David Koch, Billionaire Who Fueled Right-Wing Movement, Dies at 79

David H. Koch, who amassed a multibillion-dollar fortune with his brother Charles from the corporate behemoth they ran and then joined him in pouring their riches into a powerful right-wing libertarian movement that helped reshape American politics, has died. He was 79.

Charles G. Koch announced the death in a statement, which provided no other details but noted that David Koch had been treated for prostate cancer in the past. “Twenty-seven years ago,” the statement said, “David was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer and given a grim prognosis of a few years to live. David like to say that a combination of brilliant doctors, state of the art medications and his own stubbornness kept the cancer at bay.”

Hitching his star to the soaring ambitions of Charles, his older brother, David Koch (pronounced coke) became one of the world’s richest people, with assets of $42.2 billion in 2019 and a 42 percent stake in the global family enterprise, Koch Industries. He also became a nationally known philanthropist and the early public face of the Koch political ascendancy, as the Libertarian Party’s candidate for vice president in 1980.

Three decades after David Koch’s public steps into politics, analysts say, the Koch brothers’ money-fueled brand of libertarianism helped give rise to the Tea Party movement and strengthened the far-right wing of a resurgent Republican Party.

Source: The New York Times

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