Kochs Will Spend $88 Million on 2012 Election

If the amount of money raised and spent on conservative causes and candidates in the 2010 midterm elections seemed overwhelming (and it was, with total election spending reaching $4 billion), the tally for the upcoming 2012 presidential race will be colossal.

The outlook for election spending in 2012 will be much the same as the past race, only on a grander scale. No substantive campaign finance regulations, the prevalence of outside partisan organizations that can raise millions from anonymous donors, the blueprint for winning long-shot races if enough money is spent attacking your opponent.

And then the Kochs.

The Koch brothers of Koch Industries, the second-largest private corporation in the country, are billionaires ten times over and have become the center of the fundraising universe for the Republican Party.

They spent millions of their own fortune and helped raise tens of millions more through their political organizations in 2010. Now they’ve looking to go bigger and bolder for the ultimate prize in 2012.

Politico reports that the Kochs have set a target goal for themselves of raising $88 million to “steer” towards Republican candidates and conservative causes in 2012.

What can nearly $100 million of Koch money buy?  ”A new voter micro-targeting initiative, grass-roots organizing efforts and television advertising campaigns.”

In an expansion of their political footprint, the billionaire Koch brothers plan to contribute and steer a total of $88 million to conservative causes during the 2012 election cycle, according to sources, funding a new voter micro-targeting initiative, grass-roots organizing efforts and television advertising campaigns.

In fact, as the annual Conservative Political Action Conference meets this week in Washington and conservatives assess the state of their movement, the Koch network of nonprofit groups, once centered on sleepy free-enterprise think tanks, seems to be emerging as a more ideological counterweight to the independent Republican political machine conceived by Bush-era GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie before the 2010 midterm elections.

The aggressive embrace of political activism by the Koch brothers, Charles and David, has cheered fiscal conservatives, who hope they will reorient the conservative political apparatus around free-market, small government principles and candidates, and away from the electability-over-principles approach they see Rove and Gillespie as embodying.

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Charles and David Koch reportedly have a net worth of $21.5 billion each, thanks to their stakes in Koch Industries, their privately owned oil, chemical and consumer products company.

For decades, they’ve been generous donors to academic institutions and public policy think tanks – some of which they founded – that promote small government and free-market conservatism. But in recent years, they have increasingly focused their giving on more activist groups, and, perhaps more significantly, they have used their influence to help guide millions more in contributions from other major conservative benefactors, primarily through twice-a-year donor summits the Kochs have been organizing since 2003.

The conferences, which are sponsored by Koch Industries, bring together roughly 150 wealthy conservative business titans or their representatives to hear presentations from handpicked Republican politicians and thought leaders, as well as the heads of conservative groups hoping to secure big checks to fund their nonprofits.

At the most recent summit, held in January at a Rancho Mirage, Calif., resort, the Kochs and their invited donors pledged to contribute $49 million toward an $88-million budget goal for policy and political projects planned for the 2012 election cycle, which were sketched out at the conference, according to a source with knowledge of the summit.