Book SummaryDark Money, by Jane Mayer

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Dark Money

In Dark Money, award-winning journalist Jane Mayer describes how the wealthy elite in America, particularly conservative business tycoons Charles and David Koch, used their fortunes to propagate far-right ideology in American politics between the 1970s and 2016. Under the guise of philanthropy, they created a massive political network that effectively shifted American politics from center-left to the right and infused the culture and government with the previously fringe beliefs of libertarianism and free market capitalism.

Mayer has won...

Dark Money Summary The Koch Brothers: Inheriting Free Market Beliefs

According to Mayer, the Koch brothers’ political beliefs were influenced heavily by those of their father, Fred Koch (1900-1967). Fred was a businessman who distrusted government and was strongly in favor of free markets. He made a fortune building oil refineries in Russia under Joseph Stalin’s regime, as well as building a huge refinery in Germany during the Third Reich. This refinery produced the fuel needed by fighter planes, providing an essential piece of the Nazis’ warfaring capabilities.

(Shortform note: Fred Koch was not the only wealthy American industrialist to contribute to the Nazis’ war machine. Historical records show that the car companies Ford, General Motors, and Opel produced military vehicles and even warplanes for the Nazis and some of their German subsidiaries used forced labor in their production lines. IBM also produced machines and materials essential to the Nazi regime. Experts suggest that American companies’ facilitation of the Holocaust indicates that free market capitalism—like...

Dark Money Summary Building a Movement

According to Mayer, Charles took an interest in spreading these beliefs to others. In the 1960s he became involved with funding and running a school called the Freedom School—later expanded into Rampart College—which taught that taxation was theft, that government should be almost entirely abolished, and that the Civil War should never have been fought because people should have the right to sell themselves into slavery if they wanted to, among other far-right beliefs.

(Shortform note: The Freedom School began as a single-course program on a campus in Colorado before being expanded into Rampart College and later revived as Rampart Institute. Now, Charles Koch is continuing to fund “freedom schools” at institutions like Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. The curricula at these freedom schools are also based on libertarian thought, as at the previous iterations of such...

Dark Money Summary Catalysts: The Factors Leading to the Kochs’ Political Involvement

Prior to 1970, explains Mayer, the Kochs had been focused more on spreading free market ideas to the public and in academia. However, clashes with the government and the legal system led them to seek ways to use their power to directly influence the political sphere.

One of the biggest motivating factors for the Kochs and many others in their donor network was the new environmental and labor regulations put in place by acts like the Clean Air Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act, as well as the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1970.

According to Mayer, corporations were disturbed by these groups’ actions and their potential harm to industrial profits. These regulations posed a threat to the fortunes of many in the Kochs’ circle, including those in the tobacco and fossil fuel industry. Some corporations—including Koch Industries—found themselves facing legal issues as a result of their practices. During these cases, the Kochs established what appeared to be a pattern of spying on and intimidating their legal opponents.

(Shortform note: We can see the Kochs’ concern for their bottom line as...

Dark Money Summary Taking Over American Politics: Richard Fink’s Plan

While the Kochs felt motivated to enter politics, they struggled to gain traction. In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on the libertarian ticket on a platform that mirrored the Freedom School’s curriculum. It called for the abolition of Medicare, Social Security, the EPA, income tax, child labor laws, public education, and essentially every government service except the enforcement of property laws. The campaign failed, receiving just 1% of the vote.

(Shortform note: The libertarian party is currently the third-largest political party in America. However, the Democratic and Republican parties still dominate American elections to the degree that the greatest percentage of the vote that a libertarian presidential candidate has received is just over 3%, which went to Gary Johnson in 2016. The libertarian candidate for president in 2020, Jo Jorgenson, received just 1.2% of the vote.)

Taking a lesson from this, Mayer explains that the Kochs decided to keep their...

Dark Money Summary Electoral Politics: Funding Candidates and Campaigns

Though they had previously been opposed to the Republican Party because it was too moderate, explains Mayer, the Kochs began donating heavily to Republican politicians in the 1980s and 1990s. They were among the top three financial backers of Bob Dole’s campaign against Bill Clinton for the presidency in 1996, and in return, Dole promoted legislation that saved Koch Industries millions of dollars.

(Shortform note: The Kochs may have been spurred into their explicit support of the Republican party by the Senate’s investigation into Koch Industries for the theft of oil from Indian reservations. This investigation convinced Charles Koch that he had to get involved in Washington if he wanted to protect his company. Bob Dole helped the Kochs by submitting an article into the Senate record that included a quote from the chief of one of the involved Indian tribes saying, based on information presented to them by Koch Industries, that the company had not been stealing oil from them. This...

Dark Money Summary The Election of Barack Obama and the Tea Party Movement

According to Mayer, in the 2008 election, outside individuals and groups spent an unprecedented amount of money to influence the results. However, despite the Kochs’ and their donors’ best efforts, Barack Obama was elected president. His platform promised to reduce income inequality by making the wealthy pay their fair share. The Kochs and other elites were highly disturbed by this and were determined to undermine his presidency.

(Shortform note: The Kochs maintained a rocky relationship with President Obama throughout his presidency, particularly over climate change issues. In 2015, Obama singled out the Koch brothers as major contributors to climate change, accusing them of trying to keep clean energy businesses from succeeding by opposing subsidies for such businesses. This prompted a backlash from Charles Koch, who asserted that they’re against government subsidies of all kinds, though he admitted his company benefits from them. However, they have occasionally [aligned on other...

Dark Money Summary Redistributing Power in the States: _Citizens United_ and REDMAP

Having heavily impaired Obama’s power by undermining the bipartisan support he was expecting, the Kochs next went after power at the state level, explains Mayer. In 2010, the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case let wealthy donors and corporations have an even greater influence on politics by removing restrictions on the amount of money they could spend to influence elections. Critics predicted that the decision would result in a huge upswing in corporate political spending, but instead it enabled just a handful of extremely wealthy people to implement their personal agendas in the political sphere.

(Shortform note: Some experts have suggested that the Citizens United case was not as consequential as many believe. They note that the amount of outside spending on elections was already increasing in the early 2000s and maintained a steady rate of increase before and after Citizens United. Some attribute this to the 2002 passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, suggesting that its limits on individual donations to political parties actually prompted [a much greater...

Dark Money Summary Obama’s 2012 Reelection and Its Aftermath: Retooling the Conservative Approach

By 2012, the Kochs had undermined Obama’s administration and created a cultural push in the Republican party towards far-right ideology. According to Mayer, they expected Republicans to beat Obama by a landslide in the 2012 election but were astonished when he was reelected. They had done well in the states, but Mitt Romney had proven to be too weak a candidate to beat President Obama despite the $2.5 billion spent against him.

(Shortform note: Some attribute Romney’s loss less to his weakness as a candidate and more to other circumstantial factors. They suggest that Obama only won in 2008 because of the financial crisis, and that his response to Hurricane Sandy helped him win in 2012. Others say Romney would have done better with a different running mate and that he should have chosen someone like Marco Rubio or Bob McDonnell instead of Paul Ryan.)

According to Mayer, the Kochs and other conservatives set about understanding their 2012 loss and what to do differently next time. Based on research from...

Dark Money Summary The 2016 Surprise: The Election of Donald Trump

In 2016, the Kochs weren’t backing any presidential candidate but were focusing on maintaining their hold on both houses of Congress and further cementing their hold on governments at the state and local levels, which they accomplished. According to Mayer, they were surprised by the nomination of Donald Trump, who gained popularity by painting himself as a self-made billionaire who, unlike his opponent Hillary Clinton, was not reliant on other people’s wealth.

Leading up to the election, the Kochs seemed to oppose him, but after his victory, Trump put together a transition team full of corporate lobbyists, many of whom had ties to the Kochs. Mayer notes that though Trump had won on the claim that he would “drain the swamp,” or rid the government of individuals who were devoted only to enhancing their wealth, he immediately began adding such individuals, appointing people to positions of power in which they could pursue personal financial interests.

As a whole, Mayer explains, the Trump administration began implementing policies that aligned closely with the Kochs’ ideals, promoting fossil fuels, decreasing government regulations, and promising to dismantle the EPA, among other...

Shortform Exercise: Detect Conservative Political Slant in the News

Mayer explains that part of the Kochs’ tactics for legitimizing libertarian beliefs was to shift the political slant of the media to the right. In this exercise, you’ll try to notice both conservative and liberal bias in a news story presented in different publications.

Think of an article or news story you’ve read recently. Now try to find that same story in a different publication. Do you notice any differences between how the publications present the story? For example, do the authors portray certain political parties in a more favorable light than others? Note these differences below.