David Koch’s son is finding his own footing in sports, philanthropy and now politics. Forbes has exclusively learned that the 26-year-old namesake of the late conservative megadonor contributed $10,600 to a pair of political committees associated with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris over the last three months, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The previously unreported donations by David Koch, Jr. are small change for a member of America’s second richest family (estimated net worth: $144 billion). But the endorsement of Joe Biden’s Vice President by a descendant of the Koch Brothers is surprising nonetheless.
David Koch, Sr. died of cancer in 2019 at age 79, leaving a 42% stake in $125 billion (revenue) conglomerate Koch, Inc. (formerly Koch Industries) to his widow Julia Koch, 62, and their three children. David’s brother Charles Koch, who still serves as chairman and co-CEO at age 89, and his family also own a 42% voting stake in the Wichita, Kansas-based business that their father Fred Koch (d. 1967) founded. Julia Koch and Charles’ son Chase, 47, are the only other family members who sit on the board, and Chase is the only other family member who works at Koch, Inc. with his father (Chase was promoted to executive vice president in 2023 and works on origination and partnerships for the company).
The heirs of David Koch, Sr. had kept a low-profile until February, when they announced a $75 million gift that will fund an ambulatory care center in Julia Koch’s name at NYU Langone’s West Palm Beach location. Then in June, the New York City-based clan paid nearly $700 million for 15% of BSE Global, which owns the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the WNBA’s New York Liberty. In addition to his role as a minority owner, David Koch, Jr., who graduated from Duke University in 2021 and then worked for nearly two years at the Madison Square Garden Sports Corporation, took a job as a basketball operations assistant at BSE in September.
The eldest child of David and Julia Koch is following in his parents’ philanthropic footsteps as well. In August, David Koch, Jr. announced a $20 million gift to Columbia University that will fund a glomerular kidney center in his name. His family has now given away an estimated $1.4 billion to institutions like New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Metropolitan Museum of Art (Julia serves on both organizations’ boards). That’s on top of the estimated $2.1 billion that his free market loving uncle, Charles Koch, has donated to groups focused on education, poverty alleviation and reforming the criminal justice and immigration systems.
As for politics, David Koch, Jr. appears to be paving his own path. Forbes found no evidence of any other Koch backing Kamala Harris, which isn’t a huge surprise. After all, while his mother is less political, his father ran for Vice President as a Libertarian in 1980. Then over the last two decades, David, Sr. and his brother Charles became widely known for their funding of groups like Americans For Prosperity, which has spent tens of millions a year on fiscal conservative policy and politics, including opposing President Obama’s reelection in 2012 (as well as partnering with Democrats on issues like the legalization of marijuana at the federal level).
The Koch Brothers famously refused to support Donald Trump in 2016, and Charles hasn’t grown any fonder of the former President since. Early in the 2024 election cycle, a PAC affiliated with Americans For Prosperity called AFP Action spent nearly $50 million supporting former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the Republican primary and opposing both Trump and President Biden.
“What I think is very dangerous, very destructive for our country is that both parties are becoming increasingly authoritarian,” Charles Koch told Forbes in October 2023, after emphasizing that he doesn’t make the decisions at AFP Action. In March, the group shifted its focus to Congress and the state level, after Haley ended her presidential campaign. It has spent nearly $100 million supporting free market conservatives like Bernie Moreno of Ohio, Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania and Eric Hovde of Wisconsin in competitive House and Senate races to date. With election day less than a week away, it doesn’t appear that any of the Kochs’ money has gone to support Trump.
David Koch, Jr. isn’t the only surprising name backing Harris, whose unlikely endorsements now include former Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as Barbara Bush and Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughters of former President George W. Bush and former New York City Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, respectively.
This also isn’t the first time that the scion has made left-leaning political contributions, though his prior giving appears to have gone unnoticed as well. According to Federal Election Commission filings reviewed by Forbes, David Koch, Jr. donated $5,800 to former Democratic U.S. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York in 2022, after contributing $1,000 to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and $250 to Joe Biden two years earlier.
Note: This story was updated at 12:30 p.m. eastern on November 1, 2024 to change David Koch, Jr.’s age to 26 from 25.
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