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On a sunny Saturday in September 2009, with Wisconsin in the throes of tea party fervor, conservative starlet Michelle Malkin fired up a crowd of thousands at a lakefront park in Milwaukee with rhetoric about White House czars and union thugs and the "culture of dependency that they have rammed down our throats."

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, a Republican candidate for governor, casually attired in a red University of Wisconsin Badgers sweatshirt, stepped to the podium to amplify the message. "We're going to take back our government," he shouted, jabbing the air with a finger. The attendees whooped and clapped. "We've done it here, we can do it in Wisconsin and, by God, we're going to do it all across America."

In a way, the event was Scott Walker's graduation to the political major leagues. The audience had been delivered by Americans for Prosperity, a tea party organizing group founded by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire energy executives whose fortune helps shape Republican politics. With Americans for Prosperity, the brothers had harnessed the tea party's energy for their own policy goals, including deregulation and lower taxes. And in Walker, they'd found the perfect instrument to help carry them out.

The rally was one of the first times Walker and the Kochs joined forces. Their relationship was cemented during Walker's bitter war against public unions that led to a 2012 recall election. During the weeks of standoff at the capitol in Madison, it was the Kochs' tea party troops who provided the main counterforce to the tens of thousands of union activists protesting the governor, in a battle Walker eventually won.

As the struggle raged, Walker's alliance with his benefactors was satirized when a blogger posing as David Koch whom Walker had not yet met kept him on the line for 20 minutes.

This year, the relationship may evolve in unpredictable ways. With three tough statewide election victories under his belt, Walker, 47, is poised to pursue the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The Kochs have pledged to marshal about $900 million to spend on a fight for the presidency, and their ties to Walker appear stronger than to any other hopefuls. While the older brother, Charles, has a personal affection for Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the most libertarian-leaning potential candidate, Paul doesn't hold the same appeal for the Kochs' donor friends. Another high-profile contender, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, hasn't attended the high-profile donor summits the Kochs host near Palm Springs, California, though he was invited this year.

Tim Phillips, president of the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity, said his group won't endorse a candidate in the primaries but had effusive praise for Walker.

"The difference Scott Walker has made with his policy achievements is as transformative as any governor anywhere in a generation," he said in an interview. "That's why his appeal flourishes for activists and for donors."

The Kochs and Walker now share a donor pool-a moneyed set that isn't the establishment Jeb Bush is counting on. One Koch stalwart solidly in Walker's corner is Stanley Hubbard, a billionaire Minnesota broadcast executive.

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Walker and the Kochs: A mutually effective GOP partnership