Koch brothers launch ad campaign to help public image

David and Charles Koch, the billionaire businessman brothers who have helped fund the growth of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, are planning an ad campaign to help portray their business enterprise in a more positive light.

Koch Industries will conduct its first-ever nationwide marketing campaign with a series of television ads to promote an image of a diverse, all-American company, according to the Washington Post. The company is already running web ads which feature Koch-employed military veterans favorably comparing the values of the company to those of the armed forces.

The ads are meant in part to help recruit applicants for the 3,500 job openings the company has nationwide, the managing director of corporate communications told the Post. But a finance professor at Friends University in Wichita and longtime observer of the two company said it could also help minimize some of the liberal and Democratic backlash against them.

"I'm sure they're worried about that spilling over to the image of the company," Malcolm C. Harris, Sr., told the Post.

The senior vice president and general counsel for Koch Industries, Mark Holden said that was not the case.

"We have not been impacted by the political attacks in our recruiting, hiring, or retention, nor have our businesses been impacted," he told the Post.

The brothers will also tap allies on Capitol Hill to highlight the amount of money from Democratic groups that has flowed into politics to combat the image that it is one-sided. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, rarely misses an opportunity to demonize the Koch brothers' influence on politics from the Senate floor.

The brothers "are single-handedly funding an attack on the nation's middle class," Reid said in April.

Senate Democrats are planning a vote for Monday evening that would restore to Congress the authority to regulate and limit the raising and spending of money for federal political campaigns -- including independent expenditures from groups like super PACs. It would also allow states to regulate campaign spending at their level.

Republicans will focus on the Democracy Alliance, a donor group that brings together wealthy liberals. Just as the Koch Brothers help fund conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, Republicans argue that Democratic donors fund organizations like Common Cause, Public Citizen and People for the American Way. Not all of their donors disclose their names.

Gara LaMarche, president of Democracy Alliance, the Post her group is not comparable to the Koch brothers because they do not make contributuiosn and instead donate the money it receives to groups it has vetted and recommended.

Citing an investigation conducted with the Center for Responsive Politics, the Post says that Democracy Alliance organizations have given about $500 million to Democratic organizations in the last nine years, whereas the Koch political network raised at least $407 million just during 2011 and 2012.

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