Mailers recently distributed into Iowa’s 1st Congressional District by a Virginia-based organization and attacking U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley use messaging previously deemed false.
The mailers, shown above, were distributed Wednesday and Thursday. They encourage voters to contact Braley, the only Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, regarding his support of health care reform. The messaging is nearly identical to an earlier television ad buy, which was labeled as “pants on fire” by PolitiFact.
Both the television ad and the mailers were produced by a funding group with ties to brothers Charles and David Koch.
According to the Washington Post, “the resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics: an operation conducted outside the campaign finance system, employing an array of groups aimed at stopping what its financiers view as government overreach.”
As is typical with these types of groups, funders are largely unknown.
This column by Lynda Waddington originally published in The Gazette on May 9, 2014.