Americans for Prosperity Action PAC (AFP Action), an outside super PAC largely bankrolled by industrialist Charles Koch and a handful of wealthy donors, has spent $972,000 to date running digital ads and mailing messages to voters warning that, despite his loyal base, former President Donald Trump is not electable in the 2024 presidential race.
AFP Action initially did this without recommending an alternative candidate. But on Nov. 28, the Koch network announced its endorsement of former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who Trump appointed as his first ambassador to the United Nations.
In making the announcement, Emily Seidel, a senior advisor to the PAC and CEO of its sister advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), said, “AFP Action is proud to throw our full support behind Nikki Haley, who offers America the opportunity to turn the page on the current political era, to win the Republican primary and defeat Joe Biden next November.” She added that the only woman in the GOP primary race has not only surged to second place in the polls, but “our internal polling consistently shows that [she] is by far the strongest candidate Republicans could put up against Joe Biden in a general election — winning every key battleground state, and up nationally by nearly 10 points.”
Although the actual poll data is not available, Haley has moved ahead of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in certain primary states and is tied with him in some polls in the all-important state of Iowa, where the first caucus will be held on Jan. 15, 2024. But Trump still polls well ahead of both candidates, with more than 40% of Republicans saying he’d be their first choice in the primary.
Shortly after the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, Haley told Politico that Trump had “lost any sort of political viability” and predicted that he would not “run for federal office again,” adding: “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”
Three months later Haley said she would not run if Trump was in the race. Yet, on Feb. 14, 2023, she announced her candidacy.
It’s unclear why Charles Koch has shifted his support from Trump to Haley — beyond her potential electability. The billionaire did extremely well when the former president was in the White House, with one group estimating that it saved Charles $1 billion due to Trump’s 2018 tax cut on individuals and corporations.
Americans for Prosperity launched AFP Action just months before the 2018 midterms as “a new tool to build broad policy coalitions in Congress to help advance AFP’s vision,” as CNN reported.
Since its advent, AFP Action has tested various ways to persuade voters over three election cycles. Whereas most super PACs — which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash but cannot coordinate with candidates — rely on television and digital advertising, AFP Action also hires hundreds of individuals to canvass voters door to door.
Seidel, who has worked for a variety of Republican leaders in Congress and once served as director of special projects at Koch Companies Public Sector, claims that the PAC has already knocked on the doors of 6 million homes with the message that Trump cannot win a second term. Nonetheless, more than 40% of all voters still see the former president favorably — a percentage that has not changed since AFP Action began its assault.
The group has also run digital ads — including one 15-second spot claiming that the only way Biden can win is if Trump is the nominee and pointing out that 60% of voters oppose the ex-president running again. A second AFP Action ad uses the same 60% statistic and claims that Trump “has done a lot of good things,” but that he can’t win in 2024 since swing voters won’t support him.
AFP Action also employed this one-two punch — ads plus canvassing — in the midterms, but with only mixed results. It spent more than $69 million on federal races during the 2022 election cycle, investing almost $45 million in four competitive Senate races, with half going to losing contests in Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Of the $69 million the super PAC spent, $20 million came from Charles Koch’s conglomerate, Koch Industries, and $26.5 million from the Koch-funded Stand Together Chamber of Commerce.
AFP Action is the third largest Republican-aligned super PAC, outspent only by the Senate Majority Fund and Club for Growth Action. The latter is also airing anti-Trump ads but has not yet endorsed an alternative candidate.
AFP Action’s ambitious door-to-door canvassing efforts distinguish it from these other large super PACs. Even during the pandemic, it hired employees to canvass door to door for federal races in 2020 and 2022.
The two vendors AFP Action uses to recruit and train door-to-door canvassers are Mobilize the Message and TalentWave. In May 2018, employees of TalentWave sued its parent companies, NTT Data and Synergy Services, in U.S. District Court in Colorado for violating the Fair Standards Labor Act.
The employees complained that the company regularly required them to work more than 40 hours a week but did not pay overtime. TalentWave settled the lawsuit in September 2018 for up to $575,000 in lost pay and damages. The precise figure has not been disclosed, nor has the number of people in the class action suit.
The 2nd Amendment is definitely a target if the fringe Right is successful in calling an Article 5 convention. Claims to the contrary nothwithstanding, no Constitutional convention can be limited to only specific topics once that line is crossed. It’s exactly the same circumstance that led to the convention in Philadelphia that produced our existing Constituion.