Over the last decade, the Koch brothers have taken an increasingly important role in American politics. Recent reporting as well as academic research suggests that the Kochs now control a network that will likely outspend the Republican National Committee in 2016, and has sophisticated data analytic capacities, as well as a surveillance operation. The Kochs fund organizations that create model bills, run get-out-the-vote operations and recruit candidates. That is, the Koch network shares all of the things a traditional party does, without being accountable to voters. The remedy, say two political scientists, is to shift the campaign finance landscape to strengthen parties. But any reform must include public financing.
The rise of the Kochs
Though they have been involved in politics for more than four decades, the Koch brothers only recently began participating directly in electoral politics. However, their operations have expanded quickly. A recent Politico report finds,
Koch and his brother David Koch have quietly assembled, piece by piece, a privatized political and policy advocacy operation like no other in American history that today includes hundreds of donors and employs 1,200 full-time, year-round staffers in 107 offices nationwide. That’s about 3½ times as many employees as the Republican National Committee and its congressional campaign arms had on their main payrolls last month, according to POLITICO’s analysis of tax and campaign documents and interviews with sources familiar with the network.
At the same time as the Koch brothers have expanded into electoral politics, traditional party organizations have become weaker. Political scientists Theda Skocpol and Alex Hertel-Fernandez, who have studied organizations on the left and right extensively, find funding non-party organizations have increased dramatically on the right while the Republican Party has become weaker (see chart).
Hertel-Fernandez tells me,
“Political resources are now far less likely to flow through the official Republican committees than they were a decade ago. Instead, contributions are increasingly likely to go through outside groups. By far, the most prominent of these extra party funders is the array of groups directed by the Koch brothers.”
Their research aligns with extensive work by journalists. In his 2014 book, “Big Money,” Kenneth Vogel writes of the Koch network,
“Intentionally or not, this new system has eroded the power of the official parties that have rigidly controlled modern politics for decades… The result is the privatization of a system that we’d always thought of as public-a hi-jacking of American politics by the ultra-rich.”
Dan Balz notes that,
“When W. Clement Stone, an insurance magnate and philanthropist, gave $2 million to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 campaign, it caused public outrage and contributed to a movement that produced the post-Watergate reforms in campaign financing. Accounting for inflation, that $2 million would equal about $11 million in today’s dollars.”
In 2015, the Koch brothers revealed a spending goal of $889 million for their network, nearly 81 times more than Stone, and far more than the $657 million that the Republican Party spent in 2012. In her book “Dark Money,” Jane Mayer argues that this has long been a goal for some on the right, writing that Karl Rove “had long dreamed of creating a conservative political machine outside the traditional parties’ control that could be funded by virtually unlimited private fortunes.”
But Rove’s goal may soon become a nightmare. While most people have focused on the part of the GOP’s post-election autopsy that worried about its overwhelmingly white base, a more important nugget may well be its discussion of the increasing power of donors. The document reads,
“The current campaign finance environment has led to a handful of friends and allied groups dominating our side’s efforts. This is not healthy. A lot of centralized authority in the hand of a few people at these outside organizations is dangerous for our party.”
Take the Medicaid expansion, which has been stunted by powerful political interests, despite rather strong public support. Hertel-Fernandez, Theda Skocpol and Daniel Lynch find that while GOP governors and business groups were favorable to the Medicaid expansion, Koch-backed groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and AFP (Americans for Prosperity) fought vigorously against it (I’ve discussed this work here). As the Koch brothers grow stronger, there will be more fights between the GOP and this increasingly powerful and unaccountable family.
Meanwhile, Ken Vogel reports that in 2014, the Chamber of Commerce “considered wading into the 2014 Republican primary in a major way.” Their goal: “ousting tea party conservatives and replacing them with more business-friendly pragmatists.” Vogel cites Club for Growth president Chris Chocola who criticizes former Gov. Haley Barbour because,
“Haley wants every Republican to win, regardless of how they vote for office. The Club for Growth PAC helps elect candidates who support limited government and free markets. Unfortunately, the two goals coincide less often than the Republican Establishment cares to admit.” [emphasis mine]
Quotes like this indicate that there will be increasingly fraught relationships between outside groups and the GOP establishment.
