Koch brothers' network focusing on GOP Senate, not Trump

Here to help save Republican Sen. Pat Toomey — and, more broadly, the party's control of the Senate — are employees and volunteers for Americans for Prosperity, the best-known group financed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch.

Yet the Koch activists interacting with millions of people who could be Trump's most crucial voters aren't supposed to utter a word about him or Hillary Clinton, a Democrat they'd been preparing for years to attack.

The brothers and many of their wealthy donor friends who fund the political and policy groups known as the Koch network have no interest in backing Trump.

In a television interview in April, Charles Koch called Clinton and Trump "terrible role models" and trashed Trump's "monstrous" proposal for a temporary ban of foreign Muslims entering the U.S.

Trump's campaign has eschewed traditional political grunt work, leaving that to overworked national and state Republican parties, which must advocate for GOP candidates from Trump down to the local council members.

There's no Senate race in New Jersey, and the Kochs aren't assisting Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., largely because she sided with the Obama administration's moves to cut carbon emissions; that's at odds with the Kochs' push for fewer regulations.

At a hotel conference room one Thursday evening, Pennsylvania AFP field director Jeremy Baker prepped the out-of-state helpers for the no-nonsense attitude of many southeastern Pennsylvanians: Well, they don't want you to knock on their door at all, but when you do knock on the door, you want to be concise.