Dark Money
The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Jane Mayer · 2016 · Politics & Society
9 min · 10 chaptersNarrated in your voice
What it's about
Jane Mayer traces how a small network of ultra-wealthy families, especially the Kochs, Scaifes, Coors, and Olins, spent decades and billions of dollars building think tanks, university programs, and legal doctrines to shift American politics rightward, then exploited campaign finance rulings like Citizens United to convert that infrastructure into direct electoral power. The book matters because it documents, with names and dollar figures, how private fortunes reshaped public policy on taxes, regulation, and climate science while presenting their efforts as grassroots movements.
Reading plan
Pick a finish date and Genius lays out the days — the plan shows today's target and keeps you honest.
Read together
Start a circle and share the code — everyone sees everyone's honest place in the book. Accountability, not leaderboards.
Who it's for
- Readers who want to understand how a handful of donors reshaped Republican Party politics over four decades - Journalists and students of campaign finance who need documented case studies of dark money networks - Anyone puzzled by the sudden institutional force behind Tea Party and climate-denial politics after 2009
What’s inside
- 1The Koch Family Fortune and Its Grievances1 min
The modern conservative donor network began not with abstract ideology but with the Koch family's personal business grievances against government regulation and taxation.
- 2Building the Idea Factories1 min
Rather than fund politicians directly, the network invested first in universities and think tanks to manufacture credentialed intellectual cover for their preferred policies.
- 3Citizens United and the Legal Path to Unlimited Spending1 min
The 2010 Citizens United decision did not create dark money spending from nothing; it removed the last legal obstacle to a strategy the network had been assembling for over thirty years.
- 4The Seminar Network and Coordinated Giving1 min
Charles Koch built a disciplined, semi-secret donor collective that functioned like a private political party, pooling hundreds of millions of dollars per election cycle outside normal party structures.
- 5State-Level Capture and Model Legislation1 min
The network's most durable influence came not from presidential elections but from quietly rewriting state laws through a coordinated model-bill operation.
- 6Manufacturing Doubt on Climate Science1 min
The same donor network that fought environmental regulation of its own businesses systematically funded organized skepticism of climate science to delay regulation nationally.
- 7The Tea Party as Organized Astroturf1 min
The Tea Party movement of 2009, though experienced by participants as spontaneous grassroots anger, was substantially organized, funded, and directed by existing Koch-backed infrastructure.
About Jane Mayer
Jane Mayer is a staff writer at The New Yorker and former Wall Street Journal reporter, known for investigative books on power and secrecy including The Dark Side. She spent five years reporting Dark Money, drawing on tax filings, court records, and interviews with family insiders and former employees of the networks she covers.
