The Koch brothers’ conservative network is still debating whether it will spend any of its massive $889 million budget in the Republican presidential primaries, but the prospect of choosing a GOP nominee loomed over the network’s just-concluded donor conference in the California desert.

In an informal straw poll of some conference donors, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida came out ahead of four other would-be GOP presidential candidates who had been invited, according to an attendee familiar with the results. The poll was conducted by Frank Luntz, a veteran GOP pollster, during a break-out session of the conference, which wrapped up Tuesday after a long weekend of presentations and discussions at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, Calif.


Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — who received the least enthusiastic response from donors during a Sunday night forum of prospective candidates that also featured Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — finished last in Luntz’s poll, the source told POLITICO.

The poll is by no means a definitive assessment of the feelings of the hundreds of wealthy business leaders who comprise the vaunted network created by billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. But it does provide an early glimpse into the leanings of a pool of megadonors who are being hotly courted by the field of would-be candidates, and whose checkbooks could go a long way toward determining who emerges with the GOP nomination — regardless of whether the Koch network decides to formally back a candidate.

The network has thus far steered clear of endorsing specific candidates in primaries, but it is coming under internal and external pressures to do so. It hopes to raise $889 million from wealthy backers like those who gathered in Rancho Mirage to push its agenda in 2015 and 2016, more than double what it spent in the 2012 election cycle.

In addition to Cruz, Paul and Rubio, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker paid a visit to the Ritz meeting, though he was not present for the forum.

The three-day conference was organized by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit outfit that oversees the vast political and policy network created by the Koch brothers.

The meeting — part of an ongoing series of twice-a-year “seminars” as they’re called in the Kochs’ orbit — featured a mix of presentations on policy, politics and business. This winter’s session included a discussion moderated by conservative journalist Stephen F. Hayes on principled corporate citizenship and a luncheon discussion featuring MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, according to an attendee.

But the meat of the program consisted of detailing the network’s accomplishments and lessons learned in 2014, when it spent about $290 million and was credited with helping defeat vulnerable Democratic senators, and laying out its plans for the next two years.

Those plans are not exclusively or even primarily about partisan politics. Rather, they include everything from academic programs to public policy research and advocacy around the Kochs’ free-market philosophies to criminal justice reform, which is an increasing area of interest for Charles Koch.

The Kochs once abhorred both major political parties equally as intellectually bankrupt facilitators of unchecked government expansion. But their network has increasingly waded into campaigns on behalf of Republicans in recent years.

And one attendee at the Rancho Mirage seminar said donors were told that the network would boost its staffing for politically engaged groups to 1,500 for the next two years. That’s an increase of at least a couple hundred employees that is expected to include a significant number of field staff, whose jobs it will be to mobilize voters around fiscally conservative issues and — potentially — candidates.

Several of the network’s groups are likely to benefit from that increased staffing. Among those represented in Rancho Mirage are a handful of nonprofits that court voters with fiscally conservative messaging — including Americans for Prosperity (the most muscular group in the network), the LIBRE Initiative (which targets Hispanic voters), Generation Opportunity (millennials), Concerned Veterans for America (military personnel and veterans).

LIBRE, which already has a presence in eight states, plans to expand to Wisconsin and North Carolina this year and increase its staff by about 30 percent ahead of 2016, the group’s president Daniel Garza told POLITICO after the Rancho Mirage conference.

Garza stressed that the group also gets contributions from donors not affiliated with the Koch network and has no plans to jump into the 2016 primaries.

The group, which aired ads targeting Democrats in the run-up to the midterms, might start media buys later this year, Garza said. But it plans to spend the bulk of its 2015 budget on hosting events around the country to expose Hispanics to its policy agenda, which includes state’s rights, school choice and reforms to the federal tax code, immigration system and Obamacare.

Another outfit expected to benefit from cash steered through the network is a for-profit company called i360 that assembles and mines data for voter outreach, including by nonprofits in the network.

Americans for Prosperity and Concerned Veterans for America have hinted they may jump into contested GOP congressional primaries under the right circumstances.

Dan Caldwell, legislative and political director for Concerned Veterans for America, explained Tuesday that his group — which is planning to expand this year into Iowa, South Carolina, Colorado and Pennsylvania — wouldn’t rule out primary engagement. “If we feel like members aren’t supporting or impeding our legislative agenda or they’re misrepresenting their record, we will start our issue advocacy,” he said.

Some leading Republicans wonder whether it would be possible for any of the would-be GOP presidential candidates to win over the Koch operation as a whole given the diversity of social and national security positions embraced by the brothers’ increasingly wide donor network.

The results of the informal Rancho Mirage straw poll highlight the fractured — and unpredictable — nature of the Koch network when it comes to 2016. Rubio got the most votes despite espousing hawkish foreign policy stances that seem to clash with the Kochs' non-interventionist sensibilities. Paul, meanwhile, finished last despite a libertarian worldview that in some ways seems most similar to the Kochs' own philosophies — and his loss marks a potential setback in his effort to build a base of wealthy supporters for a presidential bid.

“It would seem to me that it would be too difficult for them to form a consensus on a candidate,” said Fred Malek, a top Republican bundler and donor who has attended past Koch seminars. He called the $889 million goal for 2016 “breathtaking, eye-opening kind of money. But it illustrates the dedication of hardworking Americans to changing the direction of the country.”

The Koch network has been known for hitting its lofty fundraising goals. The $889 million target would more than double the amount spent by the Republican National Committee during the 2012 cycle. The comparison underscores the migration of power and money away from the political parties and their candidates and to outside groups that — unlike the parties and candidates — can accept unlimited donations from individuals, corporations and unions.

“Political money now flows through outside groups because of laws that were passed that really weakened the parties, (so) these outside efforts are incredibly important,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union. Schlapp — who worked for Karl Rove in the Bush White House political office before leading the Washington office for Koch Industries, the brothers’ multinational industrial conglomerate — said the Kochs and their operation “represent a very important voice and a very important perspective” and are “going to play an important role in 2016.”

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