Election 2016, Money in Politics
By Alex Seitz-Wald
The political network led by conservative industrialists Charles and David Koch plans to spend close to a billion dollars on the 2016 elections, the Koch brothers announced at retreat with donors Monday at their annual retreat in the California desert.The $889 million spending goal would pay for everything from advertising, data gathering to grassroots activation, and donations to like minded conservative groups.It’s an astonishing amount of money, even in the post-Citizens United world when astonishing sums of money have become routine.If they turned on the money spigots today, it would mean spending about $1.36 million a day from now until November 8, 2016. That’s $56,874 per hour, and almost $950 per second.It’s almost a quarter of what spent in the 2000 election by all candidates, parties and groups, Republicans and Democrats, combined, when adjusted for inflation.It dwarfs the $404 million spent by the Republican National Committee during the 2012 election, which was the most expensive election on record, and more than either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney raised.
