Nancy Pfotenhauer on Varney & Co.

Fox Business News — October 16, 2012

STUART VARNEY: The Koch brothers have, once again, become a target for the Left. Koch Industries sent a letter to their 45,000 employees saying they were encouraging employees to vote for pro business candidates. Joining us now is Nancy Pfotenhauer, spokesperson for Koch Industries. Nancy, I’m going to quote from the letter for you. It says, and I’m going to quote directly, “We believe any decision about which candidates to support is as always yours and yours alone based on the factors that are most important to you.” You’re saying, I put it to you, Nancy, with a smile on my face, the Koch brothers are telling their employees, “Get out there and vote for Romney.”

NANCY PFOTENHAUER: It’s just ridiculous, I mean, we’ve gone past the sublime to the ridiculous. I was saying I would say that I was shocked at the selectivity of their analysis of this letter, but I simply am not. It’s been one thing after another, obviously, this election cycle. We’re very proud of our employees, and we posted this on our website, I think on October 4th, in a completely transparent manner and we trust them to make the right decision.

STUART VARNEY: The right decision being vote for Mitt Romney. I can read these things and so can you, Nancy, come on, now what, vote for Romney.

NANCY PFOTENHAUER: Well, what it does, certainly says is that KOCHPAC, the employee supported Political Action Committee, has supported Mitt Romney and we also said there are serious challenges facing this country which inarguably is the case and that there are two individuals and different perspectives how to move forward, but we trust our employees to make the right decision and we put it very clearly and underscore it for them that we’re not telling them what to do. We trust them to weigh what’s important to them and to make the right call.

STUART VARNEY: Look, I think any employer should be allowed to say this kind of thing to any employee. I don’t see why you should steer clear of the election completely, but you know, Nancy, you’re going to get demonized for this. I’m sure you’ve watched that show Newsroom, which names the Koch brothers and says they funded the wicked Tea Party. You’re going to get demonized. You know this.

NANCY PFOTENHAUER: I couldn’t watch more than once. I thought it was just very poorly plotted and inaccurate. No, this doesn’t surprise us. In fact, it’s fairly typical. You get a left leaning “webzine” go up and basically hypocritically and inaccurately describe the letter and then it goes on MSNBC and then it goes on Huffington Post and then it goes on The Atlantic, Atlantic Journal Constitution, and then finally, we get it, again, misrepresented on The View yesterday. If college and pro ball were as predictable, I’d have more money in my pocket.

STUART VARNEY: Nancy, I suspect that you like this. Not you as so much as the two Koch brothers.

NANCY PFOTENHAUER: They’re not intimidated by it.

STUART VARNEY: No they’re not. But they like it. I think they like getting at them. I think they do.

NANCY PFOTENHAUER: They’re clearly not intimidated and not about the step down, but it’s hard to like things like when death threats are issued against your family or when people are threatening to fire bomb your facilities, that your employees may be, in fact, at risk. That’s not very pleasant. But they certainly are going to make their case for the best policies of the country.

STUART VARNEY: Point taken, Nancy. I appreciate that. Nancy Pfotenhauer, thank you for joining us as always.

NANCY PFOTENHAUER: Thank you.

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