Last September, ThinkProgress posted an investigative piece about Mike Pompeo, the Republican nominee running for Congress in an open seat near Wichita, Kansas. Our post revealed that Pompeo, a businessman with little political experience, had been groomed and selected for office by the petrochemical conglomerate Koch Industries. Not only was Koch Pompeo's largest contributor, but Pompeo had gained a public profile using two local Koch front groups, had been personally endorsed by Charles Koch, and Pompeo s oil business has a partnership with Koch s subsidiaries operating in Brazil

Shortly after helping to elect Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), Koch Industries opened a new lobbying office in Madison near the state capitol. However, little has been disclosed about the Koch lobbying agenda in Madison. The New York Times reported that Koch political operatives privately pressured Walker to crush public employee unions. But Walker s major payback to Koch relates to environmental deregulation

As ThinkProgress has carefully documented over the last three years, Koch groups have spent tens of millions to influence government policy - from financing the Tea Parties, to funding junk academic studies, to undisclosed attack ads against Democrats, to groups promoting climate change denial, to a large network of state-based and national think tanks.