Poison Tea by Jeff Nesbit

Author:Jeff Nesbit
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466887473
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

The Quarterback

When the national media have reported on the corporate front groups or coalitions created, run, or managed by Rich Fink, Charles Koch, or Koch Industries, they tend to dismiss their ability to either mobilize actual armies of grassroots volunteers or that the Kochs were really quarterbacking efforts with funding and organizational muscle.

Both are serious mistakes and fail to recognize what has only become apparent after the posting of the Legacy archive and tax records for groups like CSE, Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Partners, and others.

The effort to create and direct a national political grassroots network behind myriad corporate front groups was always hiding in plain sight. It only became apparent more than a decade after the fact as public health researchers looking through millions of tobacco industry documents pieced together parts of the puzzle.

In truth, political grassroots campaigns need actual volunteers to do such things as knock on doors, make phone calls, or send letters and throw tea—or bales of tobacco—into harbors and rivers. Rich Fink seemed to be concerned with putting “boots on the ground” because it was the only way to move beyond corporate astroturfing and deliver actual people to political fights. It appears that was why he chased the tobacco companies so assiduously for years and cultivated a deep relationship with them through both funding and campaigns in the states. It appears that he learned early on, starting in the 1980s and more fully through big political fights in the Clinton presidency, that the tobacco companies offered the quickest, most effective route to recruiting actual boots on the ground.

The tobacco companies could mobilize tens of thousands of employees, growers, and service providers, all of whom would work side by side with a much broader (and loosely connected) network of millions of smokers that Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds had assiduously organized into alliances in the 1990s.

The National Smokers Alliance, with its initial annual budget of $18 million from Philip Morris in 1993, had created an army of 2 million smokers almost overnight. That army could be made available to its principal third-party ally, CSE. All that CSE, and then Americans for Prosperity, had to do was establish a common cause to fight for. The Tea Party movement paradigm—with broad themes against taxes, regulation, and a government that denied personal freedoms—was clearly, and somewhat obviously for anyone paying careful attention, that fertile common ground.

The Tobacco Strategy or Allied Forces network of volunteers provided all the grassroots muscle that the Kochs and Rich Fink required to achieve their growing political aims. But for it to be effective—for Koch Industries, Philip Morris, and RJR to be able to quarterback and direct the action behind the scenes for various political fights such as the Clinton health care reform effort and, years later, the Obamacare debate—both the funding sources and the true nature of the campaign goals needed to remain secret.

That was true of RJR’s Get Government Off Our Back effort that dovetailed so perfectly with the Contract with America efforts

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