By: Paul Rutledge
David Koch, who died last week, always seemed to cause a stir despite his best efforts.
On his HBO show “Real Time,” left-leaning comic Bill Maher suggested that the Koch brothers had “done more than anybody to fund climate science deniers for decades.” He added, “F—- him, the Amazon is burning up. I’m glad he’s dead, and I hope the end was painful.”
David Hamilton Koch, born on May 3, 1940, was a businessman, philanthropist, political activist, and chemical engineer. He joined the family business Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States, in 1970. He became president of the subsidiary Koch Engineering in 1979, and he became a co-owner of Koch Industries, with elder brother Charles, in 1983.
Koch was a libertarian. He was the 1980 Libertarian candidate for vice president of the United States and helped finance the campaign. He founded Citizens for a Sound Economy. He donated to political advocacy groups and to political campaigns, almost entirely Republican. He moved to the Republican Party in 1984; in 2012 he spent over $100 million to oppose the re-election of President Barack Obama. Through Americans for Prosperity and other dark money vehicles, he was a leading source of funding for climate change denial and attacks on environmental regulation, unions, and workers’ rights. As of June 2019, according to Wikipedia, he was ranked as the 11th-richest person in the world (tied with his brother Charles), with a fortune of $48 billion.
In September 2014, Koch granted an interview to Crain’s New York Business reporter Theresa Agovino. It read in part: “With an estimated net worth of $41.9 billion, David Koch is the sixth-richest person in the world, and is as beloved by New York institutions for his generosity as he is reviled by liberals for his donations to conservative causes. The death threats Mr. Koch’s political views elicit have made the affable 74-year-old keenly aware that his legacy may be defined as much by politics as philanthropy.
“This week,” the Crain’s piece continued, “the Metropolitan Museum of Art will unveil a $65 million David H. Koch Plaza. New York-Presbyterian Hospital later this month will break ground on the David H. Koch Center, named for his $100 million gift. Other institutions with facilities named to acknowledge Mr. Koch’s largesse include Lincoln Center, the Hospital for Special Surgery and the American Museum of Natural History… All told, Mr. Koch says he’s given away about $1.3 billion—a sum that he claims outweighs his political contributions, though he would not say by how much.”
As Agovino pointed out, even philanthropy seemed to generate controversy. “Still, even his good intentions have stirred backlash. Unions have demanded New York-Presbyterian return the $100 million gift because of Mr. Koch’s efforts to repeal Obamacare. A $25 million donation he and his brother Charles made to the United Negro College Fund also provoked outrage, with some saying his political efforts harm African-Americans.”
