In this 1975 letter to the “Rocky Mountain Oilman,” Charles Koch sought support for the Libertarian Party.

Koch argued that Republicans were “no better allies” than the Democrats regarding the deregulation of the oil industry, saying “President Ford’s signing of the S.622 (the Energy Policy and Conservation Act in December of 1975) after maintaining he was for oil deregulation is one of the many demonstrations of the bankruptcy of the Republican alternative to Democratic interventionism.”

Koch also complains that “Ford’s and Nixon’s reversals on such important issues as wage and price controls… are further examples of selling out by those who claimed to be ‘friends of free enterprise.’”

A portion of this letter was highlighted in a 2014 article by Nicholas Confessori in the New York Times. The complete two-page letter can be read in full, below.