David Koch, master of the GOP universe.
The Koch brothers are
one-third of the way to their stated goal of raising—and spending—$889 million in the 2016 election, raised during their recent donor meeting.
Mother Jones' Andy Kroll reports:
Donors at the Palm Springs confab pledged $249 million toward funding the Koch brothers' grand plan, according to two sources with knowledge of the fundraising haul. A spokesman for Freedom Partners, the organization that hosts the donor summits and helps distribute the money raised at them, declined to comment. If the Koch network raises comparable sums at its remaining donor retreats between now and November 2016—it tends to hold two to three such gatherings a year—it will easily meet, if not surpass, its $889 million target.
The retreats—first hosted by the Kochs in 2003, when a mere 17 people attended—serve not only as strategy sessions but as showcases and fundraisers for an array of conservative and libertarian organizations, including more politically active outfits like Americans for Prosperity, wonky think tanks, and issue-based nonprofits focusing on veterans issues, health care, and seniors. Typically, toward the end of each retreat, donors gather for lunch and take turns pledging big amounts for Koch-backed causes.
Clearly, that lunch is the most important part of the agenda for the Kochs, the part that matters to all those
would-be presidential candidates who show up to grovel before their potential sugar daddies. There promises to be more money raised than ever before from the Kochs—last presidential cycle they spent just (
just) $407 million. But, as in 2012, the sources of that record-breaking fundraising will remain secret as it will largely be funneled through the Freedom Partners Super PAC, which doesn't have to disclose donors.
Kroll says that this level of spending will make the Kochs the equivalent of a third political party. But it doesn't really, it reflects the fact they they've swallowed the Republican party almost wholly.