President Trump’s former legislative director says the White House political team should not be concerned about the Koch network’s refusal this week to endorse GOP Senate candidate Kevin Cramer, a decision that led Trump to rail against the influential political group in a pair of tweets on Tuesday.
“I wasn’t surprised because I think they’ve always been independent and more libertarian,” Marc Short, who ran the White House legislative affairs office until mid-July, told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
Short served as president of the Koch-funded conservative group Freedom Partners before joining the Trump administration. He said the network of elite GOP donors was more inclined to support Republican candidates across the board “after the Obama, Harry Reid, [and] Nancy Pelosi years,” but has sought to be more independent of either political party in the Trump era.
“There was a drive after the Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi years to say practically, we need to align and elect more Republicans to fight that. But that’s never something that Charles has been entirely comfortable with,” Short said in reference to Charles Koch, who until recently ran the network with his brother David. “[He] wants to be independent, not associated with either party over the other.”
[More: Bernie Sanders thanks Koch brothers for ‘accidentally’ making case for ‘Medicare for all’]
The political network told donors on Monday it planned to stay out of a competitive Senate race in North Dakota, where Cramer is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.
“If this were 2016, we likely would have gone ahead and endorsed, but we’re raising the bar,” Tim Phillips, head of the network’s policy apparatus, Americans for Prosperity, told CNN the following day. Phillips claimed Cramer, who currently serves in Congress, has failed to show leadership on “the issues where this country needs leadership most right now.”
The move caused a stir inside the West Wing, where the race in North Dakota is one of many that the president’s political team has focused on as part of its effort to boost the Republican Senate majority. Trump, who visited Fargo, N.D., at the end of June for a rally to support Cramer, described the Koch brothers as “a total joke in Republican circles” on Tuesday.
“I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas. They love my Tax & Regulation cuts, Judicial picks & more,” the president tweeted, adding in a separate tweet that the Koch network “is highly overrated.”
Short said the network’s decision not to wade into the North Dakota Senate race might not have any impact on Cramer’s chances, although he admitted “it’s always better to have as many donors supporting you as possible.”
“If you have the support of the Kochs, it’s better. But they didn’t support Donald Trump and he won the presidency of the United States, so it’s not essential to political victory,” he said.
Cramer and Heitkamp are locked in a tight race, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, which shows the Republican congressman leading his Democratic opponent by less than 1 percentage point.
