AFP To Buy Time for Wichita Incumbent July 15, 2014

(AP) – A conservative group with ties to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch is spending big money to thank U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo for his work in Congress amid a bitter race for his seat.

Americans for Prosperity says it’s spending $409,225 for radio and television ads that begin Tuesday and run until the day before the Aug. 5th Republican primary.

AFP state director Jeff Glendening says the group likes to show its appreciation to those who share its values. He cites Pompeo’s efforts to eliminate the wind production tax credit and control spending, as well as his opposition to earmarks.

Former Congressman Todd Tiahrt is challenging Pompeo in the 4th District. Tiahrt has criticized Pompeo for pursuing special interest agendas that have hurt the local economy.

Owens and Denning Trade Jabs in Final Hours of Kansas Primary Showdown August 6, 2012

The battle for control the Kansas Republican Party raged into the final hours of the 2012 GOP primary campaign.
One of the key campaigns for control is in the heart of Johnson County. Moderate State Senator Tim Owens is in a tought campaign with a conservative freshman from the House, Rep. Jim Denning.
Just a day before the polls opened the punches still flew.
Owens condemned what he called the “intransigence” of Republican conservatives.
“You can’t dialogue with them on anything, it’s their way or the highway,” Owens told KMBC TV News in a Monday interview.
Denning says every time conservatives want to do something important and reform the state, they are being blocked by Senate moderates who vote with Democrats too often.
“That is unacceptable,” he says.
Dennis says his effort to unseat Owens is part of the conservative push to oust Senate moderates. He says no other recent Kansas Republican primary has ever been like this. He says his race is part of a statewide conservative offensive.
“It’s part of the bigger picture”, said Denning, “everybody is all in on this particular election.”
“It’s a different agenda”, said Owens who is also the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “It’s not Republicanism. They want to control all three branches of government.”
Denning and the other conservatives say the moderates goal is to oppose anything the Governor wants.
He said he jumped into the race because he saw from the House how GOP moderates blocked the House and Governor Sam Bbrownback. He believes if he is going to accomplish his goals, it much be from the State Senate.
Conservatives, including Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and the Kansas Chamber of Commerce have accused Senate moderates of thwarting Brownback’s agenda. That agenda includes major tax reform, a substantially smaller role for government in Kansas affairs and the Governor’s wish to appoint some judges, rather than have them selected by a panel as it is done now.
The Kansas Chamber of Commerce and the conservative group, Americans for Prosperity have zeroed in on Senate President Steve Morris; other members of his leadership team and moderate committee chairman, like Owens, for defeat in the primary. They have spent hundred of thousands of dollars on hard-hitting political flyers, radio commercials and some television advertising. It is a unsually large amount of money in a small state primary like Kansas.
On the other side, the Kansas Chapter of the National Education Association and some labor unions have joined with Senate President Morris’ PAC and have been spending heavily as well.
It’s made for the strange sight of having Kansas Republicans photo-shopping their felow Republicans (who happen to be primary opponents) image next to Democrats like President Obama or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Conservatives have tried to oust moderates in the Kansas statehouse in recent years, but without much success. Conservatives hope this summer, primary flipping three or four State Senate seats could give them the edge they’re looking for.

Politico: Karl Rove vs the Koch Brothers of Kansas October 10, 2011

Karl Rove’s team and the Koch brothers’ operatives quietly coordinated millions of dollars in political spending in 2010, but that alliance, which has flown largely under the radar, is showing signs of fraying.

And with each network planning to dwarf its 2010 effort, Republicans worry that the emerging rivalry between the two deepest-pocketed camps in the conservative movement could undercut their party’s chances of taking the Senate and White House in 2012.

 

The billionaire industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch plan to steer more than $200 million – potentially much more – to conservative groups ahead of Election Day, POLITICO has learned. That puts their libertarian-leaning network in the same league as the most active of the groups in the more establishment-oriented network conceived last year by veteran GOP operatives Rove and Ed Gillespie, which plans to raise $240 million.

The fault lines revealed themselves this summer, when the camps split on the highest-profile conservative movement issue of the day: the biggest groups in the Rove-Gillespie network supported House Speaker John Boehner’s bill to increase the debt ceiling and the Koch brothers’ primary political group, Americans for Prosperity, pressured conservatives to oppose it.

They also have spent big on seemingly competing infrastructure. The networks recently launched similar initiatives to woo Hispanic voters. And their allies are spending millions to build dueling voter files to help their respective camps get out the vote. The Republican National Committee recently partnered with associates of Rove and Gillespie on a privately run database, which could give them an advantage over the Koch-backed data project.

“With a broad-based conservative movement – or any political movement – it’s obvious that there’s often going to be competition, rivalries, egos involved,” said Art Pope, a Koch intimate who chairs an arm of Americans for Prosperity and has advocated for the Kochs’ voter database, which is called Themis.

“But overall, that competition results in a better work product and better results than a single authoritarian decision that there should be only one product – whether it’s a voter database or whatever – that everyone must use,” said Pope.

More: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65504.html#ixzz1aNjELjA0