David Michael Miller
Rachel Campos-Duffy was picked as one of the most powerful Latinos in Wisconsin by Madison365, and for good reason. She rose to fame as a cast member of the reality TV show The Real World, and has gone on to become a frequent guest host on The View and a regular guest on Fox News’ Outnumbered.
The photogenic media star is also married to Republican Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy (they have eight children) and is the national spokesperson for the Libre Initiative, a Koch brothers-funded group that hopes to convert Latinos into GOP voters.
In an ad on Libre’s “Share the Dream” program, Campos-Duffy tells her family’s personal story, then adds: “I’m worried that government programs that are supposed to help Hispanics are actually doing harm.... A sense of entitlement and dependency on government is starting to take over.”
Republicans need the vote of Latinos, who are projected to make up more than 11% of the electorate nationally in 2016. In Wisconsin, they account for just 3.6% of the electorate, but in a swing state like this, they could be crucial. Which may be why Wisconsin is among just 10 states that have a branch of the Libre Initiative.
Libre bills itself as a “grassroots” nonprofit that seeks “to empower the U.S. Hispanic community” and touts its many individual donors. In fact it is organized as a 501(c)4 that needn’t disclose donors and that uses pass-through organizations to disguise that as much as 99.84% of its funding comes from Koch-funded groups.
And for a grassroots group, it seems lavishly funded. The group has at least 70 on staff and has received $15.8 million in Koch-connected funding, The New York Times reported.
Libre comes off as an independent group, but is closely connected to the GOP. As The Progressive has reported, its leadership is heavily Republican, from executive director Daniel Garza to several other leaders. Libre seems all about helping Hispanics, with some wonderful programs. At a recent forum in Milwaukee, “Attendees were offered free sunglasses, lip balm, wristbands, notepads and pens all branded with the Libre logo, and treated to an Italian dinner,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Libre has offered Latinos tax preparation help, wellness checkups and scholarships, as well as help preparing for driver’s tests, as the Washington Post reported. It has offered flu shots, English lessons and seminars on how to start a business — all for free — and given away Thanksgiving turkeys, the Times reported.
Yet the group backs proposals that hurt Hispanics. Libre opposes Obamacare, though the program has probably helped Latinos more than any other ethnic group. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the Affordable Care Act decreased the uninsured rate for working-age Latinos from 36% to 23%, and from 35% to 17% among all Latinos in states that chose to expand Medicaid.
Libre supports voter ID laws that make it harder for Hispanics to vote, opposes raising the minimum wage (60% of Latinos earn less than $15 per hour) and opposes Obama’s proposal to offer two free years of community college (23% of Latino students go hungry while trying to support themselves through community college). And though Libre “talks about immigration in a positive way,” its funders, the Kochs, “have put huge money behind candidates against immigration reform,” as Cristóbal Alex, president of the Latino Victory Fund, told the Washington Post.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, head of the activist group Voces de la Frontera, told Milwaukee’s WUWM-FM that “There’s one word to describe Libre and that word is malinche. In Spanish, that means a traitor to your people.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s virulent comments about Latinos have made it harder for Libre to succeed. “I am unaware of any Republican Hispanic leaders who are excited to have Trump as the nominee,” Mario H. Lopez, president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, told the Huffington Post.
Garza told the HuffPost that Libre will focus in 2016 on down-ticket races for the U.S. Senate and House and hopes to mobilize “thousands of Latinos in those campaigns.” In Wisconsin, that would mean a focus on incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s re-election campaign.
Johnson’s chances against Democratic challenger Russ Feingold aren’t good. In fact, the Koch-funded Freedom Partners Action Fund recently withdrew $2 million in funding for planned TV ads. But Libre will continue its efforts in states like Wisconsin. The Koch brothers are playing the long game, methodically building support among Latino voters that could pay off in the years and elections to come.
Bruce Murphy is editor of UrbanMilwaukee.
