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NY Times, June 19, 2018
How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country
By Hiroko Tabuchi
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A team of political activists huddled at a Hardee’s
one rainy Saturday, wolfing down a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Then
they descended on Antioch, a quiet Nashville suburb, armed with iPads
full of voter data and a fiery script.
The group, the local chapter for Americans for Prosperity, which is
financed by the oil billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch to advance
conservative causes, fanned out and began strategically knocking on
doors. Their targets: voters most likely to oppose a local plan to build
light-rail trains, a traffic-easing tunnel and new bus routes.
“Do you agree that raising the sales tax to the highest rate in the
nation must be stopped?” Samuel Nienow, one of the organizers, asked a
startled man who answered the door at his ranch-style home in March.
“Can we count on you to vote ‘no’ on the transit plan?”
In cities and counties across the country — including Little Rock, Ark.;
Phoenix, Ariz.; southeast Michigan; central Utah; and here in Tennessee
— the Koch brothers are fueling a fight against public transit, an
offshoot of their longstanding national crusade for lower taxes and
smaller government.
At the heart of their effort is a network of activists who use a
sophisticated data service built by the Kochs, called i360, that helps
them identify and rally voters who are inclined to their worldview. It
is a particularly powerful version of the technologies used by major
political parties.
In places like Nashville, Koch-financed activists are finding tremendous
success.
Early polling here had suggested that the $5.4 billion transit plan
would easily pass. It was backed by the city’s popular mayor and a
coalition of businesses. Its supporters had outspent the opposition, and
Nashville was choking on cars.
But the outcome of the May 1 ballot stunned the city: a landslide
victory for the anti-transit camp, which attacked the plan as a colossal
waste of taxpayers’ money.
An anti-transit flyer left by an Americans for Prosperity organizer. The
group made nearly 42,000 phone calls and knocked on more than 6,000
doors in Nashville.CreditWilliam DeShazer for The New York Times
“This is why grass roots works,” said Tori Venable, Tennessee state
director for Americans for Prosperity, which made almost 42,000 phone
calls and knocked on more than 6,000 doors.
Supporters of transit investments point to research that shows that they
reduce traffic, spur economic development and fight global warming by
reducing emissions. Americans for Prosperity counters that public
transit plans waste taxpayer money on unpopular, outdated technology
like trains and buses just as the world is moving toward cleaner,
driverless vehicles.
Most American cities do not have the population density to support mass
transit, the group says. It also asserts that transit brings unwanted
gentrification to some areas, while failing to reach others altogether.
Public transit, Americans for Prosperity says, goes against the
liberties that Americans hold dear. “If someone has the freedom to go
where they want, do what they want,” Ms. Venable said, “they’re not
going to choose public transit.”
The Kochs’ opposition to transit spending stems from their longstanding
free-market, libertarian philosophy. It also dovetails with their
financial interests, which benefit from automobiles and highways.
One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs’
conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also
makes seatbelts, tires and other automotive parts. Even as Americans
for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports
spending tax money on highways and roads.
“Stopping higher taxes is their rallying cry,” said Ashley Robbins, a
researcher at Virginia Tech who follows transportation funding. “But at
the end of the day, fuel consumption helps them.”
David Dziok, a Koch Industries spokesman, said the company did not
control the activities of Americans for Prosperity in specific states
and denied that the group’s anti-transit effort was linked to the
company’s interests. That notion “runs counter to everything we stand
for as a company,” he said.
“Our decisions are based on what is most likely to help people improve
their lives, regardless of the policy and its effect on our bottom
line,” he said. Koch Industries has opposed steel tariffs, for example,
even though the company owns a steel mill in Arkansas, he said.
The group’s Nashville victory followed a roller-coaster political
campaign, including a sex-and-spending scandal that led to the mayor’s
resignation.
But the results also demonstrate that the Kochs’ political influence has
quietly made deep inroads at the local level even as the brothers have
had a lower profile in Washington. (This month, Koch Industries said
David Koch would step away from his political and business roles
because of declining health.)
“These are outside groups,” said Nashville’s new mayor, David Briley, in
an interview. “They don’t represent Nashville’s interests or values.”
A Nationwide Effort
The Nashville strategy was part of a nationwide campaign. Since 2015,
Americans for Prosperity has coordinated door-to-door anti-transit
canvassing campaigns for at least seven local or state-level ballots,
according to a review by The New York Times. In the majority, the Kochs
were on the winning side.
Americans for Prosperity and other Koch-backed groups have also opposed
more than two dozen other transit-related measures — including many
states’ bids to raise gas taxes to fund transit or transportation
infrastructure — by organizing phone banks, running advertising
campaigns, staging public forums, issuing reports and writing opinion
pieces in local publications.
In Little Rock, Americans for Prosperity made more than 39,000 calls and
knocked on nearly 5,000 doors to fight a proposed sales-tax increase
worth $18 million to fund a bus and trolley network. In Utah, it handed
out $50 gift cards at a grocery store, an amount it said represented
what a proposed sales tax increase to fund transit would cost county
residents per year.
“There’s nothing more effective than actually having a human
conversation with someone on events that affect them on a day-to-day
basis,” Akash Chougule, policy director at Americans for Prosperity,
said in an interview. “It’s a great opportunity for us to activate
people in their own backyards, and we’re among the first to do it in a
sustained, permanent way.”
The paucity of federal funding for transit projects means that local
ballots are critical in shaping how Americans travel, with decades-long
repercussions for the economy and the environment. Highway funding has
historically been built into state and federal budgets, but transit
funding usually requires a vote to raise taxes, creating what experts
call a systemic bias toward cars over trains and buses. The United
States transportation sector emits more earth-warming carbon dioxide
than any other part of the nation’s economy.
The Trump administration had initially raised hopes of more funding for
transit by advocating a trillion-dollar infrastructure push. However,
when that proposed plan was made public it reduced funding for
transit-related grants.
On the Ground in Nashville
Nashville’s idea to invest in transit got off to a strong start.
Introduced in October by Megan Barry, who was mayor at the time, it
called for 26 miles of light rail, a bus network, and a 1.8-mile tunnel
for buses and trains that would bypass the city center’s narrow streets.
The $5.4 billion proposal, the costliest transit project in Nashville’s
history, was to be funded by raising the sales tax city residents pay by
one percentage point, to 10.25 percent, and raising other business
taxes. A coalition of Nashville businesses urged voters to endorse the
spending as vital to a region projected to grow to almost 3 million
people by 2040, an increase of 1 million.
“It will be far-reaching, it will serve every part of our city — north,
south, east, and west — and it will help to shape our future growth and
development,” said Ms. Barry, who enjoyed approval ratings near 70
percent. A poll by her team found that close to two-thirds of voters
would support raising taxes to pay for transit.
The vote was set for May 1.
But then in late January Ms. Barry, who is married, acknowledged a
nearly two-year affair with the former head of her security detail after
a series of exposés, including reports of steamy texts, overseas trips
and inappropriate spending. In March she resigned, and later pleaded
guilty to theft. Ms. Barry did not respond to requests for comment.
Americans for Prosperity kicked its campaign into high gear.
Secret Weapons
The team that gathered at Hardee’s in March, two weeks after Ms. Barry’s
resignation, was led by Ms. Venable and Mr. Nienow of Americans for
Prosperity. Other canvassers that morning included a local Tea Party
leader and a lawyer-turned-fantasy-novelist who writes about a young
witch who pushes back against an authoritarian government.
Central to the work of Americans for Prosperity is i360, the Kochs’ data
operation, which profiles Americans based on their voter registration
information, consumer data and social media activities. The canvassers
divided the neighborhoods into “walkbooks,” or clusters of several dozen
homes, and broke into teams of two.
There are rules: No more than two people at a door (to avoid appearing
threatening). No stepping on lawns (homeowners don’t like it). And focus
strictly on the registered voter. If anyone else answers, say a polite
“thanks” and move on.
“It’s the concept of opportunity cost,” said Mr. Nienow. Their data
zeroed in on people thought to be anti-tax or anti-transit and likely to
vote.
On a laptop in her S.U.V., Ms. Venable tracked, in real time, the
progress of the four pairs working that day. By 4:30 p.m. they had
knocked on 230 doors and connected with 66 people, a success rate of 29
percent. “Excellent,” she said.
“Everything we do is very scientific, very data-based, very
numbers-based,” said Mr. Chougule, the Americans for Prosperity policy
director. “We are able to see who are the people that are most likely to
engage on this issue, who are the people most aligned with us that we
need to get out, and who are the people whose minds we can change.”
Another weapon in the Koch arsenal is Randal O’Toole, a transit expert
at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington that
Charles Koch helped found in the 1970s. Declaring transit “dead” and
streetcars “a scam,” he has become a go-to expert for anti-transit
groups. Crisscrossing the country, he speaks at local events and writes
opinion pieces.
At a forum in Nashville in January hosted by a conservative radio host,
Mr. O’Toole gave an impassioned speech. “I think of light rail as the
diamond-encrusted Rolex watch of transit. It’s something that doesn’t do
as much as a real watch can do. It costs a lot more. And it serves
solely to serve the ego of the people who are buying it,” he said,
meaning city officials.
Public transit critics have long raised fears that rail projects are a
conduit for crime, and Mr. O’Toole himself has made that argument:
“Teenagers swarm onto San Francisco BART trains to rob passengers,” he
warned in a blog post last year. But in Nashville, Mr. O’Toole made a
different argument, namely that transit is for hipster millennials and
would be a conduit for gentrification, forcing people to move further
away to find affordable housing.
In another line of attack, he also argues that ride-hailing services
like Uber and Lyft are the future of transportation, not buses and
trains. “Why would anybody ride transit when they can get a ride at
their door within a minute that will drop them off at the door where
they want to go?” he said in an interview.
Asked whether low-income people could afford to use Uber instead of a
bus, he said that subsidizing their rides would still be more
cost-effective.
Raj Rajkumar, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Mobility21
research center, which focuses on transportation issues, said studies
have shown that mass transit reduces congestion and pollution. But he
also said there is some truth in concerns that transit could bring
gentrification. To offset that, he said, transit plans should be paired
with measures to increase affordable housing.
Still, in most places and over the long run, buses and trains are the
most effective and cleanest way of moving large numbers of people large
distances, he said. Ride-sharing can help people on shorter trips, Mr.
Rajkumar said, or getting to and from a train station. “But if you’re
going 30 miles, Uber is less suitable. I don’t think Uber and Lyft can
really replace public transit,” he said.
A Money Trail, Undisclosed
Left, Delores Gilmore, 72, who has been riding buses for more than 50
years, said she was excited for the proposed mass transit expansion.
Right, the Music City Center transit hub in downtown
Nashville.CreditWilliam DeShazer for The New York Times
The scale of the Kochs’ anti-transit spending is difficult to gauge at
the local level, because campaign finance disclosure standards vary
among municipalities. But at the state and national level, the picture
gets clearer.
Last year Americans for Prosperity spent $711,000 on lobbying for
various issues, a near 1,000-fold increase since 2011, when it spent
$856. Overall, the group has spent almost $4 million on state-level
lobbying the past seven years, according to disclosures compiled by the
National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan nonprofit
that tracks political spending.
Broadly speaking, Americans for Prosperity campaigns against big
government, but many of its initiatives target public transit. In
Indiana, it marshaled opposition to a 2017 Republican gas-tax plan meant
to raise roughly a billion dollars to invest in local buses and other
projects. In New Jersey, the group ran an ad against a proposed gas-tax
increase in 2016 that showed a father giving away his baby’s milk
bottle, and also Sparky the family dog, to pay for transit improvements
among other things. “Save Sparky,” the ad implores.
In Nashville, Americans for Prosperity played a major role: organizing
door-to-door canvassing teams using iPads running the i360 software.
Those in-kind contributions can be difficult to measure. According to
A.F.P.’s campaign finance disclosure, the group made only one
contribution, of $4,744, to the campaign for “canvassing expenses.”
Instead, a local group, NoTax4Tracks, led the Nashville fund-raising.
Nearly three-quarters of the $1.1 million it raised came from a single
nonprofit, Nashville Smart Inc., which is not required to disclose
donors. The rest of the contributions to NoTax4Tracks came from wealthy
local donors, including a local auto dealer.
‘I Knew We Were Going to Win’
Both NoTax4Tracks and Nashville Smart declined to fully disclose their
funding.
After Ms. Barry’s resignation, Nashville’s pro-transit movement
struggled. Its messaging became muddled, strategists said, with
supporters claiming that the plan would do everything: create jobs,
benefit the environment and even boost the health and wellness of residents.
Ultimately, the pro-transit camp failed to fend off criticism that the
plan benefited a gentrifying downtown at the expense of more distant
lower-income and minority areas.
“If everyone’s going to pay for it, everyone needs to benefit,” said
Rev. Jeff Obafemi Carr, who threw his support behind the opposition
campaign and mobilized African-American voters.
After the vote, the Americans for Prosperity crew celebrated its victory
at the Nashville Palace, a country music venue. “I knew we were going to
win,” Ms. Venable said. “But I wasn’t taking my foot off the gas for a
second.”
Hiroko Tabuchi is a climate reporter. She joined The Times in 2008, and
was part of the team awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory
Reporting. She previously wrote about Japanese economics, business and
technology from Tokyo. @HirokoTabuchi • Facebook
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