Special election wrap-up: Koch brothers group fails in early test of heralded ground game
An all-out effort by Americans for Prosperity to turn out voters for a special election failed this week.
Residents of Derry, a town that supported Mitt Romney by a 51% to 47% margin in last year’s presidential election, went to the polls in record numbers Tuesday and overturned deep budget cuts that would have lowered their property taxes.
The voters approved eight ballot initiatives that overturned cutbacks approved by the town council on May 19. By a narrow 4-3 vote, the councilors cut the tax rate by reducing staff in the police, fire and public works departments, cancelling overtime, eliminating the human resource director’s position and closing a fire station.
Protesting residents responded by obtaining over 800 signatures on petitions asking the council to reverse the cuts or hold a special election. When councilors failed to act, the residents went to court and a Superior Court judge ordered the town to hold the special election.
The Koch-funded effort to save the budget cuts
Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy arm of billionaire conservatives Charles and David Koch, led a sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort in support of the budget cuts that included sign-waving visibilities, door-to-door canvassing and volunteer phonebanks.
The group scheduled and promoted the activities on social media. “Thank you to the 30 NH activists who made calls to fight against Derry property tax hikes last night!” the organizers wrote after one phone bank session. “We made over 4,000 calls thanks to YOU!”
The effort in Derry was part of a larger national initiative that the Washington Post describes as “a long-term effort to undercut the left’s long-standing dominance in grass-roots organizing.” In a confidential donor prospectus obtained by Politico, AFP identified New Hampshire as one of 14 states where the group would be “devoting additional resources” in 2015.
The prospectus described the group’s grassroots activities. “AFP staff and activists utilize a mobile canvassing platform that integrates household data, GPS mapping and survey software to map canvass routes and log responses in real-time on their mobile devices,” it read.
“Americans not reached by AFP’s door efforts are called by activists utilizing our online ‘Freedom Phone’ predictive dialing system,” the prospectus continued. “Volunteers log-in from any WiFi hot-spot where they can view the name of the call recipient, call script and survey questions on a personal ‘dashboard.’
Complaints from residents suggested AFP used the “Freedom Phone” in the run-up to the election in Derry. The Union Leader reported “residents said the group Americans for Prosperity is using callers from Florida to try to sway Derry voters… But even though the calls are coming from out of state, the phone numbers are showing up as local, the residents said.”
New Hampshire AFP director Greg Moore denied out-of-staters called Derry residents. “The reality was all of the calls were made from Manchester, New Hampshire, with a 603 number,” he told the Union Leader. "Moore said some residents who favor overturning the budget cuts seem to be creating a ‘mythology’ about the phone calls.”