Koch-linked group cancels Michigan ads

The Koch group is striking in a state that Republicans have long yearned to capture. | AP Photos
CloseBy ALEXANDER BURNS | 8/12/14 10:00 AM EDT

A powerfully funded group backed by the conservative Koch brothers has canceled over a million dollars’ worth of Michigan ads for the month of August, according to sources tracking the 2014 air war.

Freedom Partners, which had booked about $1.1 million in Michigan airtime, abruptly canceled the ads this week.

The state is home to a contested, open-seat Senate race between Republican Terri Lynn Land, Michigan’s former secretary of state, and Democratic Rep. Gary Peters. Koch-supported groups, led by the nonprofit Americans for Prosperity, have advertised heavily there this year.

A spokesman for Freedom Partners did not respond to an email regarding the canceled ads, which included nearly $800,000 in spending just in the costly Detroit media market.

Other pro-Republican groups are stepping up in the state: Ending Spending, the organization funded by TD Ameritrade billionaire Joe Ricketts, has thrown down several hundred thousand dollars for ads this month. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is also set to begin a large set of general-election TV reservations.

But the withdrawal — at least for now — of the Koch group is striking in a state that Republicans have long yearned to capture, and where Democrats have explicitly made the Kochs’ involvement an issue in the Senate race.

Starting in February, the Democratic group Senate Majority PAC began attacking Land as an instrument of powerful and wealthy interests, airing ads featuring a photo of Charles and David Koch and warning that Land would help “the powerful at our expense.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/0...941.html?hp=r2