The Koch Brothers' Latino front.

• Author: Morales, Ed
• Position: Libre Initiative - Essay

Things got heated at breakfast at the Coronado Bay Hotel in San Diego at this year's annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials. Cristobal Alex, head of the liberal nonprofit Latino Victory Project, tangled with his rightwing counterpart, Daniel Garza, president of a group called the Libre Initiative, at the breakfast plenary. Both men were raised in Texas by immigrant Mexican workers, but that's where their similarities end.

"I like Daniel," said Alex. "I think he's a nice guy. But I don't like to see the Libre Initiative, with Koch brothers' money, attack Latino candidates who are champions of things like immigration reform. That bothers me."

Alex was referring to a series of ads that attacked Hispanic Democratic candidates such as Representatives Pete Gallego of Texas and Joe Garcia of Florida. Various reports state that Libre has spent $700,000 on the anti-Gallego and anti-Garcia ads alone.

Garza fired back with talking points from the Koch brothers' playbook.

"We're not going to back down," he told the conference attendees. "We don't want centralized government! We don't want collectivism! We don't want bigger government!"

But Latino Democratic activists see things differently.

"The Libre Initiative has no interest in actually solving problems," says Anthony Gutierrez, Gallego campaign spokesman. "It exists to play dirty politics and lie to the Latino community."

The Libre Initiative--whose name obviously derives from the Spanish word for "free"--was created in 2011. Garza told the conference that it is "a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advances the principles and values of economic freedom to empower the U.S. His panic community by developing a network of Hispanic pro-liberty activists."

But it is not exactly nonpartisan when you look at its major players. Garza is a former George W. Bush staffer. The group's national strategic director is Jose Mallea, formerly the campaign manager for GOP Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Its policy director, Jorge Lima, was once an adviser to former Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno, who tried to mimic Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's attack on the territory's unions. And the group's chief of staff, Andeliz Castillo, led outreach to Hispanic media for the Republican National Committee in 2008.

And when you look at Libre's funding, you see the tentacles of the Koch brothers, who have spent millions of dollars funding rightwing groups through intermediaries like...