A progressive group with ties to a secretive dark money network and a history of deceptive ads has launched a campaign attacking Republican Presidential Candidate Scott Walker as a "puppet" for the Koch brothers.
The new ad, released by the Agenda Project Action Fund, depicts what is supposed to be a Scott Walker hand puppet waving cash back and forth while flashing quotes from newspapers purporting to align the Wisconsin governor to the Koch brothers. "Want a puppet for president? Vote for the guy with the Koch Brothers hand up his ass," the uncensored ad says of Walker. At the conclusion of the 30-second ad, viewers are taken to the website Puppet4President.
"We all know that big money interests are working to rig the game, but America has now entered unchartered territory with the Koch brothers anointing Governor Scott Walker as ‘their guy’ in the Republican primary," the Puppet4President site says.
The website goes on to knock the "elaborate web of shadowy dark money" the group claims the Koch brothers use to "buy elections."
However, despite smearing the Koch brothers and Gov. Walker, the organization behind the ad is also part of an "elaborate web of shadowy dark money."
The New York-based Agenda Project, founded by liberal activist Erica Payne, launched in 2010 with a goal of connecting progressive participants, leaders, and stakeholders to build critical relationships among the left. Additionally, in 2005, Payne cofounded the Democracy Alliance, a secretive liberal donor network whose partners have invested well over $100 million into various progressive organizations.
Payne also started the Tesseract Group, a liberal consulting firm that has served heavyweight progressive groups such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Center for Independent Media, and America Votes—all organizations that are backed by liberal billionaire George Soros and are a part of the Democracy Alliance network.
The Agenda Project has released suspect political ads in the past.
The Agenda Project launched their "America the Beautiful" campaign in May 2011. During the campaign, an ad was released showing a man who looked similar to Rep. Paul Ryan (R, Wis.) pushing an elderly lady in a wheel chair off a cliff. The "Granny off the cliff" ad was made after Ryan called for partially privatizing Medicare.
The group later released an ad on behalf of the Democratic National Committee in October 2014 blaming the GOP for Ebola deaths over funding cuts to the Center for Disease Control.
This claim was not grounded in reality. The budget brought forward by the GOP in the beginning of 2014 increased CDC funding by 8.2 percent, bringing CDC’s budget to $6.9 billion for 2014. This total was $567 million more than 2013.
The Agenda Project did not return an inquiry from the Washington Free Beacon seeking information on who is funding the anti-Walker campaign.