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&33/7 JANE MAYER’S ‘DARK MONEY’ *33( POWER DINING AT THE TADICH GRILL *%7,-32 A JETSETTER’S GUIDE TO TRAVELING IN STYLE
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DARK MONEY
Investigative journalist Jane Mayer takes on the billionaires funding the radical right. BY ERICA MOODY
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t’s widely known that the Kansas oil tycoons referred to as “the Koch Brothers” are billionaire funders of libertarian and conservative candidates, think tanks and other groups to promote free enterprise, but what do we really know about them and the network they have built? New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer aimed to find out, and in “Dark Money” she reveals the shocking backstories of the Kochs and other wealthy individuals who spent hundreds of millions to bankroll an American political system to serve their interests, which led to an era of unprecedented wealth and income inequities. WASHINGTON LIFE: This book was so
impressively researched. How long did it take you to write and was it difficult to get the information you needed? JANE MAYER The book grew out of a 2010 New Yorker piece I wrote about the Kochs’ covert political operations, so in one sense I started the research then, and kept following the money. I knew I was taking on some of the most powerful and ruthless people in the world, so I had to make sure that it was factually unassailable. WL: Why did this story need to be told? What first gave you the idea to write the book and what kept you going? JM I’ve been in Washington since 1984, when I covered Reagan’s White House for the Wall Street Journal. Since then, politics has grown increasingly awash in private interest money. I watched it tie the government in knots. I felt the public needed to understand what was happening to our democracy behind the scenes, and that I had a unique obligation to tell that story because I’d had a ringside seat. WL: What was the most challenging part of
writing the book? JM The hardest part was getting people to
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going on, rather than providing solutions. But history shows that the inf luence of big money in American politics swings back and forth like a pendulum, and that when things get too corrupt, the public has cracked down. We’re at one of those moments, I think, where the crackdown is overdue. WL: What will it take to reduce these
talk about the Kochs. It was amazing how intimidated people felt by them. WL: I was surprised by how shady the Kochs were even within the context of their own families (two brothers attempting to have another brother disinherited for being gay, for example). It seems like a miserable way to live. Do you think money has a way of corrupting people? JM It’s certainly clear from the families I write about in “Dark Money” that you can’t buy happiness. The conniving and feuding in these families reached epic levels. I suppose they might have been the same if they were broke, but money became the symbol of success, power and even parental favoritism among them. What amazed me was that no matter how many billions of dollars they had, it never seemed to be enough. WL: What bit of information was the most surprising while doing your research? JM I was shocked to learn that the Koch family’s fortune was built not just on building refineries for Joseph Stalin, but for Adolf Hitler, too. It’s a pretty controversial origin for a family that also aspires to control American politics. WL: What can be done to combat the power
of this small group of people in our political system? JM I’m a reporter, not a political advocate, so I try to inform readers about what’s
billionaires’ power? JM Billionaires in America are going to be more powerful than ever because with accelerating economic inequality there are more of them than ever. Numerous studies show that wealthy political donors exert hugely disproportionate influence over politics and policy, and that their priorities are often in conflict with those of the rest of the population. ... We’re at a tipping point where public anger over political corruption is beginning to boil over. You can see it in the surprising success of the campaigns of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, who are running as politicians who can’t be bought. WL: Would our readers be surprised
to know about the “philanthropic” organizations these billionaires set up to write off their political activities? How do they work? JM Actually, some of the philanthropists I write about, such as Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh oil, steel and banking heir, tell the story very well themselves. I got hold of his unpublished memoir in which he describes unabashedly what a great deal philanthropy was for him, because he could convert it into a political tool and lower his taxes at the same time. He boasts that he personally bankrolled 133 of the conservative movement’s 300 most important organizations. He waged a tax-deductible political war. I call it “weaponizing philanthropy.”
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M
uch as they had achieved by 2015, there was still a major item on the Kochs’ shopping list: the White House. Anyone paying attention knew that 2014 was just a trial run for the presidential race in 2016. Phil Dubose, the former Koch Industries manager who spent twenty-six years working for the Kochs before testifying against them in court, had no doubt that they now had their sights on all three branches of government. “What they want is to get their own way,” he said. “They call themselves libertarians. For lack of a better word, what it means is that if you’re big enough to get away with it, you can get away with it. No government. If it’s good for their business, they think it’s good for America. What it means for the country,” he added, speaking from his modest home in rural Louisiana, “is it would release the dogs. The little people? They’d get gobbled up.” On the last weekend of January 2015, as was their custom, the Kochs once again convened their donor summit at a resort in Rancho Mirage, outside Palm Springs, California. Marc Short, the president of Freedom Partners, acknowledged that “2014 was nice, but there’s a long way to go.” To get there, according to one ally, that weekend Charles and David Koch each
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pledged to give $75 million. If so, their contributions would still represent a mere fraction of the network’s new fund-raising goal announced that weekend. This time, the Koch network aimed to spend $889 million in the 2016 election cycle. The sum was more than twice what the network had spent in 2012. It rivaled the record $1 billion that each of the two major political parties was expected to spend, securing their unique status as a rival center of gravity. The Kochs could afford it. Despite their predictions that Obama would prove catastrophic to the American economy, Charles and David’s personal fortunes had nearly tripled during his presidency, from $14 billion apiece in March 2009 to $41.6 billion each in March 2015, according to Forbes.
“This time, the Koch network aimed to spend $889 million in the 2016 election cycle.” To Fred Wertheimer, Washington’s battle-hardened liberal crusader against political corruption, the sum was almost beyond belief. “Eight hundred and eighty-nine million dollars? We’ve had money in the past, but this is so far beyond what anyone has thought of it’s mind-boggling. This is unheard of in the history of the country. There has never been anything that approaches this.” Wertheimer was a public interest lawyer who had been waging an uphill battle to stem the rising tide of money in politics since the Watergate days. From his perspective, the country’s democratic process was in crisis. “We
have two unelected multibillionaires who want to control the U.S. government and exercise the power to decide what is best for more than 300 million American people, without the voices of these people being heard.” He added, “There is nothing in our constitutional democracy that accepts that two of the richest people in the world can control our destiny.” As was clear from the more than $13 million a year that Koch Industries spent lobbying Congress, the Kochs had enormous financial stakes in the U.S. government. The idea that they and their allies were spending nearly $1 billion for completely selfless reasons strained credulity. Of course, money wasn’t always the determinant of American elections, but there was little doubt that if the American presidency was on the auction block in 2016, the Kochs hoped to make the winning bid. In an interview with USA Today, another instance in which he said that all he wanted was to “increase wellbeing in society,” Charles Koch bristled at the idea that he was motivated by an interest in boosting his bottom line. “We are doing all of this to make more money?” he asked. “I mean, that is so ludicrous.” Some of course might have used the same adjective to describe the twodecade-long legal battle that he and his brothers waged against each other after each inheriting hundreds of millions of dollars, in order to get a bigger share. But sharing was never easy for Charles Koch. As a child, he used to tell an unfunny joke. When called upon to split a treat with others, he would say with a wise-guy grin, “I just want my fair share— which is all of it.” Excerpted from “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” (Doubleday, $29.95)
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