David Koch, billionaire industrialist and conservative donor, dies at 79
David Koch, the conservative billionaire industrialist who retired from Koch Industries last year due to poor health, has died at age 79.
His older brother, Charles, said on Friday, "It is with a heavy heart that I now must inform you of David's death."
Further details about the time, place, and cause of his death are still unknown.
The Kochs were best known for a vast political network they built that became popularly known as the "Kochtopus" for its far-reaching tentacles in support of conservative causes.
"I was taught from a young age that involvement in the public discourse is a civic duty," David Koch wrote in a 2012 op-ed in the New York Post. "Each of us has a right— indeed, a responsibility, at times — to make his or her views known to the larger community in order to better form it as a whole. While we may not always get what we want, the exchange of ideas betters the nation in the process."
After battling prostate cancer for 20 years, he told a reporter following the 2012 Republican convention that he was thinking about what he will someday leave behind.
"I like to engage where my part makes a difference," he told The Weekly Standard. "I have a point of view. When I pass on, I want people to say he did a lot of good things, he made a real difference, he saved a lot of lives in cancer research."
In 2018, David retired from his roles at Koch Industries because of ill health. His net worth at the time of his death was $42.4 billion.
David, along with his elder brother Charles, has been a highly influential figure in U.S. politics since the 1980s, stemming from their fortune with Koch Industries.
After his father Fred Koch’s death in 1967, his Rock Island Oil and Refining Company was inherited by his four sons. Charles became chairman and chief executive officer in 1967 and renamed the company Koch Industries, Inc., in 1968. Charles and David purchased their brothers William and Frederick’s interest in the company for $1.1 billion in 1983.
David was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received master’s degrees in engineering in 1963.
In 1980, David was the vice-presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, which received slightly more than 1 percent of the popular vote.
David and Charles then focused their energies on promoting libertarian ideas and policies. They contributed millions of dollars annually to scores of foundations, and nonprofit groups, several of which were created or controlled by them.
David also co-founded the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (originally Citizens for a Sound Economy) in 1984 which generally favored laissez-faire economic policies and privatization of public services and social welfare programs.
The brothers also played a central role in climate-change denial and are the primary sponsors of climate-change doubt in the United States.
A new book 'Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America', by the business reporter Christopher Leonard, shows the extraordinary influence that the brothers have exerted to cripple government action on climate change.
The brothers have been criticized for using their enormous wealth to manipulate the political process and public discourse and to advance policies that harm the poor, undermine public health and the environment.
Their defenders have claimed that the extent of their influence has been exaggerated. It has also been said that their political activities are motivated by their desire to bring prosperity to all Americans.
With inputs from AP