Midwestern Bank PAC Funds Kochs' Americans for Prosperity
So far in the 2012 election cycle, the political action committee of TCF Financial -- a publicly traded holding company that owns Minnesota-based TCF Bank -- has given away $105,500.
Most has gone to candidates and party committees. But TCF PAC's largest contribution by far -- nearly a quarter of what it has given away over the last year-and-a-half -- is the $25,000 it gave on May 31 to Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and funded by David Koch. He's one of the billionaire Koch brothers, mega-funders of the right who convene twice-a-year retreats with other wealthy Republicans to strategize and pledge money to the cause.
TCF's pugnacious chairman and CEO Bill Cooper, a former Detroit street cop and head of Minnesota's Republican Party in the late 1990s, has attended at least one of the Kochs' conservative gatherings.
Americans for Prosperity is a 501(c)(4) organization under the framework of the U.S. tax code, which means that it's a nonprofit "social welfare" group allowed to engage in limited political activity. Groups such as these -- Stephen Colbert calls them "spooky PACs" -- don't have to disclose their donors, unlike their more famous cousins, super PACs. Increasingly, they have become the vehicles of choice for donors wanting to give six-, seven- or even eight-figure sums -- anonymously -- to political entities.
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/07/midwestern-bank-pac-funds-kochs-ame.html
