Political megadonor Charles G. Koch, chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, said “we just screwed up by being partisan” in helping candidates win elections who didn’t support his goals even as his political action committee heavily invests in one of the Georgia Senate runoffs, Axios reported.
“Well, we just screwed up by being partisan, rather than approaching it non-partisan,” Koch said during an interview for “Axios on HBO” Monday.
“Who, I mean, if we’re gonna help elect people who are going to be champions for these policies that empower people, they can realize their potential and succeed by helping others succeed,” Koch said in the video.
Koch expressed his disappointment in the video that those candidates his organization helped and vetted turned out to have different policy ideas than what they had expected.
Koch said in the interview that he recognized they “screwed up” when he witnessed on TV that “some of the politicians that we had helped get elected” put forward “policies that were antithetical against immigration, against criminal justice reform, against a more peaceful foreign policy.”
“And then once they got elected, I didn’t expect them to fully agree with us on everything, but to be, at least be champions on some of the major ones we were working on and that they said they were. And then do the opposite,” Koch said during the interview.
“No, we couldn’t get results, and … the whole purpose of getting into politics were find people who would help move us towards a society of equal rights and mutual benefit, where people can realize their potential,” Koch said in the video. Koch added they’ve gone in the contrary direction from what their goals were.
Koch super PAC Americans for Prosperity Action is supporting the runoff election for Republican Georgia Sen. David Perdue, one of two Georgia Senate races that will decide which party controls the Senate, said Brian Hooks, chairman and CEO of Stand Together and two-decade long co-worker with Koch, according to Axios. (RELATED: The Georgia Senate Race Is More Important Than The Election. But Where Does Trump Fit?)
Hooks told Mike Allen, co-founder of Axios, that his group has supported Purdue for awhile because they “think that he can actually make a difference if he’s returned to the Senate.”
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CORRECTION: This post has been updated to reflect the support for Sen. Perdue’s Senate race. A previous version incorrectly reported Brian Hooks’ name. We regret the error.
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