WaPo has reported that Charles Koch along with a person named Brian Hooks has founded a new "Stand Together" organization which is a rebranding of an existing organization that is focused on 5 priorities (Empower everyone to find fulfilling work. Help neighbors beat poverty and addiction. Ensure excellent education for every person. Build a stronger economy that works for all. Bridge divides and build respect for one another) and that they want to build up trust with Democrats (with Hooks telling WaPo that there is a "willingness" among Democrats to "engage" with Hooks and Koch) and work with both Democrats and Republicans on the 5 priorities: https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=a3Muc3dlZWxleUBnbWFpbC5jb20=&s=5ce2b7e1fe1ff666ca120c29
A redesigned Web page highlights some of the groups supported by Stand Together, including the Phoenix, which helps recovering addicts. (Stand Together)
THE BIG IDEA: The Koch network is getting a new name to reflect its shifting strategy.
The Seminar Network, which includes the constellation of groups funded by the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and around 700 like-minded conservatives and libertarians who contribute at least $100,000 annually, will now operate as Stand Together.
That has been the name of a nonprofit arm that the Koch apparatus created three years ago to support community groups addressing maladies like poverty, addiction, recidivism, gang violence and homelessness. That effort, which is providing grants to 140 organizations this year, will continue as the Stand Together Foundation.
Freedom Partners, an entity that was once used to air campaign commercials, will cease to exist. Americans for Prosperity will now oversee all political and policy efforts. Groups that cater to specific constituencies, like Libre for Latinos or Concerned Veterans for America, have moved under the AFP umbrella.
"We live in a period of unprecedented progress — economic, social, technological — but not everyone has shared in that progress. While many people have gotten ahead, too many people are falling behind. Our charge is clear: we must stand together to help every person rise," Koch writes in a letter that will go to supporters later today and that was shared first with The Washington Post. "In many ways, this new name already expresses who we are. … But this new name also marks a new chapter – and a new call to action."
-- Today's announcement puts meat on the bones of what Koch outlined in broad strokes at the January gathering of his supporters outside Palm Springs, Calif. Uneasy with President Trump and the Republican Party's drift toward nativism, protectionism and populism, the 83-year-old signaled a turn away from partisan politics to focus more on goals that cut across ideologies. Koch has also described himself as less interested in electoral politics than his brother David, who was the Libertarian Party's nominee for vice president in 1980 and who stepped away from the network last year because of ailing health. This is also happening against the backdrop of growing hostility on the right toward billionaires and the business community. These forces have led other entities, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to also disentangle their brands from the GOP.
-- Brian Hooks, who has chaired the network and will continue to lead the new Stand Together organization on a day-to-day basis, was adamant during a lengthy interview that this is "not a branding exercise" for marketing purposes but reflects a "natural evolution."
"For too many years, we've let people define us. Going forward, we're going to define ourselves," he said at his office in Arlington, Va. "This is really about helping to better define who we are. It's a reflection of who we've become."
-- Koch and Hooks identify these as their five top priorities going forward: Empower everyone to find fulfilling work. Help neighbors beat poverty and addiction. Ensure excellent education for every person. Build a stronger economy that works for all. Bridge divides and build respect for one another.
-- A totally redesigned website went live this morning. "Greater your good" is the group's new slogan, and it may be the catchphrase of a forthcoming ad campaign. "That's the promise made between us and our incredible partners who are dedicated to the betterment of themselves and others," Koch writes in his letter, which Hooks co-signed. "This requires that we do much more – helping social entrepreneurs increase their effectiveness by orders of magnitude. It means living by the lessons we've learned from our own experience, from that of our partners, and from movements throughout history that have benefitted millions of people: Empower those closest to the problems, to help solve them. Progress comes when millions of people get engaged: bottom up, not top down. … Unite with anyone, despite our differences, to unleash the potential in everyone."
-- Sitting out the 2016 presidential election, Koch strongly criticized Trump – and the GOP nominee responded in kind. The Trump administration, populated with several former Koch lieutenants, has done a lot that he likes, especially the 2017 tax cuts, deregulation and the confirmation of judges. But Koch concluded that many of the congressional Republicans who have benefited from the network's spending over the past decade took their support for granted. As a result, the Koch groups became much more selective about which candidates they backed in the 2018 midterms. The result of all this is that the biannual get-togethers have become less overtly political since Trump's takeover of the GOP. Dozens of elected Republicans used to fly in. In January, only three were invited: Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse and Utah Sen. Mike Lee.
-- To be sure, Koch and his groups are not getting out of politics. They're just trying to engage more effectively. "You can't ask anybody about politics and not find somebody who is frustrated," said Hooks. "Everybody is frustrated about politics. The general answer to that frustration that we've heard usually takes two forms. One is, 'I'm done with it. I'm going to walk away.' The other is, 'Well, I'm not sure what to do so I'll just double down on it.' Neither of those are acceptable. You can't walk away from politics because policy matters too much, and, if you want to change the policy, you've got to be engaged in politics. But if you double down, it's the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing and expecting something different.
"So we've rejected both of those," he added. "We're not going to continue to do the same thing that we've done, and we're not going to walk away. What we're committed to doing is offering people a different way to stay engaged in policy and in politics but to do it in a way that unites people to actually get things done."
-- Criminal justice is the model. Liberal activist Van Jones protested outside the Koch donor conference in 2011, but he was the poster boy of the session in January. Jones worked closely with Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden to push the First Step Act, a sweeping overhaul of the criminal justice system that Trump signed into law during the lame-duck session.
Hooks said they'll keep searching for nontraditional, unexpected partners. Koch-backed groups have been partnering with liberal entities on everything from protecting the "dreamers" to accelerating the end of the war in Afghanistan. "It's not just Van Jones, but I'll tell you what: It does take some risk takers like Van Jones to say, 'Hey, this stuff works,'" Hooks explained. "In a sense, all of us have had to make a choice, right? What do we care more about? Do we care more about helping people to actually break barriers or some of these old attachments? I think more and more people are making the right choice on that."
-- Koch remains a boogeyman to the left, of course, as well as an occasional punching bag of the president. Several Democratic presidential candidates mention "the Koch brothers" in their stump speeches, including top-tier contenders like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Hooks acknowledges that. He declined to detail private conversations but said he and his team have been in touch with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. "We're talking to more people than we've ever talked to," he said. "We haven't totally built that trust yet [with Democrats], but there's a willingness to engage."
-- Stand Together, the new entity, still plans to stay out of the presidential race in 2020, and, unlike in the past, there is no public target for spending on policy and politics in the coming election cycle. I asked Hooks how they're going to deal with liberal ideas that have been gaining traction, such as Warren's proposed wealth tax of 2 percent a year on all incomes over $50 million, Sanders's Medicare-for-all plan or Andrew Yang's advocacy for a universal basic income.
"It's not as though we don't care about those issues. We do. We just want to be effective in how we engage on them," Hooks said. "I think the best way to challenge a bad idea is with a good idea. In the absence of good ideas, people are prone to gravitate towards bad ideas – even ideas that have been proven failures for decades every time they've been tried. None of these are new ideas. We'll continue to make the case for what we see as the best policy in every arena where that case needs to be made, but ultimately there's a real problem that people are concerned about, and we think the best way to address that is by offering an actionable alternative. That's what this future initiative does."
