Mat Schumer, OpenSecrets

Koch network ramping up political activity ahead of 2024 election

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Americans for Prosperity Action, the flagship political group at the center of an influential network founded by the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, is gearing up for the 2024 presidential election.

The super PAC, commonly known as AFP Action, kicked off the next phase of its campaign to support former U.N. Ambassador Nikky Haley’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Jan. 5 with a new wave of mailers, digital advertising and TV spots it projects will cost $27 million.

OpenSecrets’ analysis of Federal Election Commission filings reveals that AFP Action has already spent over $45.3 million in the 2024 election cycle. About $26.5 million was to support Haley while the super PAC targeted Trump and Biden with $9 million each in attack ads.

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The new ad blitz targets key early-voting states including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina as well as states that hold presidential nominating contests on Super Tuesday in March, including Kansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

AFP Action says it has contacted more than 650,000 voters since it endorsed Haley in November and is strategizing using information from interviews with more than 6 million Republican primary voters that were conducted in 2023.

A memo released by AFP Action explaining the group’s endorsement of Haley cites her recent momentum in the polls, and the super PAC’s new ads highlight Haley’s perceived “electability” against President Joe Biden.

“Nikki Haley is by far the strongest candidate Republicans could run against Joe Biden, and no one else is even close,” AFP Action director Nathan Nascimento said in a Jan. 5 statement. “Nikki Haley would boost Republicans up and down the ballot.”.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley campaigns in Ankeny, Iowa on Jan. 11, 2024. Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons

Although former President Donald Trump remains the frontrunner, polling aggregates compiled by FiveThirtyEight show that Haley rose in the polls over the course of the last three presidential debates while Florida Governor Ron Desantis’ numbers declined.

AFP Action previously backed Desantis’ 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign in Florida, though the organization clashed with his administration earlier this year over a Florida bill aimed at making it easier to sue news outlets for defamation.

The Kochs have a more nuanced relationship with Trump after butting heads with the former president on several issues during his time in the White House. The super PAC announced it would oppose Trump’s 2024 presidential candidacy back in February 2023, several months before endorsing Haley but reiterated its commitment to spend tens of millions of dollars to help “push the Republican Party past” Trump.

“Americans for Prosperity has already lit millions of dollars on fire this primary only to watch President Donald Trump’s lead grow,” a spokesperson for the Trump-aligned super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. said of AFP Action’s endorsement of HaleyNo amount of money can break the bond President Trump has with voters. He kept his promises.”

Billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch founded Americans for Prosperity in 2004. Koch Industries and groups affiliated with the Koch advocacy network are also the primary funders of the AFP Action super PAC.

Another pair of major contributors to AFP Action is Jim and Rob Walton, two heirs to the Walmart fortune. The brothers each made a contribution of $5 million in April 2023.

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During the 2022 election cycle, AFP Action spent more than $69 million on independent expenditures supporting Republican candidates running for Congress. The super PAC ended June with more than $77 million on hand, having spent over $4 million on federal disbursements according to its most recent FEC filing.

AFP Action spent over $2 million in 2023 on Google advertising targeting Trump and Biden’s presidential campaigns, or later supporting Haley.

Since August 2023, AFP Action has spent over $1.6 million more on digital ads through Facebook parent company Meta. Many of those ads attack Trump and Biden or support Haley, though others support candidates running for offices in Congress and state-level legislatures in Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee.

Haley is the only presidential candidate the group has explicitly endorsed. But the Koch political network has been working to support conservative candidates at all levels in the 2024 election cycle and AFP Action has also thrown its weight behind several other Republican House candidates.

AFP Action announced on Jan. 4 that it supports Pat Harrigan, a Green Beret and firearms manufacturer, in the House race to replace Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) to represent North Carolina’s 10th Congressional District.

“He knows that heavy-handed government has made it harder to start and grow businesses, made life more expensive and completely neglected veterans who deserve the care they were promised,” Tyler Voigt, a senior advisor to AFP Action, said in a written statement.

The super PAC has also made several recent endorsements of state legislative candidates in the state, as well as in other states across the country.

In September, OpenSecrets reported that Americans for Prosperity spent more than $1 million on the 2023 Virginia primary and general elections. According to its filing with the Louisiana Ethics Administration, Americans for Prosperity also spent nearly $1 million supporting Republican candidates in the Louisiana legislature.

That month, AFP Action announced its endorsement of five other congressional candidates, bringing its total slate of endorsed House candidates up to eleven.

Four of the five additional candidates AFP Action endorsed in September are Republicans challenging Democrats in districts that the National Republican Congressional Committee is trying to flip in 2024, Politico first reported.

Pennsylvania is a primary target of AFP Action’s spending as the state is catapulted into the limelight during the 2024 cycle. The super PAC’s endorsements in the state include state Sen. Ryan Mackensie’s bid to represent Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District and state Rep. Robert Mercuri’s campaign to represent the state’s 17th Congressional District.

The super PAC also endorsed and spent on canvassing to support the Senate campaign of former Deputy National Security Advisor David McCormick, the former CEO of the Bridgewater Associates investment firm who is running for a seat held by three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) in Pennsylvania.

Polling indicates that McCormick is currently the Republican party’s runner-up in the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate primary but his campaign has quickly ramped up fundraising, raising $5.4 million in his first quarter as a 2024 candidate, according to Axios.

AFP Action’s Senate endorsements include Afghanistan War veteran Sam Brown, who is running to flip a Senate seat held by Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) in Nevada, and has since spent on canvassing to boost the profile of the first-time candidate. Brown reportedly went on to break a new fundraising record in the final quarter of 2023, ending the year with a $1.85 million haul – more than any challenger to an incumbent running for reelection in Nevada history, according to Fox News.

Former Michigan state Sen. Tom Barrett, who is running in a Michigan open seat currently held by Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and former Ohio state Rep. Craig Riedel’s campaign in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District are also among the Republican candidates endorsed by AFP Action.

OpenSecrets is a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research and news organization tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.

Defense contractors spent $70 million lobbying ahead of annual defense budget bill

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In the first half of 2023, defense contractors and other defense sector players spent nearly $70 million lobbying the federal government. Much of this lobbying concerned the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, an annual appropriations bill funding the Pentagon and military operations. Lobbyists are legally required to report third quarter spending on Oct. 20.

The NDAA allocates a total of $876.8 billion, with $844.3 billion dedicated to the Department of Defense budget and $32.4 billion to the Department of Energy for national security programs.

One of the largest coordinated lobbying efforts regarding the NDAA was centered around the procurement of F-35 combat aircrafts, which is the most expensive U.S. military project to date. Analysts project the program will cost the federal government $1.7 trillion over its 60-year duration.

F-35 aircraft are manufactured by Lockheed Martin, one of the top defense contractors in terms of both revenue and lobbying expenditures.

Lockheed Martin’s in-house lobbying contract cost about $6.9 million in the first two quarters of 2023. The defense contractor’s president of legislative affairs, Kristine Fauser, signed off on their lobbying disclosure and lobbied on behalf of the company in the first half of 2023.

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Before working for Lockheed Martin, Fauser served as the defense and national security advisor to the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee’s ranking member, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Prior to that, she worked for eight years as a Logistics Management Specialist for Naval Sea Systems Command.

Lobbying firm theGROUP DC was a top recipient of lobbying spending by Lockheed Martin to monitor the F-35 program in 2023. During the first six months of 2023, the firm received $90,000 from Lockheed Martin to lobby the Federal Aviation Administration and 2024 Interior appropriations legislation, in addition to their work on the F-35 program.

In March 2023, theGROUP founder and chairman Arthur R. Collins made a contribution of over $25,000 to Sen.Tim Kaine (D-Va.)’s joint fundraising committee, who is a member of both the Senate Committee on Armed Services and the Budget Committee.

Lockheed Martin also hired Baker Donelson to monitor the program. James Dyer, the former staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, was the primary lobbyist for the contract in 2023, according to the firm’s lobbying disclosure.

Baker Donelson’s PAC and employees also made contributions to members of Congress in positions overseeing the defense sector in the first half of 2023, including over $10,000 to Kaine’s campaign committee and PAC.

RTX, a defense contractor formerly known as Raytheon, is another top defense lobbying spender.

During the first half of 2023, RTX focused some of its lobbying efforts on monitoring the F-35 program’s status. Pratt and Whitney, which produces the F-135 engine that is integral to the propulsion system of F-35 models, is owned by RTX.

After spending about $5.78 million on lobbying and almost $105,000 on federal political contributions in the first half of this year to members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, RTX was awarded a $306 million contract to build F-135 systems in October 2023.

Lobbying firm The Roosevelt Group was contracted by RTX for $120,000 for the first six months of 2023 to lobby for “provisions [in the NDAA] related to the F135 Engine.”

Individual contributions made by employees of the Roosevelt Group in the first two quarters of 2023 included $8,800 to Kaine’s PAC and campaign committee as well as $14,500 to Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), a Senate Armed Service Committee member.

In addition to the money companies in the defense sector spent on lobbying, the sector made a total of $3 million in political contributions to Armed Services Committee members and their leadership PACs in the first two quarters of 2023. Over $2 million of these contributions came from those companies’ PACs. Individuals affiliated with defense sector companies contributed more than $940,000.

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About 70% of contributions from the defense sector went to Republican members of the House, while a slimmer majority of contributions to the Senate were made to Democratic candidates’ committees. Republicans received about 63% of the total defense contributions overall, including contributions to members of both chambers.

General Dynamics contributed the highest amount of money to members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. House Armed Services Committee ranking member, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), received $20,000 of the over $205,000 that General Dynamics contributed to members of those committees.

Not only is Smith the most prominent recipient of contributions from General Dynamics, his former chief of staff currently serves as the company’s director of government relations after joining General Dynamics one month after her departure from Smith’s office in May 2022.

In January 2023, President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. will provide 31 General Dynamics-produced M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine Armed forces which began to arrive in September. Smith was a vocal proponent of the aid.

Smith also oversaw the inclusion of funding for a program to develop a new Abrams tank with General Dynamics, rather than moving forward with an upgrade of the existing model.

Tech company and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies made the highest concentrated contributions to a single candidate in the Armed Services Committees, giving over $73,000 to House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers’ (R-Ala.) campaign.

Rogers received the most defense sector contributions of any member of the committee in the first half of 2023 — over $285,200.

In a press release regarding the passage of the NDAA in the House, Rogers highlighted a focus on “investing in a stronger missile defense and modernizing our nuclear deterrent.” Since their acquisitionof propulsion engine manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne in July 2023, L3Harris has become a key player in nuclear deterrence contracting.

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Rogers’ markup of the House version of the NDAA included multiple items pertaining to nuclear defense, including updates to the Trident ballistic missile program. In September, L3Harris Technologies received a $36.6 million contract modification to support the Trident system.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee received about $36,300 on average from the defense sector in the first half of 2023, while senators on the Armed Services Committee received an average of $36,000.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) received the second highest amount of defense sector contributions in the House Armed Services Committee. Wittman’s biggest contributor was energy and defense contractor General Atomics, which contributed about $24,600 to his campaign.

After the House passage of the NDAA, Wittman stated that he made efforts to include items related to autonomous collaborative aircrafts, contracted primarily by General Atomics.

Kaine and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) were the two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee with the most political contributions from the defense sector. Military shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls was the primary defense contributor of both Kaine and Wicker’s campaigns.

Wicker wrote in a press release that the NDAA “would secure a major boost for Navy shipbuilding programming by rejecting President Biden’s inadequate plans for the fleet.” Kaine wrote in a separate release that he advocated for a specific measure in the act to continue funding the production of LPD-33 transport docks, manufactured by Huntington Ingalls.

Kaine also mentioned his efforts to further support the Australia-U.K.-U.S. defense agreement (AUKUS) by providing more Virginia-class submarines, which are built at Huntington Ingalls’ shipyards in Newport News, Virginia.

A separate allocation of over $590 million was made in the NDAA for military construction in Kaine’s home state, including nearly $345 million dedicated to the world’s largest naval base in Norfolk, Virginia.

The NDAA passed both chambers of Congress and will go through a formal conference process in which members of the House and Senate will reconcile and send it to the president. This process has been prolonged by the ongoing search for a Speaker of the House.

Senior Researcher Dan Auble contributed to this report.

OpenSecrets is a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research and news organization tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.