David Koch, the influential billionaire conservative activist and philanthropist, has died at 79. “It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of my brother David,” Charles Koch said in a statement Friday. “Anyone who worked with David surely experienced his giant personality and passion for life.” A cause of death was not immediately clear, but the late Koch had stepped down from Koch Industries, the family’s manufacturing and chemical conglomerate, in 2018 amid declining health. “Twenty-seven years ago, David was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer and given a grim prognosis of a few years to live,” his brother said Friday. “David liked to say that a combination of brilliant doctors, state-of-the-art medications, and his own stubbornness kept the cancer at bay. We can all be grateful that it did,” he added, “because he was able to touch so many more lives as a result.”
The late Koch’s assets were valued at $42.2 billion in 2019, and he held a 42-percent stake in Koch Industries. Along with his brother, he was best known for his extensive bankrolling of conservative and libertarian causes, spending millions lobbying to oppose the progressive agenda on climate change and health care, championing small government, and funding right-wing think tanks and Republican candidates. Along the way, the Koch brothers earned a reputation among Democrats as GOP puppet masters. But their relationship with the party had become strained in recent years, with the brothers waging an internal war to wrest control of the GOP away from Donald Trump, who wrote in 2018 that they had become a “total joke in real Republican circles.” Even as he pushed a conservative agenda, Koch remained an active member of New York high society, lavishing millions on the arts, including at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the American Museum of Natural History.
David Koch, a former libertarian party vice presidential candidate and self-described “social liberal,” retired last year from Koch Industries and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation he co-founded because his “health has continued to deteriorate,” Charles Koch wrote in a letter to employees at the time. According to CNN, his condition had worsened in the weeks leading up to his death.
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