At the beginning of campaign season, the Koch brothers and their extensive network announced their fundraising goal for 2016 election spending was about $300 million. But in October that estimate was revised to $250 million — and it could drop lower still if the presidential race ends up being between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
"I could see the network not participating in the presidential election at all," an unnamed senior Koch official told Vanity Fair in an article published Thursday. Both candidates are deeply unpopular in the Koch network, though some Koch donors might back Trump if he competes against Bernie Sanders, scion of democratic socialism, in the general election.
The Kochs have devoted resources to opposition research against Trump, but the network is concerned that Koch-backed attacks would "risk lending credence to [Trump]'s claims of being an outsider who is battling against a corrupt political system rigged by the elites," says the Vanity Fair report.
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