Americans for Prosperity helped boost Republican candidates to victory last month, but its most monumental test still lies ahead: helping Republicans win the White House.
After spending $122 million during the 2012 presidential election and $125 million during the 2014 midterm elections, the group funded by the Koch brothers has even bigger plans for 2016.
“Our goal is to be bigger and stronger than we were in 2012 or 2008 and to build a long-term infrastructure that is locally based with long-term staff at the field level,” said Tim Phillips, the group’s president. “The biggest takeaway from 2012 was that the Left, the magnitude of their field effort and the duration was just so superior to ours.”
“This idea of ramping up and dropping down and ramping up? It doesn’t work,” Phillips said. “We want to be able to have a long-term infrastructure.”
Outside groups favoring Republican candidates claimed a major victory after the most recent midterm election cycle, when Republicans picked up eight seats in the Senate and won 31 gubernatorial races nationwide, including in such unlikely states as Maryland and Illinois.
Along the way, the names of Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers behind AFP and other outside groups, became a rallying point for Democrats.
But it’s not clear whether the avatars of the post-Citizens United world will be up to the challenge of 2016. Republican outside groups have been less successful in recent presidential election cycles, failing to crack the electoral code despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars to do so.
Phillips might be more accustomed to losing than winning. A field guy by trade, he worked on a string of losing campaigns before coming to AFP.
But over lunch recently at a Lebanese restaurant near AFP’s offices in Arlington, Va., Phillips insisted the group’s uptick in spending for 2016 would be “significant,” and he expressed optimism regarding the percolating Republican field of candidates.
“The encouraging thing for conservatives and Republicans ought to be that if you look at 2008 and 2012 and the fields that ultimately ended up running, and you look at the potential field right now, it is so much better,” Phillips said. “There are people of greater accomplishment and greater political skill. I think it’s the deepest potential class of Republican candidates since 1980.”
There are some caveats, however.
First, Phillips said, Mitt Romney should not try running for president a third time, as some Republicans have speculated he might.
“I think Gov. Romney is a good person and had some real accomplishments, but I just think it’s time to move on,” Phillips said. “I’m not speaking for AFP. AFP does not have a position. But just speaking personally, I think it’s time for new leadership.”
And governors who expanded Medicaid in their states, such as New Jersey’s Chris Christie or Ohio’s John Kasich, might face pushback, Phillips predicted. AFP has vehemently opposed Medicaid expansion in the states.
“I think it was a dramatic mistake for them to do that, policy-wise and politically. I think it’ll hurt them,” Phillips said. “I don’t know that it will disqualify them. I mean, there’s no perfect candidate. But I do think it’ll hurt them.”
Much will also hinge on the success, or failure, of the new Republican-led Congress. AFP has urged lawmakers to avoid the kind of government shutdown dramatics of last year and instead work to hammer out a budget that will cut spending and reform Medicare and Medicaid.
“If they squabble so much that they can’t get a budget to the president’s desk in a timely manner,” Phillips said, “or if they put a budget on his desk that is not a real reform budget that doesn’t rein in spending, that’s a big failure for them.”
