Background and career
David Hamilton Koch ( KOHK; May 3, 1940 – August 23, 2019) was an American businessman, philanthropist, limited government advocate and chemical engineer. In 1970, he joined the family business: Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States. He became president of the subsidiary Koch Engineering in 1979 and became a co-owner of Koch Industries (along with elder brother Charles) in 1983. Koch served as an executive vice president of Koch Industries until he retired due to health issues in 2018. 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 and donated to advocacy groups and political campaigns, the majority of which were Republican. Koch became a Republican in 1984; in 2012, he spent over $100 million in a failed bid to oppose the re-election of President Barack Obama. As of 2012, Koch was the fourth-richest person in the United States, and as of 2013 the wealthiest resident of New York City. As of June 2019, Koch was ranked as the 11th-richest person in the world (tied with his brother Charles), with a net worth of $50.5 billion. Koch contributed to the Lincoln Center, Sloan Kettering, NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital, and the Dinosaur Wing at the American Museum of Natural History. The New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, home of the New York City Ballet, was renamed the David H. Koch Theater in 2008 following Koch's gift of $100 million for the renovation of the theater.
Koch was born in Wichita, Kansas, the son of Mary Clementine (née Robinson) and Fred Chase Koch, a chemical engineer. David's paternal grandfather, Harry Koch, was a Dutch immigrant who founded the Quanah Tribune-Chief newspaper and was a founding shareholder of the Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railway. David was the third of four sons, with elder brothers Frederick, Charles, and nineteen-minute-younger twin Bill. His maternal ancestors included William Ingraham Kip, an Episcopal bishop; and Elizabeth Clementine Stedman, a writer. Koch attended the Deerfield Academy prep school in Massachusetts, graduating in 1959. He attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning both a bachelor's (1962) and a master's degree (1963) in chemical engineering. He was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. Koch played basketball at MIT, averaging 21 points per game at MIT over three years, a school record. He also held the single-game scoring record of 41 points from 1962 until 2009, when it was eclipsed by Jimmy Bartolotta.
In 1970, Koch joined Koch Industries under his brother Charles, to work as a technical-services manager. He founded the company's New York City office and in 1979 he became the president of his own division, Koch Engineering, renamed Chemical Technology Group. David's brothers Frederick and Bill had inherited stock in Koch Industries. In June 1983, after a bitter legal and boardroom battle, the stakes of Frederick and Bill were bought out for $1.1 billion and Charles Koch and David Koch became majority owners in the company. Legal disputes against Charles and David lasted roughly two decades. Frederick and Bill sided with J. Howard Marshall III, J. Howard Marshall II's eldest son, against Charles and David at one point, in order to take over the company. In 2001, Bill reached a settlement in a lawsuit where he had charged the company was taking oil from federal and Indian land; that settlement ended all litigation between the brothers. CBS News reported that Koch Industries settled for $25 million. As of 2010, David Koch owned 42 percent of Koch Industries, as did his brother Charles. He held four U.S. patents. Koch served as an executive vice president of Koch Industries until retiring due to health issues in 2018. His retirement was announced on June 5, 2018.
Koch was the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in the 1980 presidential election, sharing the party ticket with presidential candidate Ed Clark. The Clark–Koch ticket proposed downsizing the government through the elimination of various federal laws and departments. These included abolishing Social Security, the Federal Reserve Board, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business, and U.S. Federal agencies including the SEC, EPA, ICC, FTC, OSHA, FBI, CIA, and DOE. Their platform proposed privatizing all transportation and inland waterways. The ticket received 921,128 votes, 1% of the total nationwide vote. This was the Libertarian Party national ticket's best showing until 2016 in terms of percentage and its best showing in terms of raw votes until the 2012 presidential election, although that number was surpassed again in 2016. "Compared to what [the Libertarians had] gotten before," Charles said, "and where we were as a movement or as a political/ideological point of view, that was pretty remarkable, to get 1 percent of the vote." After the bid, according to journalist Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism, Koch viewed politicians as "actors playing out a script". Koch credited the 1976 presidential campaign of Roger MacBride as his inspiration for getting involved in politics:
Here was a great guy, advocating all the things I believed in. He wanted less government and taxes, and was talking about repealing all these victimless crime laws that accumulated on the books. I have friends who smoke pot. I know many homosexuals. It's ridiculous to treat them as criminals — and here was someone running for president, saying just that. Koch gave his own vice presidential campaign $100,000 a month after being chosen as Ed Clark's running mate. "We'd like to abolish the Federal Election Commission and all the limits on campaign spending anyway," Koch said in 1980. When asked why he ran, he replied: "Lord knows I didn't need a job, but I believe in what the Libertarians are saying. I suppose if they hadn't come along, I could have been a big Republican from Wichita. But hell — everybody from Kansas is a Republican." In 1984, Koch broke with the Libertarian Party when it supported eliminating all taxes; in a letter to David Bergland, the Libertarian candidate for the 1984 presidential election, Koch referred to Bergland's platform as "extreme", predicting that the country would be thrown into "utter chaos" if it was implemented. Subsequently, Koch shifted the bulk of his financial support to the Republican Party, though he continued to contribute to several Libertarian campaigns in local races. Koch donated to various political campaigns, most of which were Republican. In February 2012, during the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election, Koch said of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, "We're helping him, as we should. We've gotten pretty good at this over the years. We've spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We're going to spend more," and said that by "we" he meant Americans for Prosperity. In 2012, Koch spent over $100 million in a failed bid to oppose the re-election of President Barack Obama.
Koch supported policies that promoted smaller government and lower taxes. He was against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Koch said he wasn't sure if global warming was anthropogenic, and thought a warmer planet would be "good", with lengthened growing seasons mitigating problems caused by disappearing coastlines and mass migrations. "Earth will be able to support enormously more people, because a far greater land area will be available to produce food". Koch opposed the Iraq War, saying that the war has "cost a lot of money and it's taken so many American lives", and "I question whether that was the right thing to do. In hindsight that looks like it was not a good policy." In an impromptu interview with the blog ThinkProgress, he was quoted as saying he would like the new, 2011 Republican Congress to "cut the hell out of spending, balance the budget, reduce regulations, and support business". Koch considered himself a social liberal who supported women's right to choose, gay rights, same-sex marriage, and stem-cell research. He opposed the war on drugs. Koch opposed several of President Barack Obama's policies. An article from the Weekly Standard, detailing the "left's obsession" with the Koch brothers, quotes Koch stating that Obama is "the most radical president we've ever had as a nation ... and has done more damage to the free enterprise system and long-term prosperity than any president we've ever had". Koch said that Obama's father's economic socialism, practiced in Kenya, explains why Obama has "sort of antibusiness and anti-free enterprise" influences. Koch said that Obama is "scary", a "hardcore socialist" who is "marvelous at pretending to be something other than that". Koch contributed almost entirely to Republican candidates in 2012.
