Fredreka Schouten

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A group tied to billionaire Charles Koch has unleashed an aggressive campaign to kill a ballot measure in South Dakota that would require Koch-affiliated groups and others like them to reveal their donors’ identities — part of a sustained effort by his powerful network to keep government agencies and the public from learning more about its financial backers.

Americans for Prosperity, the largest activist group in the policy and political empire founded by industrialist Koch and his brother, David, launched a coalition this year to fight Initiated Measure 22, which calls for public disclosure of donors who fund advocacy efforts, the creation of a state ethics commission and public financing of political campaigns. It also limits lobbyists' gifts to elected officials and lowers the amount of campaign contributions to candidates, parties and political action committees.

South Dakota voters will decide the issue in November.

The AFP-founded coalition, called Defeat 22, already has run commercials on talk radio and country-music stations, contacted 50,000 voters through phone calls and door-knocking and distributed mailers denouncing the initiative as a money-grab by politicians because it would give voters taxpayer-funded vouchers to help finance candidates' campaigns, according to Ben Lee, the state director of Americans for Prosperity and chairman of Defeat 22.

Luke Hilgemann, Americans for Prosperity’s national CEO, cast the South Dakota fight as a battle to protect donors’ free-speech rights. Politicians who have been targeted by AFP over taxes and other policy issues over the years now want to unmask contributors’ identities “because they don’t like us bringing these issues to light and holding them accountable,” he said.

He argued that revealing donors’ identities could subject them to threats and intimidation and drive them away from funding advocacy groups.

“The chilling of public discourse is a bad path for the country to go on,” he said.

The South Dakota campaign marks the latest in a string of battles the Koch network has waged around the country to block efforts to disclose contributors’ identities. Last year, for instance, AFP and more than a dozen other groups opposed a bill in Georgia that would have required advocacy groups active in state politics to disclose the sources of their money. The measure died.

In June, the House passed a Koch-supported bill that would bar the IRS from collecting the names of most donors to tax-exempt groups. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., has introduced a companion bill in the Senate. Earlier this year, Americans for Prosperity's foundation won a federal trial to keep its donors secret in California.

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The Koch network is one of the most influential groups in conservative politics. Some 700 like-minded donors each pledge to give least $100,000 annually to a mix of educational, policy and political organizations affiliated with the Kochs that push a small-government agenda. The network is on track to spend about $750 million during the 2016 election cycle, about a third of which will be directed to politics, officials say.

A large share of the network's money flows through nonprofits whose donors are anonymous.

Koch officials say preserving “free speech” is among their top priorities in the coming years. “Wherever there are threats against the First Amendment, we will be there to weigh in,” Hilgemann said.

The South Dakota measure would not bar donations to nonprofit groups active in politics, but it would require the groups running independent ads and distributing mailers to disclose the identities of anyone who gives more than $100 in a calendar year.

Hilgemann would not disclose how much AFP is spending on the South Dakota effort. The coalition there includes the state’s chamber of commerce and the farm bureau, along with groups representing building contractors and retailers.

On the other side: Massachusetts-based Represent.Us, which is waging bipartisan campaigns around the country to end anonymous contributions in politics and pass laws it says will curb public corruption.

Represent.Us and other advocacy groups helped successfully pass similar measures in Seattle and Maine last year. In addition to South Dakota, two more initiatives that deal with either campaign finance or lobbying issues are headed to voters this fall, in San Francisco and Washington state.

Both sides view South Dakota as an important test in a year when voter anger about the role of moneyed interests in politics helped buoy the White House candidacies of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Republican nominee Donald Trump. Republicans control the governors’ mansion in South Dakota and both houses of the state legislature. A former GOP state senator, Don Frankenfeld, is helping run the “Yes 22” campaign in the state.

“If it can happen in South Dakota, it can happen in 10 or 20 other states,” Hilgemann said.

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The early spending against the measure caught organizers by surprise, Frankenfeld said. “We’re scrambling now to mount an appropriate response to the misleading charge that it’s a raid on the treasury for politicians.”

Defeat 22 has targeted a provision in the ballot measure that would give two, $50 “democracy credits” to every registered voter in the South Dakota. Candidates then could redeem those vouchers for taxpayer-funded money for their elections.

The measure would cap the voucher program at $12 million, and candidates could not receive unlimited amounts from the state treasury. For instance, a legislative candidate would face a $15,000-limit on voucher funds.

Defeat 22’s literature says the initiative would let politicians spend taxpayer money on TV ads and robocalls “instead of funding better roads and schools” and urged voters to “keep politics out of our pockets.”

The initiative's supporters say their internal polling shows strong support for the measure, which comes in the wake of a high-profile corruption investigation into state management of the federal EB-5 program, which grants green cards to wealthy foreigners who invest in South Dakota projects. A former state official has been charged in connection with the probe and a former cabinet official, who was under investigation, committed suicide in 2013.

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Frankenfeld said his side has spent about $360,000, much of it focused on getting the initiative on the ballot. “Will we be outspent by the Koch brothers? Probably.”

“I’m optimistic about the outcome,” he said. “The Koch brothers have gotten our attention, but I’m confident we’ve got the better argument.”