KOCHs' "Libre" = pour cash on Latinos, don't say "Repub," & Dems asleep at the wheel

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Last edited Fri Mar 13, 2015, 02:10 PM - Edit history (1)

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http://www.buzzfeed.com/adriancarrasquillo/the-koch-brother-funded-latino-group-that-democrats-fear-and#.gfKlM2KR9
[font size=5]The Koch Brother-Funded Latino Group That Democrats Fear And Loathe[/font]
(By) Adrian Carrasquillo is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Adrian Carrasquillo at [e-mail]

.... LIBRE is a group backed by billionaires Charles and David Koch. They’ve been providing services and building meaningful relationships with Hispanics since 2011 in states like Nevada, Florida, Colorado, Texas, and Arizona — and they’re doing this all while espousing conservative principles to a key demographic of voters in person, in print, and online.

Democrats from these key states are upset about it, too. They say LIBRE effectively misleads Hispanics on a whole host of issues. And they worry the national Democratic Party is asleep at the wheel, unaware that the group is [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]winning a game most Democrats don’t even know is being played[/FONT]. ....

Its executive director, Daniel Garza, is a former George W. Bush administration official, and the group employs other former Republican staffers and operatives. LIBRE has received $10 million since 2011 from [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Koch-affiliated[/FONT] entities ([FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Freedom Partners[/FONT] and the [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]TC4 Trust[/FONT]), according to public records. Garza told BuzzFeed News the funding is public information but the group doesn’t talk about it — he prefers to focus on their principles and work. ....

“It’s unacceptable that an organization that claims to support the Latino community is attacking Latino candidates,” said Labor Council For Latin American Advancement president Hector Sanchez, who works to increase Latino representation in government. “We are the most underrepresented group when it comes to public office, to have them going after Latino candidates is an attack on the Latino community.” ....

“If they continue to get Koch money they will be successful,” said a GOP operative. “They’re unstoppable at [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]branding conservative policies without saying the word ‘Republican.’[/FONT]” ....

“The biggest problem for the party is finding the LIBRE alternative — it doesn’t exist, someone doing what they do,” said a Democratic official. “I can’t point to a progressive organization doing the same in our community. They have funding that allows them to raise unlimited amounts of money. There’s no way a national committee can compete with them.”

Andres Ramirez, a Democratic strategist whose office is three blocks away from LIBRE’s in Las Vegas, said the Democratic Party in doing its recent assessment of what went wrong in 2014 already knows that a lot of [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Latinos stayed home[/FONT]. ....

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1. Shameless self-kick n/t

Last edited Fri Mar 13, 2015, 10:45 PM - Edit history (2)