# Adolph Coors Brewing Company The Golden, Colorado brewing company founded in **1873** by German immigrant [[Adolph Coors]] — the source of the [[Coors Family]] fortune and, through it, of some of the seed capital for the modern conservative movement. For more than a century a fiercely family-controlled enterprise, it became a national **flashpoint of labor and culture-war politics**, most famously the AFL-CIO Coors beer boycott of 1977–1987. The company merged into [[Molson Coors]] in 2005 and pooled its U.S. operations into the [[MillerCoors]] joint venture in 2008. In the Right Wing KB it matters as the **revenue base of a political dynasty**: the brewery's profits funded the [[Heritage Foundation]], the [[Free Congress Foundation]], and a regional Colorado infrastructure, while the company's own labor and hiring practices made "Coors" a one-word signal of right-wing politics for a generation. ## Why It Matters in This KB ### 1. The fortune that seeded movement conservatism Brewery wealth, channeled through [[Joseph Coors]] and the family's vehicles, paid for the founding of the modern conservative think-tank world. Joseph Coors's **$250,000 check in 1972** launched the [[Heritage Foundation]] — the canonical origin moment of the post-Goldwater policy infrastructure that runs forward to [[Project 2025]]. The corporate story and the political story are inseparable: no beer, no Heritage. (The detailed philanthropic mechanics live on the [[Adolph Coors Foundation]] and [[Castle Rock Foundation]] pages.) ### 2. The Coors boycott (1977–1987): when a beer can signaled your politics In April 1977, Brewery Workers Local 366 — over 1,500 workers at the Golden plant — struck over the company's intrusive **polygraph ("lie detector") testing**, its long list of grounds for dismissal, and stagnant wages. The [[AFL-CIO]] launched a **nationwide boycott** that lasted roughly a decade. It fused organized labor with feminists, Hispano, Black, and gay-rights organizers — the last objecting specifically to Coors's reported screening of job applicants' sexual orientation. The company broke the strike with replacement workers, and the local was decertified, but the boycott made Coors a national symbol of union-busting and reactionary politics. The family later courted Latino and other constituencies to repair the brand. ### 3. Corporate culture as political culture The brewery is a case study in how a closely held company becomes an extension of its owners' ideology — anti-union labor practices, conservative hiring norms, and profits openly redeployed into right-wing institution-building. It pairs naturally with the [[Coors Family]] dynasty page as the economic engine beneath the family's political project. ### 4. Consolidation and the end of family control Family dominance gave way to industry consolidation: the company merged with Canada's Molson to form [[Molson Coors]] in **2005**, then combined U.S. operations with Miller in the **2008 [[MillerCoors]]** joint venture (Molson Coors took full ownership in 2016). The Coors name survives as a brand inside a multinational, while the family's lasting influence is political rather than industrial — [[Peter Coors]] even ran (unsuccessfully) for the U.S. Senate from Colorado in 2004. ## See Also - [[Coors Family]] — The dynasty built on the brewery - [[Adolph Coors]] — Founder (1873) - [[Joseph Coors]] — Heritage Foundation patron; movement financier - [[William Coors]] — Brother; long-time company chairman - [[Peter Coors]] — Third-generation executive and 2004 Senate candidate - [[Adolph Coors Foundation]] — Family foundation; Heritage seed funder - [[Heritage Foundation]] — The movement institution the fortune launched - [[AFL-CIO]] — Organizer of the 1977–1987 boycott - [[Molson Coors]] / [[MillerCoors]] — The corporate successors