Koch Super PAC Is Spending Big for Republicans to Take the Senate
Koch Super PAC Is Spending Big for Republicans to Take the Senate
Billionaire Charles Koch is attempting to set the table for Trump to carry out his second-term agenda.
By Donald Shaw and David Moore, Sludge
Despite some high-profile breaks with former President Donald Trump over the past several years, the most notable conservative donor of this century is pouring tens of millions of dollars into electing like-minded Republicans to a Senate he hopes will implement his agenda.
Billionaire Charles Koch’s primary political action committee has already spent nearly $64.3 million this election cycle on Senate races in battleground states to deliver the U.S. Senate back to Republican control. The super PAC, Americans for Prosperity Action, has spent the money to place television ads, send out mailers, and conduct canvassing operations backing GOP candidates in six Senate races that are being closely fought, according to a review of Federal Election Commission data.
The investments include more than $15 million to help former hedge fund manager Dave McCormick in his race against Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, more than $14 million for Ohio car dealership owner Bernie Moreno against Sen. Sherrod Brown, and nearly $11 million to bank executive Eric Hovde in his race against Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, according to campaign finance records. The group is also spending heavily to elect Republicans to Democratic-held Senate seats in Michigan, Montana, and Nevada.
AFP Action is the outside spending arm of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group founded by Koch and his deceased brother David Koch in 2004. Americans for Prosperity (AFP) lobbies the federal government on policy issues including energy, immigration, and government spending, and it has dozens of state chapters that do similar work at the state level. It also runs online campaigns and organizes congressional office visits for its activists.
AFP’s website bills it as “the premier grassroots advocacy organization transforming policy around the country.” Since the group’s involvement in promoting the conservative Tea Party movement in 2009, AFP’s profile has risen as a deep-pocketed network for conservative billionaires whose spending aims to shift the political terrain, roll back collective bargaining processes, and undermine government regulations. Charles Koch-founded nonprofits, including the former group Freedom Partners, succeeded by his group Stand Together, as well as Koch Industries, have given a towering $148 million to AFP Action starting in 2018, according to FEC data.
A right-wing ‘firewall’
AFP Action has described its election spending this year for Republican congressional candidates as part of its “firewall strategy” meant “to prevent one-party progressive rule in Washington.” In total, it has spent more than $131.9 million on independent expenditures targeting the presidential, House, and Senate elections so far this cycle, making it one of the top-spending groups besides campaigns in the 2024 elections, according to OpenSecrets. The group says it is engaged in over 500 federal and state races throughout the country this cycle.
In all six races, the Republican candidates have raised less campaign money than their Democratic rivals, so AFP Action’s spending is effectively helping the Republicans offset their fundraising gaps.
The half-dozen Senate races that AFP Action is spending money on will likely determine which party controls the Senate in 2025 and 2026. All of the Senate races AFP Action is spending money on are considered competitive by Cook Political Report, with four rated as toss-ups, one rated as leaning Democrat, and one leaning Republican. The Democrats currently have a razor-thin majority of 51 seats in the Senate and are all but guaranteed to lose the West Virginia seat currently held by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin, an independent caucusing with the Democrats.
In the competitive Nevada race between incumbent Democrat Sen. Jacky Rosen and former military officer Sam Brown, AFP Action has spent $6.2 million, mostly on pro-Brown advertising. AFP Action has also spent about $8.3 million on the Montana Senate race to help CEO and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy in his bid against two-term incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, and another $9 million to aid former Rep. Mike Rogers in his race against Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, the only open seat of the six.
Much of AFP Action’s funds this election cycle have come from organizations controlled by Charles Koch. A nonprofit called Stand Together Chamber of Commerce has given it $40 million; while Stand Together Chamber of Commerce does not disclose where its money comes from, tax documents reveal that in 2021 and 2022, the group received a combined $150 million from a Charles Koch-led “dark money” organization called CCKC4.
AFP Action has also received $40 million from Koch Industries, the multinational conglomerate for which Koch is chairman and CEO. Koch Industries’ subsidiaries are involved in industries like petrochemical manufacturing, commodities derivatives trading, paper products production, containerized freight shipping, and natural gas marketing. It’s the second-largest privately held company in the United States, behind Cargill.
Other wealthy conservatives are aiding Koch’s efforts. Three billionaire children of Walmart co-founder Sam Walton—Jim Walton, Alice Walton, and Rob Walton—gave money to AFP Action this election cycle, with Alice giving $5 million, and Jim and Rob each giving $10 million. Other large donors this cycle include Waste Management Inc. founder Dean Buntrock ($3.25 million), Mountaire Farms owner and founder Ron Cameron ($4 million, and furniture company chairman emeritus Richard Haworth and his wife Evelyn ($2.9 million each); Richard Haworth serves on the board of the right-wing Michigan-based Mackinac Center think tank.
Through the first half of this year, AFP’s lobbying has addressed minimum wage and overtime compensation, as well as what the group described as “issues relating to antitrust action against big tech and how it serves as a testing ground for their novel antitrust theories, particularly dangerous for oil and gas.”
The nonprofit AFP had almost $112.5 million in revenue in 2022, the most recent year for which tax records are available.
An uneasy alliance with Trump
The two billionaires’ personalities have frequently clashed. Koch once described the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Trump as a choice between cancer and a heart attack, and his network criticized Trump’s “divisiveness” during his first term in office. Last year, Trump called Koch “very stupid, awkward, and highly overrated.”
AFP Action spent over $31 million championing Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary, ending as her campaign’s second-largest backer, according to OpenSecrets. Its super PAC arm put $9 million behind opposing President Biden’s re-election before he bowed out of the race, and spent $10 million opposing Trump’s comeback bid.
But the fortunes of Koch—and other billionaires—have swelled significantly since the 2017 Republican-passed tax cut law went into effect. Several major provisions of that law are scheduled to expire at the end of next year, and permanently extending them would heavily benefit the wealthiest 2 percent of households by income, according to a Center for American Progress analysis.
A report in July from the coalition Americans for Tax Fairness found that Charles Koch’s wealth ballooned from $47.7 billion at the end of 2017 to over $59 billion, a rise of one quarter. Julia Koch, wife of the late David Koch, saw her net worth grow by more than a third over that period, to $64.9 billion.
AFP spent a record high on lobbying in 2023 at the federal level, topping $1.9 million with a roster of 16 in-house lobbyists. Among the issues their lobbying with Congress touched on last year were opposing the PRO Act, a bill that seeks to expand labor protections for workers and prevent coercive anti-union meetings with employers, among other things. AFP also lobbied on a House Republican bill that would make permanent tax cuts for individuals and businesses from the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
Trump appears to understand how much his policies are worth for billionaires like Koch. In 2018, he called Charles and David “a total joke in real Republican circles” for their opposition to his border and trade policies.
“I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas,” Trump tweeted. “They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more.”