and other major polluters.

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/11/12662/koch-party-wins-big-planet-peril#sthash.lWCJHXIi.dpuf

===

In an election too close to call that could determine control of the U.S. Senate, ABC News reports thathundreds of thousands of voters have received grossly incorrect voter registration information in the mail from the Koch brothers' right-wing front group, Americans for Prosperity.¹

Here's just some of what's in the mailing:

The wrong deadline for registering to vote—cutting the registration window short by five days, critical for working families.
The wrong office for questions on voter registration and the wrong zip code for turning in a voter registration form.
False information about how voters will be notified of their precinct after they register to vote.²

anti epa coal before published

Americans For Prosperity (AFP)

Another Koch-funded organization, AFP reacted to proposed regulations by citing its concern over the impact it would have on low-income Americans. “Using the EPA to drive up electricity prices will have a negative impact on American families, their pocketbooks and their standard of living,” the group said in a 2013 statement. “The President claims to care about jobs and the economy, but his EPA regulations and resulting higher energy bills will hurt the little guy the most, the senior citizen, the single mom on a fixed income.”

AFP, however, has fought against raising the minimum wage, claiming that “it does more harm than good.” Last year they launched a massive campaign pressuring states to deny health care coverage to lower income Americans through the Medicaid expansion contained in the Affordable Care Act.

AFP has worked to protect fossil fuel interests and slander clean energy in multiple states — recently running ads attacking Kansas’ clean energy standard that former Senate President Dave Kerr, (R-Hutchinson) called “provably false” and failing in their attempt to undermine Tea Party support for solar power in Georgia.

wiki? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Prosperity

from?---- no lnx

https://everything.explained.today/%5C/Americans_for_Prosperity/

americans for Prosperity explained

Americans for Prosperity

Membership: 2.3 million (2013)

Predecessor: Citizens for a Sound Economy

Type: Nonprofit political advocacy group

Mission: "To mobilize citizens to advocate for policies that cut red tape and increase opportunity, put the brakes on government overspending, and get the economy working for hard workers– not special interests."[1]

Headquarters: Arlington, Virginia[2]

Formation: [3]

Leader Title: President

Leader Name: Tim Phillips

Leader Title2: Chief Operating Officer

Leader Name2: Luke Hilgemann

Tax Id: 75-3148958

Status: 501(c)(4)

Revenue: $82,682,125

Revenue Year: 2014

Expenses: $90,412,075

Expenses Year: 2014

Affiliations: Americans for Prosperity Foundation,

PDIST LLC

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), founded in 2004, is a libertarian conservative political advocacy group in the United States funded by David Koch and Charles Koch.[4] As the Koch brothers' primary political advocacy group, it is one of the most influential American conservative organizations.[5] [6]

After the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama, AFP helped transform the Tea Party movement into a political force. It organized significant opposition to Obama administration initiatives such as global warming regulation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the expansion of Medicaid and economic stimulus. It helped turn back cap and trade, the major environmental proposal of Obama's first term. AFP advocated for limits on the collective bargaining rights of public-sector trade unions and for right-to-work laws, and it opposed raising the federal minimum wage. AFP played an active role in the achievement of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives in 2010 and in the Senate in 2014.

In the 2014 mid-term election cycle, AFP led all groups, other than political action committees (PACs), in spending on political television advertising. AFP's scope of operations has drawn comparisons to political parties. AFP, an educational social welfare organization, and the associated Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a public charity, are tax-exempt nonprofits. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, AFP is not legally required to disclose its donors to the general public. The extent of AFP's political activities while operating as a tax-exempt entity has raised concerns among some campaign finance watchdogs regarding the transparency of its funding.

Background, founding, and growth

Americans for Prosperity was founded in 2004 when internal rivalries caused a split in the conservative political advocacy group Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), creating Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.[7] AFP's founding was funded by businessmen and philanthropist brothers David H. Koch and Charles Koch, of Koch Industries.[8] [9] [10] The Americans for Prosperity Foundation is the Koch brothers' primary political advocacy group.[11] [12] [13] [14] According to a spokesperson from Koch Industries, the Koch companies do not direct the activities of AFP.[8]

AFP's original stated mission was "educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing citizens as advocates in the public policy process".[15] Its current stated mission is "to mobilize citizens to advocate for policies that cut red tape and increase opportunity, put the brakes on government overspending, and get the economy working for hard workers– not special interests".[1] It is focused on "fiscal responsibility," and in particular on cutting taxes, reducing regulation of business, and limiting the power of the courts.[16] According to FactCheck.org, "AFP seeks to support free markets and entrepreneurship by advocating lower taxes and limited government spending and regulation."[17] Its leaders view the organization as a counterbalance to the progressive movement's unions and activist organizations. According to NBC News, The New York Times and others, some of AFP's policy positions align with the business interests of the Koch brothers and Koch Industries, including its support for rescinding energy regulations and environmental restrictions; expanding domestic energy production; lowering taxes; and reducing government spending, especially Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.[18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23]

From 2004 to 2007, AFP was led by Nancy Pfotenhauer.[24] [25] In 2005, the Kochs hired political strategist Tim Phillips to work at AFP.[26]

AFP had a staff of 116 employees in September 2012, and the next year it had chapters in 34 states and reported a membership of 2.3 million.[27] In June 2014, it had 240 employees in 32 states.[28] AFP has been active in national, state,[27] [29] [30] and local elections. AFP registered to lobby in 2014.[31] According to FactCheck.org, by 2011, AFP had "emerged as one of the most influential conservative issue advocacy groups on the national and state political scene".[17] [32] The Los Angeles Times said AFP performed roles typical of national and state political parties. ABC News said in August 2014 that AFP was "poised to be the most influential conservative group in the nation this year, and among the most influential and heaviest spending across the political spectrum this year and into the looming presidential race".[33]

As of mid-September 2018, AFP has become one of just 15 groups which account for three-quarters of the anonymous cash; following the 2010, Citizens United v. FEC decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which paved the way for dark money to flow into U.S. elections.[34] [35]

Leadership, structure and funding

Tim Phillips is president of both AFP and the AFP Foundation. AFP has been called both the political and educational arm of the AFP Foundation. AFP and the AFP Foundation share offices and staff.[36] [37]

AFP

As of 2014, New Jersey businesswoman Frayda Levin chaired the board of directors of AFP.[38] Other directors include Pfotenhauer, former U.S. government official and economist James C. Miller III, James E. Stephenson, and Mark Holden.[39] Filing with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, tax-exempt, social welfare organization,[40] contributions to AFP are not tax deducible. AFP is legally required to operate as non-partisan, it may not endorse or oppose political candidates, its primary purpose may not be political,[27] [17] [41] [42] it must be primarily engaged in social welfare activities,[28] and no more than half of its expenditures may be political.[42]

AFP Foundation

David H. Koch chaired the board of directors of the AFP Foundation.[43] Other directors include Pfotenhauer, economist Walter E. Williams, Debra Humphreys, and Cy Nobles.[8] [44] The AFP Foundation is an associate member of the State Policy Network, a national network of free-market oriented think tanks.[45] [46] As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, tax-exempt charity, contributions to the AFP Foundation are tax deducible, and such charities are largely prohibited from political activity.[17] [24] [42]

Transparency

Tax-exempt, nonprofit charitable organizations such as AFP are generally not required to disclose their contributors, in contrast with political action committees.[42] [47] [48] Some campaign finance watchdogs and Democrats have criticized AFP for what they perceive to be its funding of political activities from undisclosed sources. For example, the Sunlight Foundation and others have accused non-disclosing political groups like AFP of filing for nonprofit status solely to invoke the right to hide their donors.[49] [50] President Obama, speaking at a Democratic National Committee fundraising dinner in August 2010, criticized AFP for its political spending and non-disclosure of donors.[24] [51] [52] [53]The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee filed a complaint with the IRS charging that the AFP Foundation had funded political advertisements in violation of the law applicable to the foundation's tax-exempt classification.AFP responded that the charges were without merit.[54] [55] President of AFP Tim Phillips later suggested that the reason behind the Democrats' filing of the complaint was simply that they were scared of the impact the organization was having.[56]

In 2010 and 2011, AFP reported to the IRS that it was not involved in political activities.[57] Questioned by a reporter before the 2012 Wisconsin recall elections, AFP's Wisconsin director said AFP was educating the public and not engaging in political activity.[58] [59] In 2014, an AFP spokesperson said AFP had the right to keep its donors private, citing NAACP v. Alabama, a 1958 Supreme Court ruling that protected National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) donors from potential harassment.[60] In 2014, AFP president Phillips said that protecting donors' identities was prudent given the Obama administration's ideology-based IRS targeting of citizens.[61] [62] [63] The AFP Foundation said its supporters have received serious threats. [NOTE NO CITE]In February 2015, a federal judge granted the Foundation's motion for a preliminary injunction staying California Attorney General Kamala Harris's request for the names and addresses of Foundation donors, pending resolution of the legality of the request.[64] [65]

Funding

While AFP does not disclose its funding sources, some supporters have acknowledged their contributions and investigative journalism has documented others. AFP has been funded by the Kochs and others.[17] [40]

At AFP's 2009 Defending the Dream summit, David Koch said he and his brother Charles provided the initial funding for AFP.[66] [67] In initial funding, David Koch was the top contributor to the founding of the AFP Foundation at $850,000. Several American companies also provided initial funding of the AFP Foundation, including $275,000 from State Farm Insurance and lesser amounts from 1-800 Contacts, medical products firm Johnson & Johnson, and carpet and flooring manufacturer Shaw Industries.

Later grants from the Koch family foundations include $1 million in 2008 to AFP from the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation[68] and $3 million between 2005 and 2007 to the AFP Foundation from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation,[69] controlled by Charles Koch.[68] Other grants from Koch-related funding sources include $32.3 million in 2012 and $1.5 million in 2013 from Freedom Partners[70] [71] and $4.2 million through 2011 to the AFP Foundation from the Center to Protect Patient Rights.[72]

Between 2003 and 2012, the AFP Foundation received $4.17 million from the John William Pope Foundation, chaired by AFP director Pope, the largest identifiable donor to the AFP Foundation.[37] [73] In 2011, the AFP Foundation received $3 million from the foundation of the family of billionaire Richard DeVos, the founder of Amway, making the DeVos family the second largest identifiable donor to the AFP Foundation.[37] [74] In 2010, AFP received half a million dollars from theBradley Foundation.[75] [76] AFP received smaller grants in 2012 from tobacco company Reynolds American and in 2010 and 2012 from the American Petroleum Institute.[77] [78] [79] [80] [81] The donor-advised fundDonors Trust granted $11 million to AFP between 2002 and 2010 and $7 million to the AFP Foundation in 2010.[82] [83]

Tea Party and 2010 midterm election

AFP helped transform the nascent Tea Party movement into a political force.[84] [85]

AFP supported the Tea Party movement by obtaining permits and supplying speakers for rallies.[86] AFP helped organize and publicize a "Porkulus"-themed protest on the state capitol steps in Denver, Colorado on February 17, 2009, in conjunction with Obama signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.[87] [88] Within hours of CNBC on-air editor Rick Santelli's remarks on February 19, 2009, that criticized the Act and called for a "Chicago tea party," AFP registered and launched the website "TaxDayTeaParty.com," calling for protests against Obama.[87] AFP had a lead role in organizing Taxpayer Tea Party rallies in Sacramento, Austin, and Madison in April 2009.[89] AFP was one of the leading organizers of the September 2009 Taxpayer March on Washington, also known as the "9/12 Tea Party," according to The Guardian.[6] On April 16, 2011, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker at an AFP annual tax day tea party rally at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin.[67] [90]

In the 2010 midterm elections, AFP played a major role in achieving a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. AFP supported tea party groups, purchased political advertisements,[91] and sponsored a nationwide bus tour themed "November is Coming" to recruit organizers and canvassers.[92] AFP helped Tea Party groups organize voter registration drives.[9] An AFP website offered "Tea party Talking Points." The organization provided Tea Party activists with education on policy, training in methods, and lists of politicians to target.[8] In October 2010, AFP sponsored a workshop on the political use of the internet at a Tea Party convention in Virginia.[93] AFP said it spent $40 million on rallies, phone banks, and canvassing during the 2010 election cycle. Of the six freshman Republican members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in 2010, five benefited from AFP advertisements and grassroots activity.[94]

David Weigel wrote in Slate that AFP "in the Tea Party era evolved into one of the most powerful conservative organizations in electoral politics."[95] AFP and the Tea Party share many of the same principles. In 2010, AFP was one of the most influential organizations in the Tea Party movement, and the largest in terms of membership and spending.[96] [97] According to Bloomberg News, with AFP the Koch brothers "harnessed the Tea Party's energy in service of their own policy goals, including deregulation and lower taxes....As the Tea Party movement grew in the aftermath of Obama's election, the Kochs positioned Americans for Prosperity as the Tea Party's staunchest ally".

Labor law

AFP advocates for a reduction in public sector union benefits and pensions, in conjunction with curtailments of public sector collective bargaining rights.[98] [99] AFP has opposed raising the minimum wage.[100] [101]

Wisconsin collective bargaining

AFP's activities in Wisconsin developed the state into the nation's foremost conservative-progressive battleground,[102] [103] and AFP used tactics in Wisconsin that were applied in later campaigns.

AFP has been a major supporter of Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.[104] In 2009 and 2010, AFP helped raise the statewide profile of Walker, then Milwaukee County county executive, by inviting him to address its rallies.[105] In 2011, when Walker's agenda of reduced spending, cuts to union benefits, and limits on public-sector collective bargaining drew thousands in opposition to the streets around the state capitol in Madison, AFP bussed in hundreds to counter-protest.[106] AFP spent $320,000 on television advertisements and sponsored a website and bus tour themed "Stand Against Spending, Stand With Walker",[58] [107] [108] [109] and spent a total of $7 million in support of Walker.

AFP spent $3 million in opposition to the recall campaign against Walker in 2011–2012 and sent 75 trained canvasers to Wisconsin.[110] [111] [112] [113] After the passage of Walker's signature legislation, the 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, which limited collective bargaining rights for most public employees, AFP ran advertisements and held town-hall meetings with the theme "It's Working Wisconsin!"[114] [115] Days before the recall election, AFP sponsored a ten-city bus tour themed "A Better Wisconsin."[116] [117] In the context of Walker's 2014 re-election campaign, AFP purchased television issue advertisements in support of Act 10.[118]

Michigan right-to-work

Americans for Prosperity's Wisconsin campaign curtailing collective bargaining rights and turning back a recall demonstrated to AFP that similar efforts could succeed in Michigan.[119] A top priority of AFP in Michigan was right-to-work legislation, which prohibited employers from deducting union dues from employee pay checks and prohibited labor contracts from excluding non-union members.[120] [121] [122]

AFP had opposed Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, on a number of issues, including the Detroit River International Crossing Bridge project, an expansion of Medicaid funded by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and a road bill which raised taxes.[121] AFP coordinated support for right-to-work in Michigan.[121] [123] The AFP Foundation produced a 15-page booklet titled Unions: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: How forced unionization has harmed workers and Michigan. AFP's website urged members to gather at the state capital in Lansing on December 6, 2012, and some three hundred protestors showed up.[121] AFP bussed in activists[120] and offered supporters $25 gas cards, free lunch, and drinks.[124] AFP reserved space and erected a large heated tent near the Capitol steps for supporters.[125]

On the morning of December 6, during a lame duck session of the Republican-controlled Michigan legislature, Snyder called a joint press conference with the legislative leadership to announce fast-track right-to-work legislation. The legislation passed both houses of the Michigan legislature that day, as protesters and counterprotesters demonstrated outside.[126] Michigan state police responded. AFP said protesters tore down the AFP tent. No arrests were made.[125] On December 10, President Obama visited Daimler AG's Detroit Diesel factory in Redford, Michigan, and told employees the legislation was about the "right to work for less money."[127] [128] Snyder signed the legislation on December 11.[126] [129] In 2014, Snyder ran for re-election and AFP posted an online advertisement praising his legislative record.[130]

Obama re-election

AFP ran an early television advertising campaign opposing Obama's re-election.[131] An August 2012 ProPublica analysis of broadcast television political advertising purchases by category showed that two nonprofit organizations, AFP and Crossroads GPS, combined, outspent all other categories, including political parties, political action committees, super PACs, unions, and trade associations.[132] While previously AFP had run issue advertising that opposed Obama's programs, in August 2012 the organization shifted to express advocacy, which explicitly called for his defeat.[133] [134] [135] That month, AFP spent $25 million on television commercials against Obama. AFP said the goal of the commercials was to educate voters. AFP raised $140 million in the 2012 election cycle, and it spent $122 million, more than in all the previous eight years since its founding. The organization spent more than $33.5 million on television advertisements opposing Obama's re-election.[27] [136] [72]

In 2011 and 2012, AFP spent $8.4 million in swing states on television advertisements denouncing a loan guarantee the Department of Energy had made to Solyndra, a manufacturer of solar panels. Solyndra was the first recipient of such a guarantee under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and the company went bankrupt.[137] In January 2012, The Wall Street Journal said AFP's Solyndra campaign was "perhaps the biggest attack on Mr. Obama so far in the 2012 election campaign."[138] AFP sent a bus on a nationwide tour condemning Obama's economic policies called the "Obama's Failing Agenda Tour."[139] [140]

In April 2011 in New Hampshire, AFP sponsored an informal gathering of five Republican presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain.[141] [142] AFP offered tea party groups $2 for every new AFP member their volunteers signed up at polling places in the February 2012 Florida Republican primary.[143] AFP employed methodologies developed in its efforts to thwart the recall of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, including deploying a smartphone application called "Prosperity Knocks" to canvassers.[136] AFP canvassers utilized "Themis," an online voter database of millions of Americans.[41] [143] [144] AFP president Phillips said that AFP's canvassing support application offered field operatives the previous voting history of voters integrated with Census data and consumer data including purchases, magazine subscriptions, and favorite websites.[145]

Programs and advocacy

Energy and environment

AFP supports oil and gas development and opposes regulation, including environmental restrictions.[146] The AFP Foundation opposed President Obama's efforts to address global warming.[147] AFP was important in creating the Tea Party movement and in encouraging the movement to focus on climate change.[148] AFP helped defeat proposed U.S. legislation embracing cap and trade, a market-based approach to control pollution by providing economic incentives.[26] [149] In August 2009, Mother Jones magazine identified cap and trade as one of the key domestic policy goals of the Obama administration, and identified AFP as one of the most prominent groups in opposition.[150]

In 2008, AFP circulated the No Climate Tax Pledgeto government officials at the federal, state, and local levels, a pledge to "oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue."[149] [151] [152] [153] By July 2013, 411 lawmakers and candidates, including a quarter of U.S. Senators and more than a third of U.S. Representatives, primarily Republicans, had signed the pledge.[149] Of the twelve Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2011, nine signed the pledge.[154]

AFP held more than eighty events in opposition to cap and trade,[8] including the nationwide Hot Air Tour, which involved floating hot air balloons in protest of what AFP described as "global warming alarmism."[24] AFP raised a balloon in Phoenix, Arizona, in fall 2008[155] and also over Al Gore's house in Tennessee.[26] AFP described cap and trade as "the largest excise tax in history." AFP sponsored a Regulation Reality Tour to foment opposition to climate change legislation and federal regulation of carbon emissions.[156] The tour involved fake "carbon cops" with badges in green Smart cars with flashing lights who wrote citations for "carbon crimes" like running a lawn mower.[157] In 2011, AFP launched a Running on Empty website and national tour featuring a 14-foot inflatable gas pump intended to link rising gas prices to the Obama administration's environmental regulations and to promote offshore drilling for oil.[158] [159] Long lines formed in several states in 2012 when AFP offered drivers gas discounted to the price in effect when Obama took office.[160] [161] [162] [163] In 2012, AFP campaigned against Republican political candidates who acknowledged the science of climate change.[164]

AFP advocates for the construction of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline.In February 2015, AFP organized supporters to telephone the White House urging Obama to sign legislation authorizing the project.[165] AFP led an effort to repeal a federal tax credit for wind power.[166] [167] In Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, and other states, AFP campaigned to overturn renewable portfolio standards, state laws that mandated a percentage of the state's electricity come from renewable resources.[168] [169] [170] [171] AFP announced plans to oppose Republican candidates who support a carbon tax in the 2016 presidential primaries.[172]

Health care and 2014 midterm

AFP has described itself as the nation's largest grassroots champion for health care freedom.[17] In August 2009, Mother Jones magazine identified health care reform as one of the key domestic policy goals of the Obama administration, and identified AFP as one of the most prominent groups in opposition.[150] AFP sponsored two other groups advocating against the Obama administration's proposed health care reform,Patients United Now and Patients First.[150]

In May 2009, AFP launched Patients United Now, whichopposed a single-payer health care system and a government-funded health insurance option. It purchased television advertisements warning of "government-controlled health care" or a "Washington takeover" of health care.[147] In one Patients United Now television advertisement, a Canadian woman, Shona Holmes, said she could not get timely treatment in Canada and ultimately was treated in the U.S.[173] Patients United Now staged more than three hundred rallies to oppose the Obama administration's proposed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).[8] [174]

In summer 2009, Patients First sponsored a six-week "Hands Off My Health Care" bus tour.[175] Hands Off My Health Care events included rallies protesting against the health care plan and collected signatures in an effort to raise awareness about free-market-based health care reforms.[176] [177]

After the ACA became law, AFP worked for its repeal[27] and campaigned to block states from accepting federal funds made available under the law to expand Medicaid. State legislators who supported Medicaid expansion were targeted, including Republican Virginia state senators Emmett Hanger and John Watkins. AFP bussed in volunteers to a hearing in the state capital and to call constituents, distribute flyers, and send mailings.[178] AFP campaigned against Medicaid expansion in Michigan, Louisiana, and Nebraska[179] and helped defeat Medicaid expansion in Florida. AFP president Phillips said AFP advocated for repeal of the ACA to keep the issue "in front of the public" and to use the threat of a presidential veto to portray Obama as "unwilling to take some reasonable commonsense reforms."[180] Phillips told The New York Times that a broader goal of AFP's anti-ACA advertising spending was to present the ACA as a "social welfare boondoggle" which would foster opposition to spending on climate change.[19] [181] [182] In March 2012, AFP, with support from the California-based Tea Party Express, organized a rally at the Capitol during the Supreme Court's oral arguments regarding the constitutionality of the ACA.[183]

AFP played a major role in the 2014 midterm elections,[184] helping Republicans achieve a majority in the U.S. Senate.[185] AFP targeted legislators who had supported the ACA four years earlier.[186] AFP's first campaign advertisement aired in September 2013,[187] and by January 2014 the organization had spent $20 million,[188] by May, $35 million,[189] and by July, $44 million,[186] amounts unprecedented so early in a political campaign cycle.[180] Senators targeted Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, Mark Begich, and Jeanne Shaheen, all Democrats.[188] In early 2014, AFP ran nationwide advertisements featuring stories about people whose health care, according to the ads, had been compromised by the ACA, whom AFP termed "ObamaCare victims."

Between January 1, 2013, and August 31, 2014, in the campaign to control the Senate, AFP aired more than 27,000 television advertisements, about one in every 16 ads.[190] AFP was one of the leading spenders on political advertising in 2014.[191] AFP lead all non-political action committees in terms of spending on television air time for political advertisements in the 2014 election cycle through April.[192]

Fiscal policy advocacy

AFP advocates limited government. Within two days of Obama's inauguration in February, 2009, Americans for Prosperity launched a television advertising campaign and a website "nostimulus.com" which featured an online "No Stimulus" petition addressed to U.S. Senators, notifying them that the vote on Obama's first major legislative initiative, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, would be included in AFP's congressional rankings and urging a "no" vote. The petition characterized the Act as "dramatically increasing federal debt and spending...under the pretense of stimulus or recovery." Internet traffic overwhelmed the website, but it was unable to prevent passage in the legislature and a petition to repeal the act.[87] [193] [194] In 2011, AFP opposed the extension of unemployment benefits, writing that unemployment benefits increase unemployment.[195] [196] In late 2012, AFP opposed a proposed federal relief bill after Hurricane Sandy, the second-costliest hurricane in United States history.[197] [198] AFP's New Jersey director questioned the federal government's role in natural disaster relief, saying it should be limited to the repair of federal buildings.[199] AFP opposed smoking bans in Texas and Virginia.[25] [200] [201] [202]

"Government overspending is the greatest threat to economic prosperity," according to AFP.[203] [204] In 2013, AFP launched a "Spending Accountability Project" which supported letting the $85 billion in automatic cuts to federal spending required by the budget sequestration take effect.[205] [206] AFP opposed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, also known as the Ryan-Murray deal, which proposed $40 billion in spending in excess of the sequestration. AFP called the deal "not just bad policy, it is bad politics" and noted the loss of the "hard-won bipartisan spending limits set by the sequester."[207] [208]

AFP advocates for lower taxes.[17] [152] AFP opposed a 2006 cigarette tax hike in Indiana[209] and helped fund the "No on 29" effort in opposition to California Proposition 29 (2012), which would have placed a $1 excise tax on tobacco products to fund smoking medical research and smoking cessation.[25] [210] [211] [212] In 2013 in Indiana AFP ran a television advertising campaign in support of Governor Mike Pence's ten percent state income tax cut.[213] AFP advocates for the repeal of the estate tax, which they call the "death tax".[214]

AFP advocates for free market solutions.[28] In 2011, AFP sent mailings and funded radio advertisements criticizing the proposed construction of a Detroit River International Crossing bridge, a publicly financed project that would compete with the nearby privately owned Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit, Michigan, with Windsor, Ontario; AFP charged that the project would be a waste of taxpayer money if toll revenues did not cover debt service.[215] [216]

AFP advocated the dissolution of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.[217] [218] [219] [220]

Other policy advocacy

AFP opposes consideration of race and economic class in the assignment of students to schools. According to AFP's North Carolina state director, in 2009 AFP did voter education and supplied volunteers in school board-elections in Wake County, North Carolina. Wake County includes the state capital, Raleigh, and has the 18th largest school district in the US. AFP supported a slate of candidates that opposed desegregation busing, which AFP has called "forced busing."[221] [222] [223] [224] [225] AFP ran phone banks and canvassed in another school board election in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2014.[104] AFP helped organize rallies in favor of virtual and charter schools.[226]

AFP is a member of the Internet Freedom Coalition, which opposes net neutrality.[227] [228] [229] AFP's vice president for policy Phil Kerpen chaired the Coalition.[227] AFP supported January 2014's federal appeals court ruling against the Federal Communications Commission's authority to enforce net neutrality.[230] [231] AFP urged Congress to legislatively pre-empt regulation of the internet.[232]

AFP sponsors the "Grassroots Leadership Academy", a training program designed to help build a conservative movement in respect to the rise of Trumpism.[233]

Annual events

In 2007, AFP began hosting a yearly Defending the American Dream Summit,now the second-largest annual gathering of conservatives in Washington, D.C.[55] [234] [235] In conjunction with the July 2008 Netroots Nation conference in Austin, Texas, AFP hosted RightOnline,a conference of conservative bloggers and activists that aimed to develop conservative social media strategies,[236] [237] which become an annual event.[238]

Election-related activities

In June 2011, AFP placed fake eviction notices on doors in the Delray neighborhood of Detroit, stating that homes might be taken to make way for the Detroit River International Crossing project.[239]

In August 2011, AFP mailed absentee voter applications to Democratic voters in at least two recall elections in Wisconsin that included a filing deadline two days after the election. The return envelopes were addressed to an "Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center" with the post office box number of Wisconsin Family Action, a socially conservative group, rather than to the clerk's office.[240] [241] Responding to charges of voter suppression, AFP said the incorrect date was a "printing mistake" and was intended only for voters in the two districts where Democrats are set to face recalls on a later date.[242] [243] The state board of elections opened an investigation.[244]

In 2013 in Virginia and 2014 in Arkansas, the AFP Foundation mailed "voter history report cards," which included the public-record voting history of both the addressee and its neighbors.[245] [246] [247] [248]

A 2014 television advertisement targeting Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Gary Peters of Michigan for his support of the Affordable Care Act featured leukemia patient Julie Boonstra, who said she could no longer afford the cost of her treatment after the ACA.[249] [250] The Washington Post reported that the advertisement had "significant factual errors and/or obvious contradictions."[251] Boonstra would save at least $1,000 a year under the ACA, according to The Detroit News.[252] [253] AFP aired another television advertisement in which Boonstra said Peters was trying to silence her.[254] [255] AFP apologized for another television advertisement that criticized the ACA and Democratic Senator Mark Udall, a candidate for reelection, using images of a somber Obama and Udall from their visit to Aurora, Colorado, in the wake of the mass shooting there.[256]

In April 2014, AFP mailed voters in at least eight West Virginia counties material that may have led them to believe they were ineligible to vote in an upcoming primary election.The mailings, received just before the deadline to update voter registration, included registration cards and prepaid return envelopes addressed to county clerks, with a message cautioning voters that if they did not update their voter registration, they might lose their right to vote in the upcoming primary election. AFP's West Virginia director said the mailings were a non-partisan, get out the vote effort targeting unregistered voters.[257]

In September 2014, AFP was investigated by the state board of elections of North Carolina after the state Democratic Party filed a complaint regarding an AFP voter registration mailing labelled "official application form" containing inaccurate information including an incorrect filing deadline five days before the actual deadline.[258] [259] AFP stated the mistakes in the North Carolina mailings were "administrative errors."[260]

In 2017, AFP ran ads attacking Virginia Democratic candidate for governor Ralph Northam.[261]

In 2018, the New Hampshire attorney general's office began investigating the nonprofit status of AFP after a group of Republican representatives accused the conservative activist group of improperly wading into state elections. The investigation is ongoing.[262]

The organization may support Democrats in the 2020 United States elections as part of a broader effort to adjust its strategy.[263]