David Koch, above, and his brother Charles plan to spend millions to push their conservative agenda. Photo: AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File WASHINGTON – The announcement this week that the political network run by the billionaire Koch brothers plans to spend an unprecedented $900 million US to promote conservative candidates in the 2016 presidential election cycle has sent shock waves through the capital.
This massive spending goal establishes Charles and David Koch, whose combined wealth of $80 billion makes them the richest twosome on the planet, as a political force that rivals that of the Republican and Democratic parties.
It also raises the ultimate question: can billionaires buy elections.
That’s exactly what is happening, Darrell West, an expert on big money and politics at the Brookings Institute, claims.
America, he says, is heading towards an oligarchy run by the richest one per cent of the one per cent of the one per cent.
“I think we are approaching a perfect storm of big money and limited accountability coming together in ways that really threatened American democracy,” he said in an interview. “It’s going to be decisive in 2016.”
Having large financial resources allows the money elite to define the issues, set the agenda and even shape the images of politicians, he said in an interview.
“So it’s a way to communicate with a wide range of voters and really get your messages out there. I mean in 2014 we saw a lot of evidence of big money that went into the top 10 senate races and almost all of them ended up breaking in favour of Republicans and money was a big part of the overall story.”
Mega buck influence on U.S. politics for many Americans has been a growing concern that parallels the widening gap between the very rich and everybody else.
Fear of the moneyed elite taking control of government grew significantly after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that opened the door to unlimited corporate and private interest spending on political ads. A second Supreme Court ruling last year loosened the purse strings even more for individual contributions.
As a result, major donors for both parties have dived in head first to try shape America in their image. The total money raised by 1,310 outside groups in the 2012 election was $828 million, which is below what the Koch network alone hopes to spend in 2016, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign spending.
Truth is spending has been rising steadily since 1996. But the Koch’s 2016 spending goal cries out for a whole new paradigm.
It means that to stamp their conservative agenda on Washington, the two richest men in America are ready to spent about $250 million more of their oil and consumer goods wealth than both Republicans and Democrats spent on all the senate races in 2014.
“It means Democrats are going to be seriously outspent,” West said. “Essentially we have a party of rich conservative activists and they are going to spend as much as Republicans or Democrats.”
But does money alone buy elections? Evidently not. Republicans outspent Democrats in 2012 and lost badly.
Yet that turned around in 2014.
“These are smart business people,” West said. “They wasted their money in 2012. They went back and studied their failures and they recalibrated their strategy and their communications.”
With a war chest of close to $900 million, the Kochs are capable of buying up a substantial chunk of the limited advertising space on airwaves, pushing most other comers to the sidelines.
And remember, the Kochs aren’t the only billionaire players with determined political agendas. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson – worth a reported $21 billion US –gave upwards of $98 million to try to defeat U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012. He’s expected to increase that amount in 2016.
This is not an exclusive Republican club. Democrats have their own mega donors such as George Soros, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg. But their contributions pale in comparison to the financial leverage the Kochs and other Republican donors wield. West calculated that in 2012, 80 per cent of the big money donations went to Republicans.
Daniel Weiner, a campaign spending expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, said broadcast rules give outside groups an edge in obtaining ad space. By law, broadcasters can charge higher rates to outside groups than they can charge candidates.
“So you are going to see candidates and parties drowned out,” he said.
Every mega donor sports a political network, but the Koch brothers are the gorillas in the room.
Last weekend they assembled hundreds of wealthy donors to a retreat in Palm Springs, California, where they spent three days drawing up strategy for electing Republican conservatives in 2016. The New York Times called it the “largest concentration of political money outside the party establishment.”
The meeting was organized by a tax-exempt group financed by the Kochs called the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce Inc. Run by Marc Short, a former chief of staff for the House Republican Conference, its mission is to promote small government and limited regulations in a free enterprise system.
The Kochs and their donors funnel their money through Freedom Partners and a web of other organizations, many of which operate out of the same Arlington, Virginia, address, according to the group’s IRS filings.
Policing the thousands of political action committees and other outside organizations has become problematic, Weiner, who is a former chief counsel to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), said.
To investigate allegations of wrongdoing, the FEC first needs majority approval of the board, which is composed of three Democrats and three Republicans. Both parties are reluctant to investigate donors, Weiner said.
For example, political action groups are forbidden by law to coordinate their efforts with candidates, yet the practice is “rampant,” he said.
“To my knowledge there have been no actual investigations of alleged coordination between candidates and outside groups in the last couple of years,” he said. “There’s no cop on the beat … (Big donors) pretty much know the agency is not going to act if they break the law.”
wmarsden@postmedia.com
