David H. Koch
- Date of birth: March 5, 1940
- Profession: Businessperson
- Board member for: Reason Foundation, Cato Institute
- Parents: Fred C. Koch, Mary Robinson Koch
- Nationality: American
- Place of birth: Kansas
Wikipedia Citation on David H. Koch
Early life and education
Born in Wichita, Kansas, Koch is one of four sons of petroleum industry innovator Fred C. Koch. He attended the Deerfield Academy prep school in Massachusetts, graduating in 1959. He went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning both a bachelor's (1962) and a master's degree (1963) in chemical engineering.
He established an MIT record in basketball by scoring an average of 21 points per game over three years, and held MIT's single-game scoring record of 41 points, from 1962 when he was captain of the team,[3] until it was broken in early 2009 by Jimmy Bartolotta.
Political career
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 promised to abolish 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.[2][11] The ticket proposed legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide.[2] The ticket received 921,128 votes, 1.06% of the total nationwide vote,[12] the Libertarian Party national ticket's best showing to date.[13]
After the bid, according to a book by Brian Doherty, an editor of Reason magazine, David and his brother Charles viewed politicians as "actors playing out a script" and they wanted to "supply the themes and words for the scripts" by influencing "the areas where policy ideas percolate from: academia and think tanks".[2]
Koch credits the campaign of Roger MacBride as his inspiration for getting involved in politics, telling a reporter from New York Magazine,
- "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."[14]
According to Koch, he 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 Elections Commission and all the limits on campaign spending anyway," Koch told New York Magazine's Rinker Buch in 1980. When asked why he ran, Koch 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." [14]
He broke with the Libertarian Party in 1984 when it supported eliminating all taxes[15] and Koch has since been a Republican.[3]
Current political views
He opposed the Iraq war, supports gay marriage, and stem-cell research.[15] He is against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and was against the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.[15] Koch is unsure if global warming is caused by humans and thinks a warmer planet would be good because "[t]he Earth will be able to support enormously more people because a far greater land area will be available to produce food".[15]
Advocacy
See also: Political activities of the Koch family
In 1984, Koch founded, served as Chairman of the board of directors of, and donated to the free-market Citizens for a Sound Economy. In 2004, this organization separated into Americans for Prosperity Foundation and FreedomWorks. Koch continues as Chairman of the Board and gives money to Americans for Prosperity Foundation and to a related advocacy organization, Americans for Prosperity. A Koch spokesperson issued a press release stating that the Koch's have "no ties to and have never given money to FreedomWorks"[16]
Both FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity have been providing funding and training to the US Tea Party movement, which opposes much of U.S. President Barack Obama's policies and legislative agenda.[2] In addition, Koch sits on the board and gives money to the libertarian Cato Institute and Reason Foundation.[2][3][17] In the late summer and early fall of 2010, Koch's contributions to political campaigns, free-market think tanks and other advocacy organizations came under increased scrutiny. Koch supports the Tea Party movement and Republican candidates, and California Proposition 23 (2010). In July 2010, New York Magazine profiled him, calling him the "tea party’s wallet".[3] In August 2010, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker wrote on the political spending of David and Charles Koch.[18] White House political advisor David Axelrod wrote in The Washington Post, calling them "campaigners we can't see."[19] Koch says that: "I’ve never been to a tea party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me."[15]
Philanthropy
Since 2000, Koch has pledged and/or donated more than $600 million to the arts, education and medical research, more than he gave to political causes.[20]
Arts
In July 2008, Koch pledged $100 million over 10 years to renovate the New York State Theater in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (now called the David H. Koch Theater),[21] and has pledged $10 million to renovate the outdoor fountains at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[22]
Koch has been a trustee of the American Ballet Theater for 25 years[23] and has contributed more than $6 million to the theater.[24]
Medical Research
A prostate cancer survivor,[25] Koch sits on the Board of Directors of the Prostate Cancer Foundation and has contributed $41 million to the Foundation, including $5 million to a collaborative project in the field of nanotechnology.[26] Koch is the eponym of the David H. Koch Chair of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, a position currently held by Dr. Jonathan Simons.
In 2007, he contributed $100 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help fund the construction of a new 350,000-square-foot (33,000 m2) research and technology facility to serve as the home of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.[27] He also contributed $20 million to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. The building he financed was named the David H. Koch Cancer Research Building.[28] $30 million to the Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York,[29] $25 million to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to establish the David Koch Center for Applied Research in Genitourinary Cancers,[30] $15 million to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center.[31]
Education
Koch contributed $7 million to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) show Nova,[32] and is a contributer to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., including a $20 million gift to the American Museum of Natural History, creating the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing and a contribution of $15 million to the National Museum of Natural History to create the new David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, which opened on the museum's 100th anniversary of its location on the National Mall on March 17, 2010.[33]
Koch also financed the construction of Deerfield Academy's $68 million Koch Center for mathematics, science and technology,[34] and was named the first and only Lifetime Trustee.[34]
Koch gave $10 million to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory[35] where he was honored with the Double Helix Medal for Corporate Leadership for supporting research that, "improves the health of people everywhere."[36]
Real estate development
In May 2006 he sold what had been Jackie Kennedy's New York City apartment for more than $33 million.[37] He bought the apartment for $9.5 million in 1995.[38] He teamed up with members of New York City high society—including Victoria Newhouse, wife of media mogul S.I. Newhouse Jr., among others—to try to block Donald Trump's Trump World Tower.[39]
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