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| KOCH |
The KOCH EFFECT
NOTE: Except as noted, these comments are the opinions, perspectives or recollections of the author. No guarantee of accuracy is made; however a reasonable effort has been made to realistically reflect the author's life-long familiarity with the community.
No coverage of 21st Century civic affairs in Wichita is complete without a discussion of the "Koch Effect" -- the truly extraordinary and unique impact of the Wichita billionaire Koch Brothers -- among the richest few men in America -- who seek to replace local, state and national politics with their brand of Libertarianism, starting with Wichita.
Wichita's Koch Industries is firmly attached to a fading industry: fossil fuel. Koch is the nation's (and the world's) leading fossil-fuel distribution conglomerate (chief owner of America's oil pipelines, and owner of fossil-fuel pipeline, storage, refining and shipping facilities worldwide) -- an enterprise which has become a chief defender of the fading fossil-fuel industry.
The Kochs' exceptional wealth, heading the largest privately held company in America -- with its global headquarters in Wichita -- has given the Kochs' extraordinary power over Wichita and Kansas... power they use.
In recent years, the Kochs have made a major push to gain control of the political institutions of Wichita and Kansas. They have succeeded, at least partially, in re-aligning the politics of the Wichita City Council, and have had major success in converting the Sedgwick County Commission into a bastion of Libertarianism. More importantly, though, they have essentially seized control of the Kansas Republican Party, infiltrating it with Libertarians and taking over the Kansas Legislature. Their most conspicuous surrogate, though, is Kansas Governor Sam Brownback.
All of these Koch victories have brought massive political and economic change to Wichita... and not with the results promised.
The saga follows...
The most extraordinary, unique and major feature of Wichita politics is the presence of the world headquarters of oil-industry leader Koch Industries (generally regarded as America's largest privately-held company), and its leader, politically domineering Charles Koch -- by far, Wichita's very richest person.
Charles and brother David (all four Koch brothers were reared in Wichita) -- a duo well known in national political circles as simply "The Koch Brothers" -- have been THE dominant national figures in the largely anti-government Libertarian movement. David was once the Libertarian Party's nominee for U.S. Vice President.
Together, along with other family and business colleagues, the elder Koch brothers have increasingly sought to dominate and control Wichita-area politics, using wealth and corporate leverage far beyond anything opponents can muster. Though not always successful, their influence has begun to dampen the general public's normal influence in Wichita's affairs.
With the repeated failure of the Libertarian Party to gain a significant number of votes -- locally, state-wide or nationally (as shown in this 2010 graph of Kansas voters) -- the Kochs helped Libertarian Party candidates to "re-brand" themselves as "Republicans," and used Koch wealth to ensure their dominance in Republican primary elections -- gradually making Libertarian-minded politicians the leaders of the rival Republican Party, at least in Kansas.
This movement began with the Kochs' takeover of a "grass roots" Wichita tax-protest organization -- "Kansas Taxpayers Network" (KTN), originally "HomeOwner's Trust" (HOT) -- founded and funded by another Wichita billionaire, Willard Garvey. Garvey, the city's leading landlord, sought to protect his vast land and grain-storage holdings -- including square miles of low-income apartments across Wichita -- from property taxes and regulations. He disguised his tax-protest lobbying organization as a "grass-roots movement" of individual homeowners, and used it for leverage in tax battles with local and state government.
Garvey died around the turn of the century, leaving his anti-government lobbying group largely adrift. The Koch brothers -- with the money and inclination to continue Garvey's anti-tax, anti-government, liberatarian battles -- became the new sponsors (and, effectively, masters) for the Garvey lobbying group. The Kochs reorganized it as "Kansas Taxpayers Network" (KTN), then coverted it to "Kansans for Prosperity" (KFP) -- forerunner of the Kochs' national "Americans for Prosperity" (AFP) -- and sharply enhanced the sophistication of its operations.
With the emergence of the populist "Tea Party" movement, the Kochs again used their financial clout to co-opt the movement, and steer it towards victory within the Republican Party, then towards Libertarian priorites once in government. Nowhere was that tactic more evident than in the shockingly rapid turnover of the Kansas Legislature in the years that followed.
To seal their control of state government, the Kochs turned to Kansas's junior U.S. Senator, Sam Brownback -- a long-time campaign-finance dependent of the Kochs, during his years in the U.S. Senate, and during his failed presidential candidacy -- often referred to as "the Kochs' boy" in the U.S. Senate. With strong Koch backing, Brownback won election as Kansas Governor in 2008.
Promptly upon election -- backed by Koch-funded victors in the newly reconstituted Kansas Legislature -- Gov. Brownback hired the man that the Kochs had groomed for the job of State Budget Director, an insider from one of the Kochs' political front organizations.
Led by this former employee of his benefactors, Brownback began a Koch-guided "Kansas Experiment" in Libertarian-style radical changes to state government: Massive tax-cuts (chiefly for business and the upper class), dismantling or crippling of government agencies and regulations (especially those affecting business interests), and aggressive cuts in public funding of health, welfare and education.
Although the Kochs, and their political surrogates, argued that the "Experiment" would lead to an exemplary economic boom for Kansas, the opposite has happened. Despite many prior decades of above-average incomes and below-average unemployment, Kansas' economy now lags its neighborhood, and the nation.
The "Experiment" proved to be a disaster for Kansas -- which conspicuously lagged well behind its neighbors in recovering from the 2008 recession (in both general economics and in individual income and unemployment rates) -- a circumstance continuing well into 2016.
Administrative juggling and drastic tax cuts have only fouled the state budget, shoving the state to the edge of bankruptcy, earning credit-rating downgrades from leading investment analysts, and violating various laws -- according to legal analysts, and the Kansas Supreme Court.
Kansas public schools are strugging under state funding cuts (state government taxes traditionally are the principal source of public education funds in Kansas), and less-conservative Kansas urban communities -- particularly Wichita and its public schools --
have been targeted for especially harsh funding cuts. In response, the Kansas Supreme Court (as of early 2016) has threatened a complete shutdown of all Kansas public schools.
The governor, backed by Koch-funded legislators, has adamantly refused to expand Medicaid to work with Obamacare to cover uninsured Kansans, and hospitals statewide are groaning under related financial hardship -- some simply forced to close their doors (an especially major problem for rural Kansas communities, far from other help).
The cataclysmic outcomes from the "Kansas Experiment" led to a backlash against Brownback in the 2012 elections, with many of the state's most prominent, long-time, Republican leaders switching to endorse a Democrat for Governor -- and by 2016 there were open admissions from Brownback's Republican-ally leaders in the Legislature that the "Experiment" is a failure. Still, as of Spring, 2016, Brownback refuses to acknowledge the obvious, and remains fixed on maintaining the course he has set.
Wichita has been one of the communities hardest-hit by the fallout from the Koch/Brownback administration and its "Kansas Experiment."
UPDATE: Summer 2016Koch-guided Kansas state government has faltered under Koch-sponsored Governor Sam Brownback, whose libertarian "Kansas Experiment" — extreme tax, regulatory and government cuts (fashioned by a Koch employee who became Brownback's budget director) — brought financial calamity to the state.
The disaster has made Brownback the most unpopular governor in the United States (as of mid-2016) — with a public-approval rating of only 15%, the lowest of any governor in recorded state history.
As a result — after 6 years of lagging other states in the region in the recovery from the Great Recession, and chaos in the state and local government resulting from Koch influence in state government — the July 2016 Kansas primary election saw a take-back of many key Republican seats in the Legislature, unseating Koch-backed Libertarian-Republicans.
The result of this election is a projected shift of power, in the Kansas Legislature, away from the Brownback administration and the Kochs' politics.
UPDATE, November, 2017:During the 2016 election campaign, Brownback backers (with anonymous funding widely believed to have come partially from the Koch system) funded a lavish and unprecedented campaign to unseat Kansas Supreme Court justices, who had ruled against Gov. Brownback on the pivotal and costly school finance issue, and taken other decisions offending certain factions, including the Kochs.
However, the effort failed, completely and overwhelmingly -- due in part to opposition from both law enforcement supporters and four previous governors (Republicans Mike Hayden and Bill Graves, and Democrats Kathleen Sebelius and John Carlin) who dismissed the power grab by Brownback, declaring that "there should not be political influence over the decisions of the court."
Furthermore, aggressive campaigns by moderate Republicans, and by Democrats -- largely over the school finance issue, and in opposition to the Koch-promoted Brownback tax cuts (and the resulting state fiscal crisis) -- resulted in the election defeat of 40 of the radical-right legislators (most of them Koch-funded) who had backed Gov. Brownback. They were unseated by either moderate Republicans or by Democrats -- shifting power in the Kansas Legislature away from the radical-right Republicans (and the Koch brothers), towards moderate Republicans.
(For details of the outcome, see analysis and opinion essay by WSU Public Administration Prof. Ed Flentje, former Campaign Manager and Kansas Secretary of Administration to Republican Governor Mike Hayden, at:
"Kansas voters rebuke Brownback, tax plan"
November 12, 2016, Wichita Eagle.)Also see:
"Conservative Lawmakers Ousted in Kansas Primary Election:
GOP races seen as referendum on Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax-cut policy"
Aug. 3, 2016, Wall Street Journal
UPDATE, Summer, 2017:Following a reversal of fortune in the Kansas legislative election of 2016, Koch influence waned in the Kansas Legislature, and many Republicans joined Democrats to roll back the tax cuts and other measures that had defined the the Brownback/Colyer administration's controversial Koch-guided fiscal policy, known as the "Kansas Experiment."
See:"Kansas' economic outlook shifting
with reversal of Brownback tax policy"
June 11, 2017, Topeka Capital-Journal
UPDATE, August 23, 2019:In the November, 2018 election -- though some legislative seats were regained by Koch allies -- the race for Kansas governor was won by a Democrat, Laura Kelly. Her election was generally seen as a state-wide backlash against the Brownback/Colyer administration, and a firm, statewide repudiation of their controversial Koch-guided fiscal policies (known as the "Kansas Experiment").
David Koch -- the "Koch brother" who oversaw the Kochs' various political organizations -- announced his withdrawal from the leadership of their political activity.
Several months later, August 23, 2019, David died -- leaving his eldest brother, Charles (who leads the family business, Koch Industries), to oversee their political programs, as well.
Wichita is not the primary focal point of Koch political tampering (the Kochs have shifted focus to the Kansas capital, Topeka -- and to national politics), but Wichita remains a major political target of the Kochs. And Wichita remains the Kochs' backyard "playground" for political and social experiments, and a key breeding ground for their state and national organizations and initiatives.
Nevertheless, strong community resistance to the Kochs -- from many Democrats, Republicans and independents -- has limited the Kochs' abillity to shape and control the city's politics. Differing views and voices still have effective influence (even if noticeably diminished) in Wichita's civic affairs.
Participate - Let your voice be heard!
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