Americans for Prosperity Celebrates 20-Year Legacy as the Champions of Freedom
In 2004, a small group of ambitious changemakers came together out of concern for the direction of the country. They had a shared vision: get government out of the way and restore the principles of free markets, free enterprise, and free people.
Fast forward to 2024, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is the largest and most powerful grassroots organization the country has ever seen, with representation in all 50 states, a 4 million strong volunteer network, and hundreds of policy victories to its name.
But this colossal force for change wasn’t built overnight. It took 20 years of dedicated resolve and hard work from everyday Americans determined to mobilize around the power of the people. Brick by brick, door by door, conversation by conversation, these small acts added up and converted AFP into the grassroots colossus it is today.
AFP entered its first policy fight in the spring of 2004 when the governor of Kansas proposed a tax increase that would directly impact the poorest 20% of residents. They hit the ground running building a campaign to educate voters and assembling a unified opposition that ultimately killed the bill. With tried and true grassroots tactics such as door knocking and phone banking, AFP sparked a blitz of constituent voices flooding the statehouse to oppose the tax hike. A state senator later revealed that legislators were so overwhelmed by the voices of constituent opposition, they were compelled to stop the proposal in its tracks.
As AFP’s scale and national footprint grew over the next two decades, so did the range of issues they engaged on. They elevated conversations around education freedom nationwide, pushing policies that empowered students and families to pursue educational opportunities that best met their needs in West Virginia, Arizona, Utah, Arkansas, Montana, Oklahoma, Ohio, and many other states.
AFP has relentlessly demanded government accountability and transparency, passing the REINS Act in both Florida and Kansas to protect key industries from executive overreach that increases the costs for private companies and drives businesses and jobs out of the state. They defended the working class from labor union coercion, championing right-to-work policies in Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Thanks to these policies, workers are no longer forced to join a union or pay dues to keep their jobs.
AFP continues to take on Certificate of Need laws across the country that impose a government-mandated permission slip to expand medical services, build facilities, and purchase necessary equipment. These policies grossly increased patient wait times and diminished access to quality care. In response, AFP mounted a powerful data-driven awareness campaign, collected tens of thousands of petition signatures, testified in state capitols, and elevated the voices of constituents impacted by the policy. Their perseverance has expanded access to crucial treatments and diagnoses for patients in need at a price they can actually afford.
Not only is AFP eradicating government overreach from the legislative and executive branches, they are also tackling threats to liberty coming from the judicial branch across multiple states. In South Carolina, they mobilized allies in the statehouse to pass a bill that reformed the judge selection process, ending the domination by legal elites over appointing judges to serve on civil, criminal, and even the state supreme court. Meanwhile, in Montana, AFP is fending off union attempts to use the judicial system to strike down an education reform bill that established a charter school system in the state.
What sets AFP apart is the devotion to their founding principles and their tenacity to make real change. Its state leaders are always innovating and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, AFP has remained a known entity that doesn’t waver on its positions. It puts policies over politics and has maintained a culture willing to “work with anyone to do good and no one to do harm.”
The fight to protect our freedoms and ‘Reignite the American Dream’ is never over, and no one is better prepared to lead this charge than the thousands of activists who make up AFP. The countless victories AFP has achieved over the years is credit to its unabated grassroots network that puts the power back in the hands of citizens to establish a freer and more prosperous nation.
