The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism · 2016. 10. 26. · The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez Presidential election

The Koch Network and RepublicanParty ExtremismTheda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez

Presidential election years attract attention to the rhetoric personalities and agendas of contending White House aspirants butthese headlines do not reflect the ongoing political shifts that will confront whoever moves into the White House in 2017Earthquakes and erosions have remade the US political terrain reconfiguring the ground on which politicians and social groupsmust maneuver and it is important to make sure that narrow and short-term analyses do not blind us to this shifting terrainWe draw from research on changes since 2000 in the organizational universes surrounding the Republican and Democraticparties to highlight a major emergent force in US politics the recently expanded ldquoKoch networkrdquo that coordinates big moneyfunders idea producers issue advocates and innovative constituency-building efforts in an ongoing effort to pull the RepublicanParty and agendas of US politics sharply to the right We review the major components and evolution of the Koch network andexplore how it has reshaped American politics and policy agendas focusing especially on implications for right-tilted partisanpolarization and rising economic inequality

ldquoT he Republican Party has become ideologi-cally extreme contemptuous of the inheritedsocial and economic policy regime scornful of

compromise unpersuaded by conventional understandingof facts evidence and science and dismissive of the

legitimacy of its political oppositionrdquo1 This startlingdescription appeared not in a broadside issued by theDemocratic National Committee but in a wonkish 2012book Itrsquos Even Worse Than It Looks How the AmericanConstitutional System Collided with the New Politics ofExtremism co-authored by two sober-minded analysts ofdifferent personal political persuasions Thomas Mannand Norman Ornstein Breaking from the pundit consen-sus that polarization in contemporary US politics mustalways be even-handedly blamed on ldquoextremistsrdquo in bothpolitical parties Mann and Ornstein pointed out thateven though the two parties did move symmetricallyapart from the 1960s to the 1980s since then continuingUS partisan polarization has mainly been driven by theunremitting rightward movement of the GOP Tellinglythis far-right lunge has not slowed in the 2000s not evenduring the presidency of self-declared ldquocompassionateconservativerdquo George W Bush nor after Democrats wonmajor electoral victories in 2006 2008 and 2012Traditional political science models predict that losingparties will move toward the middle to attract ldquomedianvotersrdquo but that has not happened for the present-dayRepublican Party whose politicians increasingly embraceunpopular stands and obstruct routine governingfunctions2

Why has this happened Standard wisdom blamescurrent GOP extremism on unruly party base votersmdashonTea Partiers or Christian conservatives or working-classnativists In safely-conservative legislative districts andpresidential primaries dominated by base voters GOPstances on social issues like abortion or immigration can be

A list of supplementary materials provided by the authorsprecedes the references section

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S Thomas Professor ofGovernment and Sociology at Harvard University and theDirector of the Scholars Strategy Network (skocpolfasharvardedu) Her current work focuses on recent trans-formations in US civic life politics and public policies Sheis currently leading a project on the shifting US politicalterrain Alexander Hertel-Fernandez is an Assistant Pro-fessor at the Columbia University School of Internationaland Public Affairs (alexanderhertelgmailcom) His workexamines the political economy of organized interestsespecially business and labor and public policy He haspublished research on the politics of US taxes unemploy-ment insurance health insurance and corporate lobbyingThe authors thank the other members of the Shifting USPolitical Terrain team for their work and discussionsespecially Angie Bautista-Chavez Sarah JamesDaniel Lynch Jason Sclar and Vanessa Williamson We alsothank participants at presentations at the Southern PoliticalScience Association 2016 meetings the Midwest PoliticalScience Association 2016 meetings and workshops at Cornelland Harvard for very helpful comments and feedback

doi101017S1537592716001122

copy American Political Science Association 2016 September 2016 | Vol 14No 3 681

Articles

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attributed to such pressures from below But this expla-nation sheds little light on accelerating GOP economicextremism On one economic issue after another virtuallyall Republican politiciansmdashincluding contenders for thepresidency and candidates for the Senate in large diversestatesmdashhave moved toward unpopular far-right positionsNot even conservative populist voters are demandingcutbacks or privatization of Social Security or Medicareyet virtually all nationally prominent Republicans nowpush these overwhelmingly unpopular ideas3 Americansin general increasingly favor higher taxes on the richbut Republican politicians universally call for massiveupward-tilted tax cutsmdashand such proposals have becomemore sweeping in each successive presidential contestfrom 2008 through 2012 to 20164 Large majorities ofAmericans including many Republicans favor modestincreases in the minimum wage and new social supportssuch as mandated paid family and sick leave but GOPersin office have become increasingly dug in against allsuch steps5

The rightward lunge of the GOP is undoing long-standing compromises For decades many Republicangovernors and legislators coexisted with public-sectorunions but recently in state after state GOP governmentshave abruptly taken unpopular steps to destroy unionsand eliminate established collective-bargaining rights6

Most voters along with many prominent business orga-nizations favor increased government investments ininfrastructure but more and more Republicans seek tounravel longstanding federal or state highway and construc-tion programs7 Finally most Americans including major-ities of Republicans and GOP-leaning Independentsendorse many environmental protections and want carbondioxide to be regulated as a dangerous pollutant8 But withincreasing unanimity Republican politicians rail againstclimate-change reforms and seek to undercut environmentalregulations of all kinds As Vox reporter David Roberts hasdetailed popular views are not sufficient to explain why theUS Republican Party has become ldquothe worldrsquos only majorclimate-denialist partyrdquo an outlier even compared to otherconservative political parties worldwide9

Clearly many Republican candidates and officeholdersare responding to elite-driven forces not just to votersBut in the elite realm too we must look beyond the usualsuspectsmdashlobbying groups and individual big-moneypolitical donors After all politicians from both partiescourt big-money contributors And business associationslike the US Chamber of Commerce that have long setGOP economic agendas nowadays find themselves fightingfar-right groups over the renewal of longstanding businesssubsidy programs like the US Export-Import Bank or thefarm bill10 Something more must be at work in the recentlunge of the GOP toward the ultra-free-market rightWe highlight a heavyweight new player in conservativepoliticsmdashthe recently expanded ldquoKoch networkrdquomdashthat

coordinates big-money funders and an integrated set ofpolitical organizations operating to the right of theRepublican Party As we will show the rise of the Kochnetwork may help to explain the increasingly-extremeeconomic positions espoused by most GOP candidatesand officeholders

An Organizational ApproachFor this analysis we draw data and findings froma new research project on ldquoThe Shifting US PoliticalTerrainrdquo11 Focusing on organizations rather than simplyon mass publics or aggregates of wealthy donors thisproject uses data on the founding dates goals budgetspersonnel and inter-group ties of key organizationsactive on the right and left in US national and cross-state politics The project examines both party commit-tees and extra-party organizations ranging from thinktanks and donor organizations to advocacy and constit-uency groups Where wealthy funders are concerned wepay especially close attention to ldquodonor consortiardquomdashthatis organizations such as the twice-yearly Koch seminarsconvened by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerceon the right and the meetings held by the DemocracyAlliance on the left A focus on such coordinated fundinggroups rather than just on individual donors or partic-ular PACs makes sense because concerted and sustainedfunding efforts are much more likely to have an impacton political parties and governing agendas than one-shotdonations to single-issue campaigns or to candidatesrunning in particular electionsInformation about organizational budgets and in some

cases on leadership and staffing allow us to ask andanswer fresh questions How have balances and relation-ships shifted between party committees and extra-partygroups between old-line organized players and newly-formed efforts and between consortia of wealthy politicaldonors and broad-based associations Can we identifygenuinely new kinds of formations that might help toexplain extreme GOP stances on economic issuesDrawing from our larger project the following sections

provide an overview of recent sharp shifts in the universeof GOP and conservative political organizations and thenexplore the structure and goals of the Koch politicalnetwork that has recently amassed extraordinary capaci-ties to wage policy and electoral battles in dozens of USstates as well as in Washington DC As we will showbecause of its massive scale tight integration ramifiedorganizational reach and close intertwining with the GOPat all levels the Koch network exerts a strong gravita-tional pull on many Republican candidates and office-holders re-setting the range of economic issues andpolicy alternatives to which they are responsive In ourfinal section we explore ways to pin down the impact ofthe Koch network on the overall trajectory of USpolitics and policymaking

682 Perspectives on Politics

Articles | The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism


A Revamped Republican-ConservativeUniverseData from our larger project identify shifts during the2000s in the universe of national US Republican andconservative organizations From media and scholarlysources we assembled the list in Appendix A of keyconservative and GOP organizations operating at (oneor both of two junctures) in 2002 and 2014 Budgetdata were recorded in those nonpresidential electionyears (or in the nearest non-presidential year if datawere not available for 2002 or 2014) so that our measureswould tap underlying rather than temporarily inflatedorganizational capacities Budget numbers are used as anindicator of total annual resources for all types of orga-nizations with one exception For the non-party fund-ing groups ldquobudgetrdquo has a distinct meaning because wedo not want to measure just the core staffing of thesegroups To get at the total donor resources these groupsdeploy we record for the relevant years the sums fromwealthy donors the groups reportedly directed Our listincludes five major types of Republicanconservativeorganizations

bull Political party committeesmdashincluding the RepublicanNational Committee the Senatorial and Congressionalcampaign committees and the committees fundingcampaigns across state legislative and gubernatorialcontests

bull Non-party fundersmdashorganized consortia that raisemoney from many rich donors and channel it intomultiple campaigns and political effortsmdashsuch as KarlRoversquos American Crossroads PAC as well as the Kochseminars This category does not include politicalaction committees for individual candidates

bull Constituency organizationsmdashthat claim to speak forand mobilize broad constituencies including businessassociations the National Rifle Association theChristian Coalition and Americans for Prosperity

bull Issue advocacy organizationsmdashprofessionally-rungroups that lobby on behalf of specific kinds of policiessuch as anti-abortion and anti-tax groups

bull Think tanksmdashsuch as the Heritage Foundation theCato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute

Before we proceed it is important to be clear aboutwhat we think our organizational lists domdashand do notmdashsignify12 We use annual budgets simply to indicate therelative order of magnitude of organizational clout and weadd up budgets for organizations in each major category togive a rough sense of the resources controlled by varioustypes of party and non-party political organizations in2002 and 2014 But our organizational lists and budgetscannot capture all partisan resources on the right ArguablyRepublicans and conservatives in the 2000s benefit greatlyfrom openly-partisan commercial media outlets including

the Fox television network and right-wing talk radio yetthose commercial media organizations are not included inour list13 Another consideration to bear in mind is howorganizational universes fit into the US economy In ourlarger project we include national labor unions as ldquoconstit-uency mobilizing organizationsrdquo on our Democraticliberaluniverse list and the Republicanconservative list usedhere includes the US Chamber of Commerce and theNational Federation of Independent Business But theRepublicanconservative list does not include local andregional chambers of commerce or other trade groupsand it also leaves aside individual corporations some ofwhich operate their own lobbying shops and PACsmdashandeven mobilize their employees into politics14 Also notincluded are evangelical church networks that figure greatlyin conservative political communication and mobilization inrural and suburban communities all over the countryIn short our organizational list does not exhaust all of theresources available on the rightmdashand of course secretand untraceable donations are not captured by thisapproach that relies on public records

With all necessary cautions the analysis of our datain figure 1 suggests striking findings about the shiftingRepublicanconservative organizational universe of the2000s We see sharp shifts in the organizational channelsthrough which political resources flow with the share ofresources directly controlled by the GOP committeesdropping sharply while extra-party funding consortia andother political organizations not run by the RepublicanParty have growing resource clout In particular theRepublican Party has lost considerable ground comparedto extra-party consortia of conservative donorsmdashconsortiathat are in turn beefing up extra-party think tanks con-stituency mobilizing organizations and utilities of the sortthat the institutional party has traditionally controlled

Figure 1Shifting organizational resources on the right

Notes Figure shows budget shares for 2001ndash2002 and 2013ndash2014

by organizational category refer to Appendix A for full listing of

included organizations and budgets

September 2016 | Vol 14No 3 683


Crucially the resource shifts on the right portrayedin figure 1 have largely occurred through the rise ofnew far-right organizations instituted after 2002 notthrough increases in the resources controlled by oldergroups If we tracked only the budgets of organizationsthat existed continuously from 2002 to 2014 we would stillsee a reallocation (principally from Republican Party com-mittees to constituency mobilizing organizations) butthe share claimed by extra-party funders grew onlyfrom 6 percent to 10 percent among longstandinggroups Shifts are much more dramatic however whenorganizations launched after 2002 are included as theyare in figure 1 When both longstanding and post-2002groups are included the resource share controlled byGOP committees plunged from 53 percent of theRepublicanconservative pie in 2002 to just 30 percentby 2014 just as the share of the pie deployed by old andnew extra-party funders burgeoned from 6 percent in 2002to 26 percent by 2014

Who are the new players driving most of the shiftin resource flows away from official Republican Partycommittees A variety of recently launched organizationshave certainly gotten into the action including AmericanCrossroads Heritage Action and the Senate Conserva-tives Fund But the most resourceful new politicalorganizations built on the right in recent years are tiedto the wealthy industrialists David and Charles Kochand their close political associates in ways we are about tospecify In Appendix A the 2002 and 2014 organiza-tional lists for the right universe present the names oforganizations we regard as part of the core Koch networkin bold blue color Clearly many of the new conservativeorganizations formed between 2002 and 2014 are Kochoperations we will soon describe more fullymdashincludingAmericans for Prosperity the Freedom Partners Chamberof Commerce the Koch seminars the Libre InitiativeThemisi360 Aegis Strategic and others When we add upthe numbers three-quarters (76 percent) of all of thebudgets of organizations on the right newly created since2002 turn out to be controlled by the Koch operationRemarkably more than four-fifths (82 percent) of thenew money attributed to extra-party collective fundersflows through the Koch-affiliated consortia launchedafter 2002

Deciphering the Koch NetworkDramatic resource shifts on the organized US rightcannot be understood without a clear understanding ofthe Koch networkmdashwhat it is how it has evolved what itaims to accomplish and how it functions As we are aboutto elaborate the network is about more than individualsyet it is spearheaded by two ultra-conservative billionairebrothers David and Charles Koch who have recentlybecome celebritiesmdashat first reluctantly after they wereouted by the media but more recently because Charles

especially has embraced public fascination by givingregular interviews and because selected reporters have beeninvited to attend Koch-organized donor gatherings15

Political scientists have not so far done much research onKoch political activities apart from including the brothersthemselves in studies of wealthy individual electoraldonors16 Since 2010 however advocacy groups andjournalists have issued detailed reports that portray theKoch operation as a major new political force in theUnited States17

But what kind of force Explicitly or implicitly theKoch network is usually treated as a corporate dark-money ldquofront grouprdquo shoveling funds through dozens ofconduits and conservative groups into national electionsA typical portrayal is the ldquoMaze of Moneyrdquo chart createdby Open Secrets to display a spider-like web of some$400 million in 2012 election funding said to be directlyor indirectly connected to the Kochs18 In the post-Citizens United era political donations are often routedthrough secret channels so charts like this one neces-sarily miss a great deal But ironically they also leadobservers to see ldquoKochtopusrdquo tentacles in almost everyconservative group or cause ranging from longstandingmainstays like the US Chamber of Commerce theNational Rifle Association and Christian right groups totemporary fronts set up to pay for political advertisingduring one election season19

Taking a different approach our project hones in onmajor politically-engaged organizations founded by theKochs and directly controlled by leaders they install orback Figuring out which organizations exactly fit thisdefinition presents some challenges because indirect con-trol mechanisms are sometimes used20 Nevertheless care-ful students of the Kochs and their political activities agreethat the organizations depicted in figure 2 are all key partsof the evolving network (see Appendix A for the budgetsof these groups and Appendix B for brief descriptions ofthem)21 Much can be learned simply by arraying thesecore Koch organizations chronologically and sorting themaccording to their major purposes and modes of activityThis straightforward step for any historical-institutionalanalysis offers a coherent picture of the major phases ofKoch network-building and enables us to put the post-2000developments in their full contextAs the timeline in figure 2 shows the roots of

Koch-orchestrated political activity go back manydecades Charles and David Koch take ideas seriouslyand believe that politicians ldquoreflectrdquo rather than createldquothe prevalent ideologyrdquo so they started out as majorbackers of the nationrsquos leading libertarian think tankthe Cato Institute founded in 197722 In the 1980s theybecame continuous sponsors of the Mercatus Center atGeorge Mason University which does policy studiesand runs educational programs plus the Charles G KochFoundation which disburses grants to college and




university-based scholars and supports programs toencourage free-market ideas and policy proposals23

During the 1970s Charles andDavid Koch also supportedthe Libertarian Party and David even ran for VicePresident on the partyrsquos 1980 ticket But after this foraymade little headway the Kochs turned to backing moreconventional organizations that raised corporate contribu-tions to influence policymaking through lobbying andincreasingly public outreachIn this second phase of Koch network building Citizens

for a Sound Economy (CSE) was started in 1984 to pressfor tax and regulatory cuts on behalf of corporate clients24

It functioned until 2004 when the organization splitapart in a fight between the Kochs and the organizationrsquoserstwhile chairman Dick Armey25 During the Bush-seniorpresidential administration of the 1990s the Kochs alsosponsored the 60 Plus Association to press for privatizationof Social Security and health programs for senior citizensas well as the elimination of the estate tax In recent yearsthis group has campaigned against President Obamarsquoshealth reform law26 Additional advocacy operations tookto the field during the early Obama administrationincluding the American Energy Alliance that opposedenvironmental regulations and cap and trade legislationas well as the Center to Protect Patient Rights that foughtthe health reform effort27 Later the Center also served asa conduit used by many wealthy Koch-connected donorsto fund election efforts against the Obama Democratsmdashso much so that this group for a few years straddled two ofour categories by doing donor coordination as well asadvocacy28

The longstanding proclivity of the Kochs to recruit andorchestrate other donors is perhaps the clearest reasonwhy it is misleading to regard them simply as individualwealthy industrialists throwing around their inheritedand earned money As the heirs of a privately held verysuccessful corporate conglomerate the brothers havealways been in a position to think big and as individualswho take philosophical and normative ideas as well asmaterial interests very seriously they envision politicalchange in a multifaceted and long-term way WithCharles in the lead the brothers have accordingly gone farbeyond the tactics of other super-wealthy philanthropistsNot content with scattering donations to disparate insti-tutions and causes run by others they have moved throughphases to build their comprehensive political networkmdashand their latest efforts the third phase took shape in the2000s when organizations specializing in donor coordina-tion and constituencymobilization were added to the earliermix of think tanks and advocacy groups

Starting in 2003 the Kochs began to convene twice-yearly donor ldquoseminarsrdquo at which invited wealthy peoplechiefly business leaders are exposed to ultra-free marketand libertarian ideas as well as to practical political strategiesAt first these Koch seminars were tiny intellectuallyponderous affairs but after 2006 interest and attendancesteadily grew29 By 2010 more than 200 wealthy inviteddonors attended the seminars often in husband-wife pairsand by now attendance reportedly exceeds 50030 In 2012the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce took over theorganization of these events31 Formal rules were put inplace requiring guests to pledge a minimum of $100000

Figure 2The evolution of Koch core political organizations

Notes Blue bars indicate idea organizations and think tanks yellow bars indicate policy advocacy organizations green bars indicate donor

coordination organizations red bars indicate constituency mobilization organizations and purple bars indicate political utilities



per year to Koch endeavors in return for the right toparticipate in the Koch seminars Twice each year donorsassemble for several days at posh resorts under tight securityto socialize and listen to presentations by conservativeintellectuals media people and leaders of core Kochpolitical organizations32

Some sessions at the biannual seminars amount toauditions for invited GOP candidates includingCongressional leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnellgovernors like Scott Walker and Chris Christie Senatecandidates like Cory Gardner Tom Cotton and JoniErnst and assorted presidential hopefuls33 Koch organ-izations do not as such endorse particular candidatesinstead they deploy what is arguably a much more effectivetactic by encouraging politicians to compete to prove thatthey can be effective spokespersons for and executors of theKoch agenda Because the Koch seminars attract manywealthy supporters politicians covet invitations and are gladto audition for the guests

But the seminars are not chiefly about politiciansPrimarily they foster like-mindedness and camaraderieand focus the assembled millionaires and billionaireson supporting the larger Koch network Carefully-choreographed panels are staffed mainly with speakersfrom Koch-run political organizations who can thuspresent accomplishments and strategies to existing andpotential donors In addition corralling several hundredwealthy conservatives in one place for several days createsopportunities for the Koch network leaders to schedulesmall consultations between invited attendees andprincipals in other Koch organizations Of course fullinformation on such encounters is spotty because seminarprograms and lists of attendees are supposed to be keptsecret But documents have leaked from time to timeincluding full Koch seminar programs for the spring of2010 and the spring of 2014 plus a sheet from thewinter 2014 seminar (found crumpled up in a hotelroom) giving a full list of individualized ldquoone-on-onerdquosessions between Koch organization leaders and potentialdonors in attendance34

Our research team has analyzed all these seminardocuments and finds that the same types of Koch orga-nizational leaders hold most panel speaking slots andparticipate in the one-on-one donor meetings35 BeyondCharles and David themselves featured honchos includeother top officials from Koch Industries and FreedomPartners They also include leaders from the MercatusCenter and the Koch Foundation highlighting the endur-ing stress the network places on investments in ideasresearch and higher education Last but not least leaderswho speak and meet with seminar donors come from thenewest Koch political organizations launched to mobilizeconservative activists and US citizens for issue campaignsand elections

In the 2000s such political organizations havebecome along with the donor seminars the centerpieceof the most recent third phase of comprehensive Kochnetwork building As the following section will elaboratethe most extensive and pivotal effort has been the con-struction since 2004 of the general-purpose advocacyand constituency mobilization federation Americans forProsperity which deploys a combination of advertisinglobbying and grassroots agitation during and betweenelections36 More recently specialized organizations havebeen added to do outreach to particular constituenciesConcerned Veterans for America was launched in 2012to address military veteransrsquo issuesmdashand to push forprivatization of the Veterans Administration37 Veteransare seen as a natural conservative constituency yet theKoch network has also launched organizations to reachinto constituencies that liberals presume are on their sideSince 2011 Generation Opportunity (ldquoGenOpprdquo) hastargeted young people38 And the fast-expanding LibreInitiative was instituted the same year to do communityoutreach as well as political agitation among Latinos withefforts especially targeted in electoral swing states39

Finally Koch election efforts have very recently beenbolstered by general-utility organizations Themisi360is a combined for-profit and non-profit operation thathas worked since 2010 to develop and deploy real-timedigitized data on conservative voters and activistsmdashresembling Catalist on the left40 And Aegis Strategica consulting organization was founded in 2013 to identifyand support the nomination and election of very conserva-tive candidates (such as Joni Ernst who was recruited andsupported to run successfully for the open 2014 Senateseat in Iowa)41

The newer as well as older Koch political organizationsare deeply intertwined with the family-run industrial giantKoch Industries This Wichita-headquartered internationalcorporate empire is of course the source of Charles andDavidrsquos stupendous wealth Beyond that members of theinner cadre of political network leaders including RichFink Mark Holden and Marc Short have all served inKoch Industries management and other staffers have cycledback and forth between the political groups and thecorporation42 Management and organizational strategiesdeveloped at Koch Industries have been applied to thepolitical networkmdashincluding the deployment of subsidiar-ies and enforcement of accountability through rigorousinternal audits and ldquomarket-based managementrdquo whereeach staffer is responsible for showing measurable results43

Koch Industries includes a governmental affairs divisionthat shares priorities resources and personnel with networkpolitical organizations The corporationrsquos lobbyists andstaffers often work hand in glove with the political networkon legislative campaigns And Koch Industries funds alliedorganizations such as the American Legislative ExchangeCouncil44




A final point about the overall Koch political networkis worth emphasizing Typically media pundits andDemocrats portray the Koch network as a reaction toPresident Barack Obama but the unfolding phases ofnetwork development we have just reviewed make it clearthat the Kochs and their cadre have pushed political changefor decades At least since the 1990s moreover they havetaken ever more extensive steps to reorient and leveragethe Republican Party Highly critical of increased publicspending and other moves under President George WBush the Kochs set out to build clout apart from KarlRove the Bushesrsquo chief political consultant and pull theRepublican Party toward the ultra-free-market right45

Indeed the post-2002 resource shifts on the US rightthat we noted earlier are in significant part due to thelatest Koch undertakingsmdashespecially the Koch seminarsFreedom Partners and the buildup of Americans forProsperity the 800-pound gorilla of the reorganized USconservative universe

The Growth and Unique Featuresof Americans for ProsperityAlong with a coordinated nonprofit foundation led bythe same board Americans for Prosperity was set up as a501c4 organization in 2004 following the break-up ofCitizens for a Sound Economy and just as the Kochs weregetting their donor seminars under way By 2005 theKochs signaled bold ambitions for AFP by recruiting

Tim Phillips a former Christian right organizer to directand vastly expand the operation at both national and statelevels As figure 3 shows AFPrsquos growth was remarkableeven before Barack Obama launched his run for thepresidency As indicated by the deep purple coloring onthe map by the end of 2007 AFP already had paid statedirectors permanently installed in 15 states encompassingalmost half the total US population and their representa-tives in Congress Well before Democratic sweeps in the2008 elections AFP organizations were ensconced not justin conservative regions but also in the electorally-contestedMidwest and Upper South

Our project uses a unique laboriously-assembled dataset to track the growth of AFP In recent years the AFPnational website includes a menu linking to what arecalled state ldquochaptersrdquoBut not all of those so-called chaptershave actually had any continuous staffing To get at solidorganizational foundations we use the presence of a paidstate director to determine whether AFP in a given stateamounts to more than just names on a national list ortemporary field staffers deployed from neighboring states fora specific election or policy campaign To determine thenames and terms of paid state directors we have collectedinformation from earlier AFP website postings archived onthe Internet ldquoWayback Machinerdquo Using contemporaneouslists along with real-time announcements of the arrival anddeparture of AFP state directors allows us to track where andwhen interruptions occurred in AFP expansion

Figure 3The rapid growth of Americans for Prosperity

Notes Sources include archived AFP webpages (from the Internet Archive) and media reports



Like most organizational heads AFP leaders tend toportray their federation as always growing and neverexperiencing any setbacks and in prospectuses preparedfor donors they offer bold projections of future growthBut real-time analyses show that AFP has from time totime fallen short of projections and has even disbandedstaffs in certain states For instance the state of Oregonhad paid state directors from 2007 to 2013 before AFPclosed shop there46 Directors were implanted onlytemporarily in North Dakota (2006ndash2007) Maryland(2009ndash2011) Washington (2010ndash2011) and Connecticut(2011ndash2012) and AFP organized New Mexico only verybriefly in 2012ndash201347 In addition as of 2015 ten stateshave never had paid AFP directorsmdashin a mix of large liberalstates and small very conservative states Even with ups anddowns spelled out however the nationwide reach attainedby AFP is truly remarkable By 2015 it had paid directors in34 states encompassing four-fifths of the US populationIn addition AFP carries on its master contact lists manyconservative activists who reside in the states where it doesnot have a paid staff presence48 Each year AFP announcesplans for further expansion and according to PoliticorsquosKenneth Vogel intends to have staffing up and runningin all but eight states by 201649

For the period from 2004 through 2015 the data tableincluded in figure 3 tracks the overall growth in affiliatedvolunteer activists budgets and total staffing (using lists ormedia reports that include national staffers as well as statestaffs) Every indicator points to a sharp upward growthtrajectorymdashwith the caveat that the ranks of volunteerconservative activists in regular contact with AFP havegrown only gradually since 2013 from 23 to almost25 million while paid-staffing levels have grown moresharply across the federation as a whole As AFP hasmarshaled generous donor resources from the Koch net-work its ratio of paid staffers to volunteer activist contactshas grown AFP is becoming steadily more top-heavy acrossthe board What is more the national headquarters nowraises and deploys major resource ldquosurgesrdquomdashinfusing moneyfor advertisements and bevies of temporary field operatives tobolster election campaigns and policy battles in pivotal statessuch as Colorado50 and Florida51

Basic organizational growth aside how does Americansfor Prosperity actually function as a political operation Inhighly unusual ways it combines features that are oftenfound separately Americans for Prosperity is centrallydirected yet federated it impacts both elections andpolicymaking it combines insider lobbying with publiccampaigns and grassroots activation andmdashperhaps mostimportant of allmdashAFP enforces its own highly disciplinedpolicy agenda but at the same time is thoroughly intertwinedwith the Republican Party Each of these combinations offeatures and functions deserves elaboration because takentogether they explain how AFP has become a massive cadre-

directed operation capable of reorienting the priorities of theRepublican PartyAFPrsquos unique combination of corporate and federated

organization is its most striking feature Like a privately-heldcorporation AFP is a fully national organization directedfrom above by centrally-appointedmanagers operating fromtheir headquarters in Arlington Virginia National manag-ers oversee functions such as fundraising policy and webcommunicationsmdashand in recent years AFP has also pro-liferated regional managers who shepherd groups of statesAlong with the AFP board director Tim Phillips and his toplieutenants obviously have complete authority over per-sonnel and resource allocations Over-time tracking showsthat AFP officials are appointed and removed at will andregularly moved around Likewise managers shift betweenAFP and other core Koch organizations Top AFP leadersdirect special infusions of funds into various functions andstatesmdashfor example into big advertising buys during keySenate election battles52 or into hot campaigns to blockMedicaid expansion in particular states53

But even though AFP is highly centralized like a cor-poration it also has a federated structure with importantstate-level organizations just like classic American volun-tary associations and the US governmental system asa whole54 Directors and other paid staff members such asldquograssroots directorsrdquo are installed in most of the states andgiven considerable room to monitor and influence stateand local politics and to weigh in locally with their statersquosUS Senators and Representatives State-level AFP offi-cials remain beholden to national leaders howeverAlthough AFP usually appoints directors who have expe-rience and longstanding ties in their states these pivotalplayers are not selected by in-state activists National AFPpresident Tim Phillips usually announces the arrival anddeparture of state directors and regardless of varied careerbackgrounds (which we will discuss later) all AFP statedirectors along with all other AFP employees push alocally-adapted version of the standard AFP agenda usingwell-honed organizational routinesTo get a picture of lineages of state directors over more

than a decade our project has gathered data on 58 AFPstate directors (including 45 men and 13 women allwhites) who served between 2004 and 2015 in the first15 AFP states The states in this database are KansasNorth Carolina and Texas where AFP was organizedstarting in 2004 Virginia and Wisconsin starting in2005 Colorado Georgia Illinois Michigan MissouriNew Jersey Ohio and Oklahoma starting in 2006 andArizona and Florida starting in 2007 Of the 43 directorsin these states who have completed their terms theaverage time in office was 209 months (although somestayed in office for many years while a small numbermoved on after just a few months including some whoseem not to have liked the work or who performed poorlyand were removed by the national AFP managers)




State director is an important and pivotal position inthe AFP federation Once in place state directors notonly coordinate the eclectic mix of AFP activities we areabout to describe They also apparently have considerableauthority over appointments of deputies and functionaldirectors in their state The numbers of additional paidstaffers varies greatly from state to state and may dependin part on local fundraising not just budget grants fromnational headquarters In interviews with experts andfrom the public record we have found indications thatAFP state directors are where possible responsible forraising donations from local activists and wealthy donors55

We also note that AFP recently advertised a job openingfor a Senior Regional Development Officer who is sup-posed to ldquocultivate and solicit individuals for contribu-tions to support states in their assigned region as well asnational effortsrdquo Furthermore in some longstandinggenerously-staffed states in-state conservative donors likeArt Pope in North Carolina and the Bradley Foundationin Wisconsin seem to have virtually adopted the localAFP affiliateIn another distinctive combination Americans for

Prosperity conducts political activities between as well asduring elections maintaining a continuity of effort thatits leaders proudly tout in public statements and privatepitches to potential donors56 To be sure AFP budgetsand expenditures balloon during election years as nationaland state operatives channel major funding into advertise-ments especially for presidential contests and key Senateraces such as the 2014 races in Iowa North CarolinaColorado Arkansas and Louisiana In addition AFPdeploys extra funds and personnel to do voter contactingand turnout in key states as it reportedly did in Florida in201457 Nevertheless AFP is not a mere pass through forelectioneering moniesYear to year AFP mounts policy campaigns and

maintains lobbying and grassroots pressure on legislatorsand public officials especially in state legislatures Duringbattles in the states over Medicaid expansion underObamaCare for instance AFP state directors issuedpress releases pressured legislators and mounted ldquograss-rootsrdquo protests58 And the same sort of thing happens inother state-level fights over highway funding taxes andfunding for education and social policies as well as inbattles over right-to-work legislation and curbs on public-sector unions (which we will discuss further later) In allsuch battles AFP organizations work closely with the locallegislators enrolled in the American Legislative ExchangeCouncil (ALEC) and with conservative free-market thinktanks operating in the State Policy Network59 In additionmany AFP-organized states put out annual ldquoscorecardsrdquoto track votes by members of their own state legislatures aswell as publicizing the scores assigned to their statersquosCongressional contingents by the national AFP scorecardof votes in the US Senate and House of Representatives

AFP has released national Congressional scorecards since atleast 2007 showing that GOPers in the House and theSenate have voted with AFP most of the time across allsessionsmdashwith compliance rising from 73 percent in2007 to 88 percent in 2015

This brings us to the third way that AFP combinestypically separated functionsmdashby synchronizing staff-ledlobbying and publicity efforts with mobilization ofvolunteer citizen activists Most AFP-organized stateshave grassroots directors of some sort whose responsi-bilities include maintaining lists of conservative activistscommunicating regularly with them and putting outcalls for public demonstrations from time to timemdashsuchas a protest staged at a legislative hearing about a contro-versial piece of legislation Overall AFP claims to enrollclose to 25 million activists nationwidemdashincludingtens to hundreds of thousands of them in each stateGrassroots members are signed up even in stateswithout paid directors Yet it is important to understandwhat activists domdashand do not domdashin the organizationNo doubt AFP managers pay attention to the ideas andpassions of conservative voters and activists and theycertainly try to build and update contact lists so rank-and-file conservatives can be contacted for issue campaignsturned out on Election Day and urged to donate to AFP(which can then proudly proclaim that it has large numbersof ldquosmall donorsrdquo) But in no sense is AFP controlled bycitizen ldquomembersrdquo Voluntarily-affiliated citizens do notelect AFP leaders they do not provide the bulk oforganizational funding and they do not determine AFPpublic messages or issue agendas Wealthy donors andcentrally-orchestrated managers within the Koch politicalnetwork perform all of those directive functions

Now we get to the heart of the matter what AFP aimsto accomplish and how it relates to other conservativeorganizations and the Republican Party In essence AFPis autonomous and directed from above yet at the sametime it is sufficiently intertwined with the GOP at alllevels that it can pull party agendas steadily rightwardAFP pursues a broad pro-free-market agenda with ahighly-disciplined focus on economic and political issuesavoiding controversial social policies like gay marriageabortion and immigration as much as possible Likeearlier free-market advocacy groups it pressures and pullsRepublican candidates and officeholders to follow itspreferred agenda But unlike earlier kindred organiza-tions AFP pursues a broader set of priorities and engagesin a more integrated array of political activities acrossmultiple levels of government It more closely resemblesa European-style political party than any sort of special-ized traditional US advocacy group or election campaignorganization Yet AFP is not a separate political partyIt is instead organized to parallel and leverage theRepublican Party because it overlaps with the party but isnot subsumed within it or beholden to GOP officials



With a disciplined focus on its own agenda AFP leveragesRepublican candidates and officeholders and pulls them tothe far right on political-economic issues

In some ways AFPrsquos connection to the GOP is similarto the ldquoanchoringrdquo relationship that the labor movementused to enjoy with Democrats60 Like AFP the labormovement at its mid-twentieth-century peak was a feder-ated operation that combined rank-and-file members withnational leadership (although many unions gave ordinarymembers more democratic control than AFP has everdone) Like AFP organized labor sought to pull the wholeDemocratic Party to the left on economic issues bysupporting favored candidates and policies at all levels ofgovernment Indeed from time to time AFP leadersopenly acknowledge that their organization is self-con-sciously built to parallel and counter unions especiallypublic-sector unions In a revealing interview with theNew York Times AFPrsquos chief executive recently explainedthat laborrsquos influence was ldquounmatched by anything on therightrdquo a decade ago but now AFP is ldquospreading themessage through the same meansrdquo61 Of course in recenttimes most unions have experienced sharp declines inmembership resources and clout within the DemocraticParty orbit while AFP is growing rapidly and exercisinggreater influence over the GOP

On which issues does AFP exert that influence Ourproject has not yet assembled a full data set coding issuesmentioned in AFP press releases and on AFP websitesover time both nationally and in the various states Buthundreds of hours spent on AFP websites past and currentallow us to say with confidence that this organizationexercises tight control over the policy goals its operativespursue and discuss in public The clearest evidence lies inthe fact that AFP public communications have always beencentered in a single website whose format and content isquite standardized and obviously managed from aboveState organizations have their own dedicated webpages andsome include state-specific contentmdashfor example newsupdates about upcoming public events or legislative battlesin that state But on both the national and state-specificportions of the AFP website the range of issues covered ishighly standardized Even state and regional media coverageof local AFP efforts follows pretty much the same scriptUsing almost identical phrasing AFP directors are quotedparroting their own local versions of the organizationrsquosmantras about limited government free markets andindividual liberty

Another important indicator is provided by the nationalAFP Congressional scorecards issued by the group Like allscorecards these record each Senatorrsquos and Representativersquosvotes on selected issues indicating whether those votesreflect or fail to reflect AFP preferences On these widely-disseminated scorecards AFP does not track all conservativepriorities but instead focuses on votes in policy areas of coreconcern to the Koch networkmdashvotes on bills about budgets

and spending energy and the environment health care andentitlements taxes labor education and pensions bankingand financial services property rights and technology Thisevidence about scorecard categories dovetails perfectly withthe emphases we see on AFP webpages about state-levelissue campaigns and legislative monitoringOn webpages in statements to the media in lobbying

efforts and at public protests messages from national andstate AFP operatives focus relentlessly on promoting taxcuts blocking and eliminating business regulationsopposing the landmark health-reform law passed in2010 pushing for reductions in funding of (and wherepossible the privatization of) public education and social-welfare programs and opposing state-level environmentalinitiatives and any from the US EnvironmentalProtection Agency In these respects the AFP agendaaligns with long-standing anti-tax and ultra-free-marketgroups like the Club for Growth and Americans for TaxReform as well as with the priorities pushed by theconservative activists and corporate interests operatingthrough ALEC to shape state legislation In addition likemany of these other organizations AFP works to undercutprivate and public-sector labor unions and reduce theranks and rights of public employees And AFP stateorganizations often support bills and administrative meas-ures to restrict easy voter registration cut back on votingdays and hours and generally make it difficult for youngand minority people to vote AFP is a fighting organizationthat works relentlessly to shrink government reduceeconomic regulations and redistribution and disempowerliberal and Democratic constituenciesAs we have learned from career histories and news

coverage many AFP leaders (as well as grassrootssupporters) are Christian conservatives opposed to abor-tion and gay marriage and quite a few activists involvedwith AFP want to restrict immigration But these ldquosocialissuesrdquo are not core AFP concerns As an organization AFPdoes not take stands on most hot-button social issues orgive much if any public attention to them Especially inconservative states AFP definitely cooperates in electionsand issue campaigns with gun-rights groups Christianright groups and even immigration restriction groupsOn an ad hoc basis AFP joins typical conservative alliancesBut AFP itself keeps the focus on the Koch networkrsquos coreeconomic and political prioritiesShould we then conclude that AFP is just another

ultra-free-market advocacy group Does AFP simply addcapabilities for citizen outreach to such longstandingelite funded and top-down operations as the Club forGrowth and Americans for Tax Reform (ATR)62 Inpart the answer is yesmdashAFP does add important newcapabilities especially via its many state-level organizationsBut AFP also appears to have a different relationship to theRepublican Party In classic advocacy-group modes theClub for Growth and Americans for Tax Reform are run by




separate sets of professionals and push on the GOP from theoutside usually at the national level AFP in contrast isorganized as a federation that parallels the political partiesand especially in its state organizations turns out to bethoroughly intertwined with the Republican Party in bothelections and governanceEarly in our research we imagined that AFPrsquos ability to

pressure Republican candidates and officeholders might bedue to its separate organization that AFP like the Club forGrowth and ATR might work through career staffers topunish and reward Republicans according to their fealty tothe Koch agenda Information we have collected on careertrajectories shows that Club and ATR staffers rarely comefrom Republican positions or move on to such posts Cluband ATR staffers tend to pursue careers within the worldof conservative lobbying groups In contrast AFP statedirectorsmdashthe paid staffers at the frontline of AFPrsquospolitical operationmdashpursue careers that are thoroughlyintertwined with the Republican PartyAs mentioned earlier one of our data sets tracks careers

of AFP state directors By looking at the original 15 AFPstates we could track the careers of AFP state directors overmany years using organizational biographies LinkedInprofiles and media accounts to see what kinds of poststhose staffers held before they were first appointed at AFPand what kinds of positions they moved on to hold aftertheir stints as AFP state directors (In addition we havegathered information on the prior career posts held by all34 state directors in office as of the late summer of 2015For reasons of space these data are not reported here but

the earlier careers for current AFP directors align closelywith the longer-term findings we report for the earliestorganized states)

From figure 4 and the background data several patternsstand out

bull Quite a few AFP state directors are promoted fromwithin the federation Deputy directors often moveup to state directorships and even more frequentlyformer state directors move up to higher-level AFPposts (to become for example regional directors ormanagers in the national office) or end up in top postsin other Koch organizations The Koch network hascreated a substantial internal labor market

bull Many AFP state directors come frommdashand latermove on tomdashother key positions in the conservativeworld including top posts in businesses and businessassociations and in conservative advocacy groups Thebusiness posts are usually not in corporations howeverthey are typically ownerships of political consulting orpublic-relations firms that work especially for GOPclients

bull Tellingly figure 4 reveals that a very high proportionof AFP state directors held earlier positions in GOPelection campaigns or on the staffs of Republicanlegislators and executives and after their AFP stintsmany have also moved on in due course to such postsTwo-thirds of AFP directors have had earlier careerexperiences on Republican staffs And close to one-thirdof state directors moved on immediately or later to

Figure 4Careers of state directors for Americans for Prosperity

NotesData on directors for 15 earliest AFP state organizations KS NC TX from 2004 VAWI from 2005 CO MI MO NJ OH OK GA IL

from 2006 AZ FL from 2007



positions in GOP campaigns or staffs Often thesepost-AFP jobs in the Republican Party are very sig-nificant positions such as legislative staff directors orheads of presidential or senatorial campaigns Inaddition as previously noted many prior and post-AFP career stops are in businesses serving Republicanclients

These data show that the AFP federation has been ableto penetrate GOP career ladders and recruit experiencedknowledgeable Republican staffers usually young menin their thirties or forties into pivotal positions as statedirectors in its own parallel organization This penetra-tion of Republican career lines brings clear-cut advantagesto Americans for Prosperitymdashand to the Koch network asa whole AFP recruits with GOP experience have valuableknowledge and connections to party circles within eachstate They know who counts in Republican politicslegislatures and governorsrsquo offices and their savvy makes iteasier for AFP to mount well-targeted lobbying efforts andissue campaigns AFPers who have worked in GOPpositions also know the strengths and vulnerabilitiesof each statersquos Republican ldquoestablishmentrdquo which ofcourse greatly helps AFP to gain leverage duringlegislative battles In addition when former AFP statedirectors later move into Republican postsmdashby direct-ing election campaigns working as political consul-tants or managing governing staffsmdashchances are thatmany of them will further AFP agendas and help dragthe Republican Party as a whole further to the right onpolitical-economic issues

Overall AFP exhibits an ideal combination of autonomyfrom and embeddedness within GOP circles a uniquesituation that helps the Koch network serve as an ideolog-ical backbone and right-wing force for todayrsquos RepublicanParty This happens not only because the Koch networkthrows a lot of money around and not even because itthreatens politicians with sanctions if they stray from theKoch agendamdashtactics that other groups like the Club forGrowth and ATR perfected long before AFP emergedRather the most pervasive and subtle form of leverage bythe Koch network on the Republican Party happensbecause of the flow of people back and forth between thetwo operations

A concrete example nicely dramatizes how AFPrsquosparallel and intertwined organization can help the far rightprod and pull Republicans and powerfully affect policyagendas and outcomes In the November 2012 elections inTennessee a campaign operative named Andrew Ogles ledsuccessful efforts to elect Republicans to super-majoritycontrol of the state legislature In early 2015 Bill Haslamthe very popular GOP governor of the state who hadhimself won re-election by an overwhelming marginpushed a proposal to adopt a conservative variant ofMedicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act This

proposal had strong backing from Tennessee hospitalsand health care businesses as well as from the statersquosChamber of Commerce But Tennesseersquos far right wasfirmly opposed to the expansion Backed by resourcesfrom national AFP headquarters an all-out campaign toblock legislative approval of Haslamrsquos proposal wasspearheaded by the state AFP organizationmdashled by itsrecently-appointed state director none other thanAndrew Ogles In a short span Ogles went from electingRepublicans to full control of the Tennessee legislatureto targeting many of those very same legislators withretribution when they showed any openness to expandingMedicaidmdashnot just lobbying them but also unleashingradio ads and door-to-door canvassers In a very shorttime Governor Haslamrsquos proposal died in the legisla-ture63 Obviously AFP-Tennessee Director Ogles knewexactly how to leverage the very Tennessee GOP legis-lature he had helped to elect and his expertise andleadership allowed AFP working with other right-winggroups to re-set the legislaturersquos agenda and undercut theRepublican governorrsquos willingness to compromise withthe Obama administration

Assessing the Impact of the KochNetwork on Politics and PolicyFiguring out whether political organizations actually havea specific net impact on election outcomes public agendasand public policies is one of the most difficult challengesanalysts facemdashand our project is still in the early stages oftrying to trace and pin down the precise impact of the Kochnetwork on the Republican Party and on US politics andpublic policymaking more generally One important re-search possibility we have not yet pursued is a systematicstudy of whether in GOP primary elections candidates withKoch donor support and backing from Koch politicalorganizations do better overall than other candidatesBeyond elections however governing agendas and policychanges are another important area to exploreArguably given what we have learned about the

emphasis the Koch network places on broad andsustained political change ldquoKoch effectsrdquo on the GOPmight be stronger in critical policy battles and the setting ofgoverning agendas than in elections From the Kochnetwork perspective using a combination of carrots andsticks as well as resources and ideas to inspire already-sitting GOP officials to avoid certain policies and supportothers is an even more efficient way to shape US politicsthan battling it out election by election to change GOPofficeholders Furthermore because of themassive resourcesthe Koch network is able to raise and deploy a more globaland long-term strategy is possibleIn this section we introduce preliminary empirical

evidence suggesting that Koch network operations havecontributed to growing gaps across issue-areas betweenGOP policy stands and majority citizen preferencesmdashand




occasionally to rifts between Republican priorities and thepolicy preferences of mainstreamUS business groups wellestablished in the GOP coalitionIn our introduction we pointed to many issue areas

where Republican candidates and officeholders increasinglyadhere to unpopular policy stands All of the discordantpolicy positions to which we pointedmdashon issues of taxessocial benefits climate policy and union rightsmdashin factalign todayrsquos Republicans with Koch network positionsrather than with the preferences of most Americansmdashandsometimes align GOPers and Koch leaders together againstthe preferences of key business groups and most Republicanvoters However correlation establishes plausibility notnecessarily causation Even though the GOP and the Kochnetwork may be aligned in opposition to majority prefer-ences in various policy domains this does not prove thatKoch network efforts are the explanation To get closer tothe causal mechanisms that could be at workmdashand to pointtoward agendas for further researchmdashwe take a look in theconcluding section at several national and state policy arenaswhere Koch forces have recently wielded growing clout thatmay well help to explain otherwise puzzling Republicanpriorities

Congressional Climate PoliticsGlobal warming politics in Washington DC is one sucharea Ever since its 1990s campaign against the Clintonrsquosadministrationrsquos proposed ldquoBTU taxrdquo the Koch networkhas worked to defeat climate-change legislation64 Inaddition to financing scientific and policy research thatquestions the reality of human-induced climate changethe network lobbies Congress aggressively with AFP in thevanguard65 Adapting a tactic from Americans for TaxReform AFP has for some years pushed lawmakers to signa ldquoNo Climate Taxrdquo pledge promising to oppose ldquoanylegislation relating to climate change that includes a netincrease in government revenuerdquoThis squarely targets anypossible carbon tax a tool for reducing dangerous emis-sions from burning fossil fuels that is supported by manyeconomists including some conservatives66 As figure 5shows Republicans in Congress have increasingly signedon to the AFP pledge In the House pledge signatorieshave increased from close to half of all GOP Representa-tives during the 111th Congress to three-fifths of them inthe 113th Congress In the Senate GOP support hasincreased even more dramatically growing from just one-quarter of GOP Senators in the 111th Congress to 56percent of them in the 113thAre Republicans who sign the pledge simply reflecting

public or constituent views Thanks to the Yale Projecton Climate Change Communication we know that theanswer is ldquonordquo based on reliable measures of publicattitudes about global warming in states and Congressionaldistricts67 As it turns out even in the constituencies ofthe GOP representatives and senators who have signed the

ldquoNo Climate Taxrdquo pledge majorities of Americans believeglobal warming is happeningmdashand want to take action toaddress its ill effects Across the states and districts repre-sented by legislators who signed the AFP pledge in 2015 anaverage of 59 percent of Americans say that global warmingis happening and an average of 58 believe it threatensfuture generations (refer to figure 6) Even more strikingly73 percent of residents in these districts on averagesupport action to regulate carbon dioxide In this policyrealm AFPmdashand the Koch network more generallymdashareclearly urging Republicans to take positions against thebeliefs of most of their constituentsmdashincluding majori-ties of moderate Republicans68 Only the most conser-vative GOP voters agree with the stands the Kochnetwork is trying to enforce in the Republican Party

Legislative Battles in the StatesIn state-level policy battles too Americans for Prosperityand the larger Koch network have helped to drag the GOPnot just into signing pledges but into legislating at oddswith public preferences Here Koch network capacities toleverage Republicans across levels of government becomeespecially relevant because state legislators and governorsare the key players in important fights over the rights ofpublic-sector unions to organize and bargain collectivelyand also in struggles about whether to expand Medicaidcoverage to the near-poor using funds from the 2010Affordable Care Act

Koch leaders have always strongly opposed public-sectorunions in part because they see all unions as distortionsof the ldquofree marketrdquo but also because they understandthat public-employee unions promote liberal policiesand boost Democratic candidates with contributionsand get-out-the-vote efforts By restricting the rights ofpublic-sector workers to organize and bargain withgovernment the Koch network can eviscerate a key part

Figure 5Congressional GOP support for the AFP cli-mate pledge



of the liberal coalitionmdashand AFP in particular brings newclout to this battle69 Among the most active groups incampaigns for rollbacks and restrictions of public-unionprerogatives AFP state organizations hold rallies co-ordinate petitions and orchestrate contacts betweengrassroots adherents and state lawmakers70 Often spend-ing extra resources sent from AFP headquarters and Kochdonors state organizations run ads in favor of anti-unionbills help to fund litigation challenging public-sectorunion rights and conduct ldquopush-pollsrdquo asking distortedquestions in order to highlight apparent public supportfor anti-union legislation

AFP efforts to curb unions proceed regardless ofobjectively-measured public preferences More thantwo-thirds of registered voters in 2011 told pollsters thatthey believed states should allow public-employee unionsto negotiate for salaries and benefits71 And well over halfof American adults opposed efforts by Republican gover-nors to curb collective bargaining rights and cut pay forstate employees in the wake of GOP takeovers of manystate governments72 We have also examined state-levelvariations in public support for unions Drawing on fournationally-representative surveys of adult Americans con-ducted between February and March of 2011 we esti-mated the share of adults in each state that supportedrestricting public-sector union rights to bargain collec-tively (refer to Appendix C for a summary of our approachto this estimation) Support for restrictions ranged from 31percent of adults in the District of Columbia to 46 percentof adults in New Hampshire with the average across allstates falling at 40 percent But variations in public viewshad little relevance because union curbs were as readilyenacted in states such as Michigan and Tennessee wherepeople expressed high levels of support for public-employeebargaining as they were in states like New Hampshire andOhio where people were much less supportive In contrast

states with paid AFP directors in 2011 a key measure ofAFPrsquos strength were substantially more likely to enactrestrictions than those without AFP directors in place Only15 percent of states without a paid AFP director passed lawscutting public-employee bargaining rights compared to 48percent of the states with paid AFP heads (this comparisononly includes states that had permitted at least somecollective bargaining at the start of the year)In a full multivariate analysis aimed at accounting for

the enactment of state-level restrictions on public-sectorunion rights in 15 states in the 2011 legislative sessionwe also controlled for additional factors that mightplausibly influence enactments or AFP institutionalstrengthmdashincluding the partisan balance in state gov-ernment (as measured by Democratic control of up tothree veto points the governorship and the state houseand senate) overall union density in the state labor force(a good indicator of overall state liberalism and the strengthof organized opposition to anti-union measures) and thestate unemployment rate (an indicator of economic con-ditions)73 As table 1 shows in this more complex logisticregression model the presence of a paid AFP state directorincreases the probability of a state enacting curbs to public-sector bargaining rights by nearly 30 percentage pointsnearly the same effect size as partisan control of government(refer to Appendix C for the full regression results)74 Publicsector bargaining rights thus seem to be another clear-cutdomain in which GOP lawmakers have responded to Kochnetwork priorities rather than public preferencesSome would argue that when it comes to retrenching

union rights or supporting other economic policies longbacked by business associations Americans for Prosperityand other Koch groups are simply adding heft to long-standing business crusades This is true up to a point andmakes it difficult to pinpoint exactly how much newclout AFP and other Koch organizations bring to long-running redistributive and regulatory battles However incertain policy arenas we see a growing rift between theKoch-backed far right and business groups that haveanchored the GOP since the 1970s75 In Congress theKoch network has joined players like Heritage Action toencourage conservative Republicans to break with the USChamber of Commerce and other business lobbies byopposing bills to renew agricultural subsidies to reautho-rize the US Export-Import Bank and to replenish theHighway Trust Fund76 Similarly in many states theKoch network works to defeat business-backed appropria-tions for highway repairs and infrastructure investmentsPerhaps most tellingly the Koch network has opposed

business associations as well as majority popular opinionin ongoing state-level battles over acceptance of newfederal funding to expand Medicaid under the 2010Affordable Care Act Even in very conservative states likeUtah Tennessee Alabama andWyoming GOP governorsalong with hospital associations and state Chambers of

Figure 6Constituent support for global warmingreforms of GOP signatories to the AFP ldquoNoClimate Taxrdquo pledge




Commerce support Medicaid expansion as a way to garnersubsidized profits and new revenues for their statesBut the Koch strategy calls for all-out opposition to anyand all expansions of public social spending In anotherpublication we have developed new organizationally-based empirical measures of right-wing network strengthin the states to include in multivariate analyses that weighthe relative impact of right-wing networks and Chambersof Commerce in the choices GOP-led states have madeabout Medicaid expansion77 In addition we have trackedintra-GOP battles in state case studies Both approachesshow that right-wing organizations including AFP chap-ters have had a significant impact In most GOP-led statesgovernors and business associations want to proceed withMedicaid expansion but fierce opposition from well-organized right groups usually persuades most GOP statelegislators to slam the door

The Bottom Line The Koch Networkand Rightward PolarizationThe evidence we have presented here suggests that theKoch network is now sufficiently ramified and powerfulto draw Republicans into policy stands at odds not onlywith popular views but also with certain business prefer-ences With massive resources and a full array of politicalcapacities the Koch network of the 2000s has set up shopon the GOP right and become a powerful shaper of thecareers of party operatives and the agendas of Republicanpolitics Arguably Koch network pressures and inducementshave so effectively influenced GOP politicians that many ofthem end up vulnerable to populist defections from voterswho dissent from or donrsquot care about ultra-free-marketorthodoxies on trade or immigration or slashing elderlyentitlements In the 2016 Republican primaries DonaldTrump was able to maneuver successfully in the yawning

gap between the priorities of most voters (including manyRepublicans and Independents) and the Koch economicorthodoxies embraced by the GOP establishment

However we want to be precise about what we are(and are not) arguing here Although the gap betweenKoch network goals and the preferences of most Americansis enormous we do not want to overstate tensions betweenKoch network priorities and the policy goals of corporateAmerica particularly as expressed in recent times by theUS Chamber of Commerce and the American LegislativeExchange Council in the states Because Koch andcorporate priorities are largely aligned on matters suchas curbing labor unions reducing taxes and social spend-ing and weakening government regulation mainstreambusiness lobbies such as the national and state Chambersof Commerce are very unlikely to oppose Koch-backedRepublicans in most elections and Koch groups willcontinue to ally with corporate organizations in potentcampaigns to weaken government as an agent of inclusiveeconomic growth78

In fact the reinforcing alignment between businessassociations and far-right ideological groups like the Kochnetwork may help to explain many of the divergencesbetween public policy outcomes and the preferences ofmost Americans documented recently in the research ofLarry Bartels Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page79 Inimportant policy realms these scholars and others haveshown the significant divides between what most Americanvoters want and what government does (or does not) doPut simply when Koch organizations the national Cham-ber of Commerce and an array of other ideological andcorporate groups call in one loud voice for governmentcutbacks upward-tilted tax reductions and anti-unionmeasures virtually all of todayrsquos Republicans do theirbidding despite what most Americans say they prefer

Table 1Predicting retrenchment of public sector bargaining rights 2011

State CharacteristicChange in the Predicted Probability of State Retrenching

Collective Bargaining Rights

AFP Director 1 30 percentage pointsNo director to paid director [4 55]

Partisan Control of Government ndash44 percentage pointsFull Republican to full Democratic [-72 -16]

Public Opinion ndash34 percentage pointsLowest to highest support for retrenchment [-100 54]

Unemployment Rate ndash12 percentage pointsLowest to highest unemployment rate [-84 60]

Union Density 1 16 percentage pointsLowest to highest union density [-36 69]

Notes Table shows the change in the predicted probability of a state retrenching public sector collective bargaining rights in 2011

legislative session associated with changes in various state characteristics Other variables held at their means

N 5 44 only states with at least some collective bargaining rights in place at start of year were included

95 confidence intervals are in brackets



As we have spelled out empirically the Kochnetwork possesses greater clout and a much strongerideological backbone than most of the groups thatruled the GOP-conservative roost as recently as 2000and the contemporary Koch operation has put in placea parallel federation that can discipline and leverageRepublican politicians across multiple levels of govern-ment When it comes to governmentrsquos role in the economyhowever the overall US conservative agenda has onlyevolved not changed The Koch network brings newcapabilities and ideological extremism to a long-runningclass war from above Battling Democrats and liberalsacross all levels of government between as well as duringelections the Koch network spearheaded by Americansfor Prosperity aims to complete the job started andfurthered by Americans for Tax Reform the Club forGrowth and the US Chamber of Commerce In somepolicy fights the Koch network may flex its musclesagainst business allies But for the most part the networkjust strengthens the ability of right-wing corporate andideological elites to steer American democracy away fromthe wants and needs of most citizens

Notes1 Mann and Ornstein 20122 Hacker and Pierson 20143 On support for Social Security benefits even if it

means raising taxes see the National Academy ofSocial Insurancersquos 2014 poll ldquoAmericans Make HardChoices on Social Security A Survey with Trade-OffAnalysisrdquo On opposition to Medicare privatizationsee eg Bloomberg Poll September 9ndash12 2011 57percent of adults opposed replacing Medicare witha voucher system See also Kaiser Health Tracking PollSeptember 13ndash19 2012 for evidence of bipartisansupport for maintaining traditional Medicare

4 Burman 2016 OrsquoBrien 2016 On strong publicsupport for higher taxes on the wealthy and largecorporations see eg the CBSNew York Times PollNovember 6ndash10 2015 63 percent of adults favoredraising taxes on the wealthy and large corporations

5 On support for raising the minimum wage see egCBSNew York Times Poll May 28ndash31 2015 71percent of adults supported raising the minimumwageto $1010 and 80 percent of adults according to thesame poll supported an employer requirement toprovide paid leave to the parents of new children oremployees caring for sick family members while 85percent supported a paid sick-leave requirement

6 On the history of public sector labor unions seeWalker 2014

7 On historical bipartisan support for infrastructurespending see eg Hacker and Pierson 2016 ch 4On public support for infrastructure spending see theGallup March 2ndash3 and 4ndash5 2013 polling that shows

that around three-quarters of Americans would sup-port new federal infrastructure programs

8 On belief in climate change among Republicansincluding conservative Republicans see Public Opin-ion Strategies August 24ndash27 2015

9 Roberts 2015a 2015b10 Gold and Hamburger 2015 Hertel-Fernandez and

Skocpol 2016b11 For more information on the project see http

terraingovharvardedu12 For data on the Democraticliberal organizational

universe as well as a fuller discussion of measurementchallenges see Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez 2016b9ndash16

13 See eg Berry and Sobieraj 2014 Calmes 2015Skocpol and Williamson 2012

14 Hertel-Fernandez 201615 For examples of interviews see Ryssdal 2015 For

journalistsrsquo attendance at the seminars see Israel 201516 Bonica and Rosenthal 2015 West 201417 Above all see Mayer 2010 2016 Vogel 2014a

2015a18 Gold 2014a 2014b19 Mayer 201020 Barker and Meyer 201421 Gold 2014b Schulman 2014 SourceWatch 2015

Vogel 2014a22 Schulman 2014 9923 Levinthal 2015 Schulman 2014 264ndash6624 Schulman 2014 266-7025 Vogel 2014a 136 Schulman 2014 270ndash7126 Vogel 2014a 133 SourceWatch 201527 See Mayer 2016 ch 7 for details on the health care

reform debate and ch 8 on climate change28 Vogel 2014a 200ndash129 Schulman 2014 286ndash88 Vogel 2014a 130ndash33 and

throughout30 Koch 2010 Kroll and Schulman 201431 Allen and Vandehei 201332 Vogel 2015a33 Koch 2010 Stein 2014 Windsor 201434 The spring 2010 Koch seminar program is available at

Koch 2010 the spring 2014 program is available atWindsor 2014 and the winter 2014 one-on-onesessions are available at Kroll and Schulman 2014More detail on the Koch seminars is to be found atSclar Hertel-Fernandez Skocpol and Williamson2016

35 Levinthal 201536 Bump 2014 Sonmez 201037 Mundy 2016 Overby 201538 Novak 201439 Bautista-Chavez and Meyer 201540 On Themisi360 see Allen and Vogel 2014 for the

data organizations on the left see Hersh 2015




41 Vogel 2015b42 Vogel 2014a 2015a43 Schulman 2014 especially ch 1244 SourceWatch 201545 Moore 200646 Burghart 201547 ProgressNow NM 201448 Americans for Prosperity 2013 201549 Vogel 2015a50 Fish 201451 Mishak and Elliott 2014 Rutenberg 2014 Vogel

2015a52 Vogel 2014b53 Hertel-Fernandez Skocpol and Lynch 2016

Schouten 201554 Skocpol Ganz and Munson 200055 See for example the remarks from former AFP-New

Hampshire Director Corey Lewandowski in NewHampshire Business Review 2012

56 See Americans for Prosperity 2013 201557 Mishak and Elliott 201458 Hertel-Fernandez Skocpol and Lynch 201659 Hertel-Fernandez and Skocpol 2016a Hertel-

Fernandez Skocpol and Lynch 201660 Schlozman 201561 Greenhouse 201662 On the Club for Growth and Americans for Tax

Reform see especially Bai 2003 Hacker and Pierson2006

63 Full accounts appear in Schouten 2015 Sher 2015See also Hertel-Fernandez Skocpol and Lynch 2016

64 Fang 2013 Schulman 201465 Mayer 201366 Geman 201267 Howe et al 201568 Maibach et al 2013 See also more recent data of

registered voters in Leiserowitz et al 201469 For a revealing interview see Stan 201170 Hertel-Fernandez 201571 Fox News Poll March 14ndash16 201172 NBC NewsWall Street Journal poll March 31ndashApril

4 201173 Data on the partisan control of state governments was

from the National Conference of State Legislaturesstate union density data comes from UnionStats andthe unemployment rate from the Bureau of LaborStatistics

74 Note that this analysis only includes states in which atleast some collective bargaining was permitted at thestart of the year

75 Hacker and Pierson 2010 Vogel 1989 Waterhouse2013

76 For more details see Hertel-Fernandez and Skocpol2016b

77 Hertel-Fernandez Skocpol and Lynch 2016

78 See Hacker and Pierson 2016 especially ch 779 Bartels 2008 Gilens 2012 Gilens and Page 2014

Supplementary Materials

Appendix A Budgets of Organizations in the USRepublicanConservative UniverseAppendix B Core Organizations in the Koch PoliticalNetworkAppendix C Public Opinion AFP Advocacy and2011 Retrenchment of Public Sector Union Bar-gaining Rights

httpdxdoiorg101017S1537592716001122

ReferencesAllen Mike and Jim Vandehei 2013 ldquoThe Koch Broth-

ersrsquo Secret Bankrdquo Politico September 11Allen Mike and Kenneth P Vogel 2014 ldquoInside the

Koch Data Minerdquo Politico December 8Americans for Prosperity 2013 ldquoAmericans for Prosperity

2012 Annual Reportrdquo Arlington VA Americans forProsperity

2015 ldquoPartner Prospectusrdquo Arlington VAAmericans for Prosperity

Bai Matt 2003 ldquoFight ClubrdquoNew York Times MagazineAugust 10

Barker Kim and Theodoric Meyer 2014 ldquoWho Controlsthe Kochsrsquo Political Network ASMI SLAH andTOHErdquo ProPublica March 17 Available at httpswwwpropublicaorgarticlewho-controls-koch-political-network-asmi-slah-tohe

Bartels Larry 2008 Unequal Democracy The PoliticalEconomy of the New Gilded Age Princeton NJPrinceton University Press

Bautista-Chavez Angie and Sarah Meyer 2015 ldquoTheLibre InitiativemdashAn Innovative Conservative Effort toRecruit Latio Supportrdquo Cambridge MA ScholarsStrategy Network

Berry Jeffrey M and Sarah Sobieraj 2014 The OutrageIndustry Political Opinion Media and the New In-civility New York Oxford University Press

Bonica Adam and Howard Rosenthal 2015 ldquoTheWealth Elasticity of Political Contributions by theForbes 400rdquo Unpublished working paper Available athttppapersssrncomsol3paperscfmabstract_id52668780

Bump Philip 2014 ldquoAmericans for Prosperity May BeAmericarsquos Third-Biggest Political Partyrdquo WashingtonPost June 19

Burghart Devin 2015 ldquoAmericans for Prosperity Aban-dons Oregonrdquo Irehrorg May 20

Burman Len 2016 ldquoThe GOP Proposed Tax Cuts Wouldbe Unprecedentedrdquo Tax Policy Center Washington DC



Calmes Jackie 2015 ldquolsquoThey Donrsquot Give A Damn AboutGoverningrsquo Conservative Mediarsquos Influence on theRepublican Partyrdquo Cambridge MA ShorensteinCenter on Media Politics and Public Policy HarvardUniversity

Fang Lee 2013 The Machine A Field Guide to theResurgent Right New York New Press

Fish Sandra 2014 ldquoAmericans for Prosperity ColoradoKoch Brothersrsquo Advocacy Gets Local in ColoradordquoAl-Jazeera America August 12

Geman Ben 2012 ldquoHouse GOP Leaders Pledge toOppose Climate Change lsquoTaxrsquordquo The HillNovember 15

Gilens Martin 2012 Affluence and Influence EconomicInequality and Political Power in America PrincetonNJ Princeton University Press

Gilens Martin and Benjamin I Page 2014 ldquoTestingTheories of American Politics Elites Interest Groupsand Average Citizensrdquo Perspectives on Politics 12(3)564ndash81

Gold Matea 2014a ldquoKoch-backed Political NetworkBuilt to Shield Donors raised $400 Million in 2012Electionsrdquo Washington Post January 5

2014b ldquoThe Players in the Koch-Backed $400Million Political Donor Networkrdquo Washington PostJanuary 5

Gold Matea and Tom Hamburger 2015 ldquoInside the bigGOP fight over the influential Export-Import BankrdquoWashington Post March 27

Greenhouse Steven 2016 ldquoCan Labor Still Turn Out theVoterdquo New York Times March 4

Hacker Jacob S and Paul Pierson 2006 Off Center TheRepublican Revolution and the Erosion of AmericanDemocracy New Haven CT Yale University Press

2010 Winner-Take-All Politics How WashingtonMade the Rich Richermdashand Turned Its Back on theMiddle Class New York Simon and Schuster

2014 ldquoAfter the ldquoMaster Theoryrdquo DownsSchattschneider and the Rebirth of Policy-FocusedAnalysisrdquo Perspectives on Politics 12(3) 643ndash62

2016 American Amnesia How the War on Gov-ernment Led Us to Forget What Made America ProsperNew York Simon and Schuster

Hersh Eitan D 2015 Hacking the Electorate New YorkCambridge University Press

Hertel-Fernandez Alexander 2015 ldquoNew ConservativeStrategies to Weaken Americarsquos Public Sector UnionsrdquoCambridge MA Scholars Strategy Network BasicFacts

2016 ldquoHow Employers Recruit Their Workersinto PoliticsmdashAnd Why Political Scientists ShouldCarerdquo Perspectives on Politics 14(2) 410ndash21

Hertel-Fernandez Alexander and Theda Skocpol 2016aldquoHow the Right Trounced Liberals in the StatesrdquoDemocracy A Journal of Ideas Winter (39) Available at

httpdemocracyjournalorgmagazine39how-the-right-trounced-liberals-in-the-states

2016b ldquoBillionaires Against Big BusinessrdquoPresented at the 2016Meetings of theMidwest PoliticalScience Association Chicago IL

Hertel-Fernandez Alexander Theda Skocpol and DanielLynch 2016 ldquoBusiness Associations ConservativeNetworks and the Ongoing Republican War overMedicaid Expansionrdquo Journal of Health Politics Policyand Law 41(2) 239ndash86

Howe Peter D Matto Mildenberger Jennifer RMarlon and Anthony Leiserowitz 2015ldquoGeographic Variation in Opinions on ClimateChange at State and Local Scales in the USArdquoNature Climate Change 5 596ndash603

Israel Josh 2015 ldquoThe Restrictions Journalists Agreed toin Order To Attend the Koch Brothersrsquo ConferencerdquoThinkProgress August 3

Koch Charles 2010 ldquoUnderstanding and AddressingThreats to American Free Enterprise and ProsperityrdquoCover letter and enclosed program from Spring 2010Seminar on held at St Regis Resort For backgroundinformation see Zernike Kate 2010 ldquoSecretiveRepublican Donors Are Planning Aheadrdquo New YorkTimes October 19

Kroll Andy and Daniel Schulman 2014 ldquoThe KochBrothers Left a Confidential Document at Their DonorConferencerdquo Mother Jones February 5

Leiserowitz Anthony Edward Maibach ConnieRoser-Renouf Geoff Feinberg and Seth Rosenthal2014 ldquoPolitics and Global Warming Spring 2014rdquoNew Haven CT Yale Project on Climate ChangeCommunication

Levinthal Dave 2015 ldquoKoch Brothers SupersizeHigher-Ed Spendingrdquo Center for Public IntegrityDecember 15 Available at httpswwwpublicintegrityorg2015121519007koch-brothers-supersize-higher-ed-spending

Maibach Edward Connie Roser-Renouf Emily VragaBrittany Bloodhart Ashley Anderson NeilStenhouse and Anthony Leiserowitz 2013ldquoA National Survey of Republicans and Republican-Leaning Independents on Energy and ClimateChangerdquo George Mason University Center forClimate Change Communication and Yale Project onClimate Change Communication

Mann Thomas E and Norman J Ornstein 2012 ItrsquosEven Worse Than It Looks How the AmericanConstitutional System Collided with the New Politics ofExtremism New York Basic Books

Mayer Jane 2010 ldquoCovert Operations The BillionaireBrothers Who Are Waging a War against ObamardquoNew Yorker August 30

2013 ldquoKoch Pledge Tied to Congressional ClimateInactionrdquo New Yorker June 30




2016 Dark Money The Hidden History of theBillionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right NewYork Doubleday Press

Mishak Michael J and Phillip Elliott 2014 ldquoAmericansfor Prosperity Builds Political Machinerdquo AssociatedPress October 11

Moore Stephen 2006 ldquolsquoPrivate Enterprisersquo WeekendInterview with Charles KochrdquoWall Street Journal May 6

Mundy Alicia 2016 ldquoThe VA Isnrsquot Broken YetrdquoWashington Monthly MarchAprilMay

New Hampshire Business Review 2012 ldquoQ amp A withAFP-NH Director Corey Lewandowskirdquo New Hamp-shire Business Review August 10

Novak Viveca 2014 ldquoGenOpp Too Another GroupAlmost Wholly Funded by Koch Networkrdquo Open-Secrets Blog May 13 Available at httpwwwopen-secretsorgnews201405genopp-too-another-group-almost-wholly-funded-by-koch-network

OrsquoBrien Matt 2016 ldquoWhy the Republican EstablishmentIs Actually Winningrdquo Washington Post March 10

Overby Peter 2015 ldquoKoch Political Network ExpandinglsquoGrass-Rootsrsquo Organizingrdquo National Public RadioOctober 14

ProgressNow NM 2014 ldquoKoch Brothers to ShutDown NM Operations Ahead of 2014 ElectionrdquoProgressnownmwordpresscom January 13 Availableat httpsprogressnownmorg20140112pnnm-exclusive-koch-brothers-to-shut-down-nm-operations-ahead-of-2014-election

Public Opinion Strategies 2015 ldquoRepublicans CleanEnergy and Climate Change Poll of 1200 RegisteredVoters Nationwide With An Ovesample to Reach 500Republicansrdquo Available at httpsclearpathorgdocsclearpath_survey_reportpdf

Roberts David 2015a ldquoThe GOP Is the Worldrsquos OnlyMajor Climate-Denialist Party But Whyrdquo VoxDecember 2

2015b ldquoRepublican Climate Denial Itrsquos theDonors Stupidrdquo Vox December 16

Rutenberg Jim 2014 ldquoHow Billionaire Oligarchs AreBecoming Their Own Political Partiesrdquo New YorkTimes Magazine October 17

Ryssdal Kai 2015 ldquoCharles Koch lsquoI Donrsquot Like Poli-ticsrsquordquo Marketplace October 22

Schlozman Daniel 2015 When Movements Anchor Par-ties Princeton NJ Princeton University Press

Schouten Fredreka 2015 ldquoKoch Group Flexes Conser-vative Muscle in State Fightsrdquo USA Today February25

Schulman Daniel 2014 Sons of Wichita How the KochBrothers Became Americarsquos Most Powerful and PrivateDynasty New York Hachette Book Group

Sclar Jason Alexander Hertel-Fernandez Theda Skocpoland Vanessa Williamson ldquoDonor Consortia on the Leftand Right Compariing the Membership Activities

and Impact of the Democracy Alliance and the KochSeminarsrdquo Presented at the 2016 Meetings of theMidwest Political Science Association Chicago IL

Sher Andy 2015 ldquoAmericans for Prosperity Aims forTennessee Influencerdquo Chattanooga Times Free PressMay 5

Skocpol Theda Marshall Ganz and Ziad Munson 2000ldquoA Nation of Organizers The Institutional Origins ofCivic Voluntarism in the United Statesrdquo AmericanPolitical Science Review 94(3) 527ndash46

Skocpol Theda and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez 2016ldquoThe Koch Effect The Impact of a Cadre-Led Networkon American Politicsrdquo Presented at the Annual South-west Political Science Association Meetings San JuanPuerto Rico January 8

Skocpol Theda and Vanessa Williamson 2012 The TeaParty and the Remaking of Republican ConservatismNew York Oxford University Press

Sonmez Felicia 2010 ldquoWho Is lsquoAmericans forProsperityrsquordquoWashington Post The Fix Blog August 26Available at httpvoiceswashingtonpostcomthefixsenatewho-is-americans-for-prosperithtml

SourceWatch 2015 ldquoThe Koch NetworkrdquoMadisonWICenter for Media and Democracy

Stan Adele M 2011 ldquoHow Workers Learned to FearUnions in Wisconsinrdquo Investigative Fund June 2

Stein Sam ldquoAt Koch Retreat Top GOP Senate Candi-dates Credited the Network for Their Riserdquo HuffpostPolitics August 27 Available at httpwwwhuffing-tonpostcom20140826koch-brothers-ernst-cotton-gardner_n_5718773html

Vogel David 1989 Fluctuating Fortunes The PoliticalPower of Business in America Washington Beard Books

Vogel Kenneth P 2014a Big Money 25 Billion DollarsOne Suspicious Vehicle and a Pimp On the Trail of theUltra-Rich Hijacking American Politics New YorkPublic Affairs

2014b ldquoKoch Brothersrsquo Americans for ProsperityPlans $125 Million Spending Spreerdquo Politico May 9

2015a ldquoHow the Koch Network Rivals the GOPrdquoPolitico December 30

2015b ldquoHow the Kochs Launched Joni ErnstrdquoPolitico November 12

Walker Alexis N 2014 ldquoLaborrsquos Enduring Divide TheDistinct Path of Public Sector Unions in the UnitedStatesrdquo Studies in American Political Development28(2) 175ndash200

Waterhouse Benjamin C 2013 Lobbying America ThePolitics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA PrincetonNJ Princeton University Press

West Darrell M 2014 Billionaires Reflections on theUpper Crust Washington Brookings InstitutionPress

Windsor Lauren 2014 ldquoExclusive Inside the KochBrothersrsquoSecret Billionaire Summitrdquo The Nation June 17



attributed to such pressures from below But this expla-nation sheds little light on accelerating GOP economicextremism On one economic issue after another virtuallyall Republican politiciansmdashincluding contenders for thepresidency and candidates for the Senate in large diversestatesmdashhave moved toward unpopular far-right positionsNot even conservative populist voters are demandingcutbacks or privatization of Social Security or Medicareyet virtually all nationally prominent Republicans nowpush these overwhelmingly unpopular ideas3 Americansin general increasingly favor higher taxes on the richbut Republican politicians universally call for massiveupward-tilted tax cutsmdashand such proposals have becomemore sweeping in each successive presidential contestfrom 2008 through 2012 to 20164 Large majorities ofAmericans including many Republicans favor modestincreases in the minimum wage and new social supportssuch as mandated paid family and sick leave but GOPersin office have become increasingly dug in against allsuch steps5

The rightward lunge of the GOP is undoing long-standing compromises For decades many Republicangovernors and legislators coexisted with public-sectorunions but recently in state after state GOP governmentshave abruptly taken unpopular steps to destroy unionsand eliminate established collective-bargaining rights6

Most voters along with many prominent business orga-nizations favor increased government investments ininfrastructure but more and more Republicans seek tounravel longstanding federal or state highway and construc-tion programs7 Finally most Americans including major-ities of Republicans and GOP-leaning Independentsendorse many environmental protections and want carbondioxide to be regulated as a dangerous pollutant8 But withincreasing unanimity Republican politicians rail againstclimate-change reforms and seek to undercut environmentalregulations of all kinds As Vox reporter David Roberts hasdetailed popular views are not sufficient to explain why theUS Republican Party has become ldquothe worldrsquos only majorclimate-denialist partyrdquo an outlier even compared to otherconservative political parties worldwide9

Clearly many Republican candidates and officeholdersare responding to elite-driven forces not just to votersBut in the elite realm too we must look beyond the usualsuspectsmdashlobbying groups and individual big-moneypolitical donors After all politicians from both partiescourt big-money contributors And business associationslike the US Chamber of Commerce that have long setGOP economic agendas nowadays find themselves fightingfar-right groups over the renewal of longstanding businesssubsidy programs like the US Export-Import Bank or thefarm bill10 Something more must be at work in the recentlunge of the GOP toward the ultra-free-market rightWe highlight a heavyweight new player in conservativepoliticsmdashthe recently expanded ldquoKoch networkrdquomdashthat

coordinates big-money funders and an integrated set ofpolitical organizations operating to the right of theRepublican Party As we will show the rise of the Kochnetwork may help to explain the increasingly-extremeeconomic positions espoused by most GOP candidatesand officeholders

An Organizational ApproachFor this analysis we draw data and findings froma new research project on ldquoThe Shifting US PoliticalTerrainrdquo11 Focusing on organizations rather than simplyon mass publics or aggregates of wealthy donors thisproject uses data on the founding dates goals budgetspersonnel and inter-group ties of key organizationsactive on the right and left in US national and cross-state politics The project examines both party commit-tees and extra-party organizations ranging from thinktanks and donor organizations to advocacy and constit-uency groups Where wealthy funders are concerned wepay especially close attention to ldquodonor consortiardquomdashthatis organizations such as the twice-yearly Koch seminarsconvened by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerceon the right and the meetings held by the DemocracyAlliance on the left A focus on such coordinated fundinggroups rather than just on individual donors or partic-ular PACs makes sense because concerted and sustainedfunding efforts are much more likely to have an impacton political parties and governing agendas than one-shotdonations to single-issue campaigns or to candidatesrunning in particular electionsInformation about organizational budgets and in some

cases on leadership and staffing allow us to ask andanswer fresh questions How have balances and relation-ships shifted between party committees and extra-partygroups between old-line organized players and newly-formed efforts and between consortia of wealthy politicaldonors and broad-based associations Can we identifygenuinely new kinds of formations that might help toexplain extreme GOP stances on economic issuesDrawing from our larger project the following sections

provide an overview of recent sharp shifts in the universeof GOP and conservative political organizations and thenexplore the structure and goals of the Koch politicalnetwork that has recently amassed extraordinary capaci-ties to wage policy and electoral battles in dozens of USstates as well as in Washington DC As we will showbecause of its massive scale tight integration ramifiedorganizational reach and close intertwining with the GOPat all levels the Koch network exerts a strong gravita-tional pull on many Republican candidates and office-holders re-setting the range of economic issues andpolicy alternatives to which they are responsive In ourfinal section we explore ways to pin down the impact ofthe Koch network on the overall trajectory of USpolitics and policymaking







































































































































































































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Documents

The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism · 2016. 10. 26. · The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez Presidential election