Yesterday, Pro Publica had no less than three articles taking an inside look at the Koch Brothers funding network. One talks about Sean Noble, who used to be one of the main men behind the enterprise. Another links to other articles written about the Koch Brothers. Another diagrams their funding network. The fact that people are starting to talk about their inner workings to Pro Publica, even anonymously, suggests that the empire is starting to crack.
The main article, about Sean Noble, is a cautionary tale about how power can corrupt. He presented himself as a Mormon and family man. But the fact of the matter (as detailed in the article) is that the higher he got in the Koch Bros' favor, the more it tore apart his family. Finally, he lost his family and has fallen out of the Koch Brothers' good graces.
The downfall started following the disappointing results of the 2012 election and after the State of California started asking questions about Nobles' activities within the state.
The California investigation, coupled with poor election results, weakened Noble’s influence on the Koch network and shrank the Center’s role within it.
“There were growing rumors, frustration, through 2010, 2011 and 2012, that Sean was controlling everything, that it was too insular, that it was all about who Sean liked and knew,” a top national conservative operative familiar with the Koch network told ProPublica.
Noble’s life was also changing in other ways. No longer was he the Arizona outsider who blogged about serving as the Mormon bishop in his ward, who preferred Waffle House to Washington’s pricey eateries, and who praised his wife for earning “sainthood for tolerating my work schedule.”
In April 2013, Noble filed for divorce. Though his wife of more than 20 years was a homemaker raising their five children, he argued in filings that she deserved no spousal maintenance. After they separated, he bought a condo in Phoenix for himself for $510,000 and another for his parents for $181,500.
Although he is still active in the right wing political scene, Noble is going to have a hard time rebuilding to where he once was. One political consultant, Jeff Miller, talking to California investigators, had these choice words to say about Noble:
“I’m not sure how their network works, to be perfectly frank,” Miller later told investigators in a recorded interview. “But when he, when he started to get in the shit storm, he panicked and lied to you all about how it was done to protect his organizations. That’s what I think happened. I don’t know that, though. That’s what I think happened. I think that he panicked and to prevent your agency from opening up his books, he made, he lied.”
Many of the people in the article about Noble were afraid to talk for fear of retribution by the Koch Brothers. They are still a formidable force in the political world. But the more this progresses, the more the fear from people will grow that they will be next. This is the sort of thing that happened to McCarthy back in the 1950's; he actually became a victim of his own success. More and more people were afraid that they would be the next target of his wrath and eventually, it reached a tipping point. The same thing happened to Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff as well.
The reason that there is hysteria on right wing radio about the IRS auditing right-wing groups is that it is only a matter of time before the IRS starts asking more and more questions about Koch Brothers and their activities. Pro Publica interviewed one former IRS person regarding Noble's activities and was told:
Owens, the former IRS official, said social welfare nonprofits are not allowed to pay “excessive” benefits to people who control the organization or to companies they run.
“That’s probably an excessive private benefit right there,” Owens said, after ProPublica told him how much Noble’s firms earned in 2012. “That’s a huge amount of contracts for someone in charge to hand out to contractors he controls.”
Noble was quoted in the Pro Publica article as saying that the GOP needed more candidates that could connect with people. But there are serious structural problems within the GOP. Ronald Reagan had the unique ability to connect with people even as he mingled with the rich and powerful of this country. But there is no politician on the horizon on the GOP side who has the kind of charisma that Reagan had; people like that are just as rare to politics as LeBron and Jordan are to the NBA. In most cases, if your main comfort zone is with the rich and powerful, it is a challenge to adjust and connect with real people with real problems.
This election cycle is a make it or break it year for the Koch Brothers. They already suffered a puncture in their posture after the disappointing results in 2012. A second unsuccessful election for them will likely send potential donors scurrying to the exits in time for the 2016 cycle. The gerrymandering that has taken place over the last two decades will help them this year, but how much is the big question. If people vote for the status quo despite a stagnant economy in which more and more people are dropping out of the work force every month, it is going to be seen as a failure.