The 'Evil' Koch brothers are just 59th on the top political donation list

Sometimes, if you listen to some Democrats, they're running against the "Evil" Koch brothers rather than a specific Republican candidate.

The brothers that liberals like to hate are often trotted out as prime examples of why campaign finance reform is necessary. They are often portrayed as one of the biggest contributors to political candidates, their evil money financing evil Republicans.

The group OpenSecrets.com has compiled a list of top donors to candidates and, to the left's surprise, the Koch brothers are far down the list.

Washington Examiner:

Charles and David Koch are the two most evil people in American politics, right? We know that because Jane Mayer proved it with her landmark "Covert Operations" tour de liberal force in 2010.
Well, it turns out that Mayer's aim was off just a little, by like 58 slots on the all-time biggest donors in American politics list, as compiled by OpenSecrets.org.
OpenSecrets.org tallied the top donors in federal elections between 1989 and 2014. Koch Industries -- privately owned by the Evil Koch Bros -- is on the list, to be sure, but doesn't appear until the 59th slot, with $18 million in donations, 90 percent of which went to Republicans.
Unions, unions, unions
So who occupies the 58 spots ahead of the Evil Koch Bros? Six of the top 10 are ... wait for it ... unions. They gave more than $278 million, with most of it going to Democrats.
These are familiar names: AFSCME ($60.6 million), NEA ($53.5 million), IBEW ($44.4 million), UAW ($41.6 million), Carpenters & Joiners ($39.2 million) and SEIU ($38.3 million).
In other words, the six biggest union donors in American politics gave 15 times more to mostly Democrats than the Evil Koch Bros.

Lhota, in Harlem last night, said he hadn’t seen the video, but took the opportunity to defend David Koch: “First off, it’s David Koch, not the other Koch brother. This is the same man who is pro-choice, pro-same-sex marriage, one of the largest philanthropists in New York [with] all of our cultural institutions; the person who built the hospital for special surgery in New York. He’s a philanthropist and a person who gave $80,000 to Governor Andrew Cuomo. So, look at who he is and try to understand what kind of citizen he is.He’s the one Koch that lives in New York with his wife. I mean, to say, ‘They’re trying to buy the election,’ I just don’t understand it.”

For your convenience, I dropped this into a spreadsheet and performed some very basic analysis...

The 156 donors on this list all gave a total of at least $5MM in political donations over the last 25 years.

The total dollars donated by these 156 donors is ~$2.98 Billion, and the ratio is 55.7% Democrat, 39.0% Republican and 5.3% other.

6 of the top 10 donors are unions, with a 28.5 to 1 advantage to the Democrats ($213.6MM to $7.5MM)

10 of the top 15 donors are unions, with a 28.7 to 1 advantage to the Democrats ($341.1MM to $11.9MM)

Top 10 donors: $379.3MM Democrat to $83.5MM Republican (4.5 to 1 advantage, Democrats)

Top 20 donors: $619.6MM Democrat to $164.2MM Republican (3.8 to 1 advantage, Democrats)

Top 50 donors: $1,018.9MM Democrat to $487.5MM Republican (2.1 to 1 advantage, Democrats)

You have to get to donor #53 before the running total of the total dollars donated drops below 2 to 1 Democrat advantage.

First donor that leans >60% Republican: #17 (United Parcel Service, 64%-35% Republican)

The "Evil" Koch brothers (Koch Industries)? They're only #59 on the list, and the donors above them leaned 60.5% to 32.2% in favor of Democrats ($1,083.9MM Democrat to $577.5MM Republican, $130.2 MM Other)

(based on data released by the FEC on December 16, 2013)

At the core of the libs. hatred of the Koch bros. is their stupid idea that if not for the Koch bros. (and talk radio...and FOX), everybody would love leftists like Obama and his cronies. They simply cannot grasp that conservatives don't like leftists on g.p.

I've got a lefty brother who is amazed and perturbed that I listen to conservative talk radio and don't watch Colbert, Maher, or the other tv dope (Stewart?). Like I haven't heard tons of liberal codswallop in my 64 years on this earth.

So one time I asked my bro. what he knew about conservatism. Like most libs, he didn't know anything about conservatism. He thinks conservatism is being against screwball lib ideas. It's that, but it's a lot more.

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