Right-wing Koch Network raises more than $70 million in bid to 'stop Trump' from winning GOP nomination

29 June 2023

Former President Donald Trump's legal problems, which include a 37-count federal criminal prosecution as well as a 34-count felony indictment in New York State, are not hurting his popularity among Republican primary voters.

A Fox News poll released on Wednesday, June 28 found Trump leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by 34 percent in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. This follows other late June polls showing Trump ahead of DeSantis by 38 percent (Emerson College) or 29 percent (NBC News).

But some Republicans are refusing to accept the claim that a Trump nomination is inevitable, including the Koch Network — which, according to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Shane Goldmacher — is spending tens of millions of dollars in the hope of someone other than Trump winning next year's GOP presidential nomination.

"Two groups closely affiliated with Charles Koch contributed $50 million of the more than $70 million that has been raised," the New York Times reporters explain. "Mr. Koch is a major shareholder in Koch Industries, which contributed $25 million to Americans for Prosperity Action, according to a preliminary draft of Federal Election Commission filings. Another $25 million was donated by Stand Together, a nonprofit he founded."

Haberman, Swan and Goldmacher continue, "The Koch Network's goal in the 2024 presidential primaries, which has been described only indirectly in written internal communications, is to stop Mr. Trump from winning the Republican nomination. In February, a top political official in the network, Emily Seidel, wrote a memo to donors and activists saying it was time to 'have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter.'"

The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist, is extremely skeptical about DeSantis' ability to overtake Trump in the Republican presidential primary. Wilson, one of Trump's most scathing critics on the right, has been saying that Trump hasn't lost his "stranglehold" on the GOP — which he predicts will ultimately "bend the knee" to Trump and give him the nomination.

The New York Times journalists report that although "many top party donors" have "begrudgingly" considered Trump "the inevitable nominee," the Koch Network sees the former president as vulnerable among Republican voters.

"With seven months until the primaries," Haberman, Swan and Goldmacher report, "the Koch coalition of conservatives is still searching for who its influential and wealthy donors believe can take down the former president — a reflection of a broader paralysis among anti-Trump Republican donors who have watched in shock as Mr. Trump's poll numbers have held despite two indictments."

Find the New York Times' full report at this link (subscription required).

From Your Site Articles