Peter1469
05-16-2016, 06:16 PM
Koch world realignment, less national politics (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435418/koch-brothers-campaign-activity-slows)
The Koch brothers have realized they get more from their money by influencing legislation as opposed to picking horses in elections.
And that money spent at the grass roots level in business development, think tanks and similar local efforts is the path to future success.
In conversations last year, “there was much more an emphasis on getting back to the policy aspect, as opposed to the electoral aspect,” says one Koch insider, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity. It became obvious, the source says, that the Kochs wanted to “reboot and go back to pre-2010, the think-tank and social-change model of CKI [The Charles Koch Institute], when they were very policy-driven instead of engaging in electoral politics.”
By the time of the Wichita meeting, the writing was on the wall. It was hard to believe that barely a year earlier, in late January 2015, the Kochs had pledged their network would raise and spend $889 million during the 2016 cycle, a number that accounted for both educational and political spending. Yet much had changed for the Kochs in the year since that announcement, and sources say the pace of those changes has only accelerated since.
One week after the meeting in Wichita, Short announced he was leaving Freedom Partners for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. As colleagues gathered over beers that Friday for a sendoff inside Freedom Partners’s Arlington, Va., office, he surprised them with an emotional speech, according to two people present. He concluded by telling colleagues that, on the Rubio campaign, he looked forward to “being in the fight.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435418/koch-brothers-campaign-activity-slows
The Koch brothers have realized they get more from their money by influencing legislation as opposed to picking horses in elections.
And that money spent at the grass roots level in business development, think tanks and similar local efforts is the path to future success.
In conversations last year, “there was much more an emphasis on getting back to the policy aspect, as opposed to the electoral aspect,” says one Koch insider, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity. It became obvious, the source says, that the Kochs wanted to “reboot and go back to pre-2010, the think-tank and social-change model of CKI [The Charles Koch Institute], when they were very policy-driven instead of engaging in electoral politics.”
By the time of the Wichita meeting, the writing was on the wall. It was hard to believe that barely a year earlier, in late January 2015, the Kochs had pledged their network would raise and spend $889 million during the 2016 cycle, a number that accounted for both educational and political spending. Yet much had changed for the Kochs in the year since that announcement, and sources say the pace of those changes has only accelerated since.
One week after the meeting in Wichita, Short announced he was leaving Freedom Partners for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. As colleagues gathered over beers that Friday for a sendoff inside Freedom Partners’s Arlington, Va., office, he surprised them with an emotional speech, according to two people present. He concluded by telling colleagues that, on the Rubio campaign, he looked forward to “being in the fight.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435418/koch-brothers-campaign-activity-slows