A liberal nonprofit group with ties to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants to make the Koch brothers famous outside the Beltway establishment, where they're well known GOP fundraising heavyweights.
Patriot Majority PAC launched Tuesday what it calls a "long-term, nonpartisan project" targeting the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, who are expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to defeat President Barack Obama in the November election.
The anti-Koch crusade starts with a $500,000 ad buy on national cable television and will continue throughout the fall with online ads, direct mail and citizen engagement, according to a news release from the PAC.
"The Koch Brothers and their special interest friends have been pursuing their Greed Agenda for decades," Patriot Majority USA President Craig Varoga said a statement. "Just as Rome was not built in a day, it will take a lot more than a few months to stop the Greed Agenda. The effort that we’re beginning this week will eventually include all 50 states and will continue at the local, state and federal levels.”
In one of the anti-Koch campaign's two TV spots, a narrator accuses the Koch brothers and their Republican allies of trying to "buy this year's election" as a fake signature is scrawled over a fundraising check made out to "The Greed Agenda."
"What's their payback?" the ad's narrator asks. "Politicians who will pass laws that benefit special interests but hurt the middle class."
In May, Politico reported that outside groups supporting Republican candidates and causes plan to pour almost $1 billion into this year's election cycle. Political spending by the vast umbrella of Koch-linked organizations will top $400 million alone, according to the same report.
Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit advocacy group backed by the Koch brothers, is currently in the middle of its largest ad campaign yet -- a $25 million anti-Obama blitz blanketing 11 battleground states.
Varoga told Politico on Tuesday that one of his group's first goals is to publicize the Koch brothers' political involvement, which he said remains mostly unfamiliar to the average voter.
"We believe that the more people learn about the Koch brothers and their agenda, that there is going to be a positive response," he said.
Varoga, a former Reid staffer, headed up Patriot Majority's independent-expenditure campaign to reelect the Senate majority leader in 2010.
Watch the two new ads below:
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