Vilifying the billionaire Koch brothers, who have been top contributors to conservative, free market causes and candidates, is a major goal of the national Democrats , in order to undercut the brothers’ messages and influence. Some, like the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel, thinks that it’s working. She cites decreased giving to the Republican Party and Republican super-PACs as evidence, saying that such attacks against the Koch brothers have made Republican donors “skittish.”  (The hundreds of millions they put in Mitt Romney’s losing campaign also didn’t help). In any case, as the ADN’s Nat Herz first wrote, it’s unclear if this latest attempt to go after Sullivan via the Kochs is going to work in Fairbanks, where the ad, courtesy of the International Association of Firefighters’ super-PAC, is running. It is perhaps too much of a step removed, and as many in Fairbanks know, there’s lots of blame to go around in that Koch-brothers refinery closure. Then again, it’s Fairbanks, and it’s always been hard to predict what the people up there are going to do and what’s going to take hold.  It’s conservative country, but not corporate-conservative country, as evidenced by the whopping 56 percent who voted to repeal Ballot Measure 1. That vote doesn’t bode well for Sullivan, who fought against repealing the measure, and more problematic yet, doesn’t at all exude a populist vibe.

Whether the ad works or not, the photoshoppped ghost-of-Sullivan at the end of the ad is kind of fun. Watch the ad here.