Top GOP funders are divided between helping Trump beat Clinton and redirecting their spending down ballot.The GOP’s biggest donors are mostly united in their distaste for the party’s presidential front-runner Donald Trump, but they increasingly are coming to grips with the prospect of his nomination, and many are now signaling they would support him in a general election.
The shift, detailed in interviews with a dozen major donors and their representatives, is less an indication that the party’s donor class is warming to Trump, and more a reflection of their disdain for Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Their willingness to rally in opposition to Clinton should tamp down concerns on the right that the lingering unease with Trump would mean a free pass for Clinton from big-money attacks in a prospective general election matchup with Trump.
“If it were Trump vs. Hillary, I would have to give to Trump. And I would kind of hold my nose doing it, but I would have to do it,” said Minnesota billionaire Stan Hubbard, adding that he’d prefer that the GOP nominate either Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Hubbard ― whose family donated more than $100,000 to committees supporting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s GOP presidential campaign before eventually siding with Kasich ― has donated at least $10,000 to an anti-Trump super PAC.
“Although Trump’s not my first choice, I’d have to do what I can [to] support him, and hope he’d have more sense than he’s shown so far, because I certainly would never go for Sanders, and Clinton kind of scares me,” said Hubbard. “I think many donors feel that way, and I’ve heard people say so.”
Among the major donors who told POLITICO that they would support Trump ― or oppose Clinton ― in a Trump-versus-Clinton matchup are Hubbard, T. Boone Pickens, Toby Neugebauer and Dan Eberhart.
Some of the rich conservatives funding a big-money effort to stop Trump will be among those gathering next week for a two-day conclave to assess big-money general election spending plans. The gathering is being convened by the donor network helmed by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, who supports Marco Rubio, and is set for shortly after the pivotal March 15 primary elections ― seen by many as the last shot to block Trump from locking up the GOP nomination before the party’s convention.
Pickens ― a Texas investor who donated to committees supporting the since-aborted GOP presidential campaigns of Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson before bemoaning how “we’ve turned our presidential selection process into a reality TV show” ― would nonetheless “support the Republican nominee, whoever it is,” said his spokesman Jay Rosser.
Some GOP donors said they were troubled by suggestions that some of their fellow wealthy conservatives would sit out the presidential campaign entirely in protest of Trump.
Neugebauer, an energy investor who has played a key role in boosting Cruz, chastised the Republican establishment for its big-money assault on Trump, which he says misrepresents Trump and minimizes his appeal to alienated middle-class voters. And he predicted they’d be doing the same thing to Cruz if the Texas senator, who is also despised by the GOP establishment, were he the front-runner.
“The money spent on negative ads has obviously not made a difference,” said Neugebauer, who helped set up a network of super PACs supporting Cruz and donated $10 million to one. Neugebauer said he’s fully committed to Cruz and sees a path for him to win the nomination, but he acknowledged that Trump is harnessing the same dissatisfaction with the establishment that has animated Cruz’s campaign.
“Our leadership in D.C. has lost the mandate to lead,” said Neugebauer, adding, “I will not support the Republican nominee if the Washington cartel nominates someone other than Ted or Trump.”
Any big-money spending boosting Trump ― even if framed as an anti-Clinton effort ― could undermine the billionaire real estate showman’s effort to cast his campaign as self-funded and independent from major donors, conceded some of the major donors who are open to Trump.
Yet, Trump and his supporters have begun signaling that he might seek outside cash for his campaign in a general election matchup that is expected to cost more than $1 billion for each party’s nominee and super PAC allies.
And Trump on Tuesday night ― after posting big wins in Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii ― seemed to acknowledge that he’d welcome super PAC support in a general election matchup with Clinton.
“I think people ought to save their money. I think we ought to use that money to fight Hillary Clinton and the Democrats,” Trump told CNN when asked about the major donor-funded super PAC attacks against him in Ohio and Florida. Those states hold March 15 winner-take-all contests that are seen as the last stands for home-state politicians Kasich and Rubio, respectively. Trump victories in both would make it difficult to deprive him of the delegates necessary to secure the nomination.
Hubbard, the Minnesota billionaire, predicted it won’t hurt Trump in the general election if he’s the beneficiary of massive super PAC checks boosting him or attacking Clinton.
“When the general election comes, the message changes completely, and we mostly forget about what they’re yelling about now,” Hubbard said.
To be sure, there are plenty of major donors vowing they’ll never support Trump. Instead, they say, they intend to shift their spending to down-ballot races for Congress and state houses, where they fear the GOP could suffer debilitating losses with Trump at the top of ticket.
The reluctance to spend heavily boosting Trump is particularly acute among three key pockets of conservative big money: K Street, Bush loyalists and small-government ideological purists, such as the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.
One influential K Street association executive said Trump’s offensive comments about ethnic and religious groups have made him toxic for many business community donors. “That’s big with business,” said the executive, who also is a GOP donor. “He is — to say the least — the most controversial, and there are a lot of folks who don’t want to be in any way, shape, form identified with him.”
That’s the sentiment of many of the major donors who provided the lion’s share of the $152 million raised by committees supporting Bush, the former Florida governor who was embarrassed by Trump before dropping out of the race.
“There is currently no appetite at all to give money to independently support someone who claims to be worth billions and brags about self-funding,” said Charlie Spies, who helped run the pro-Bush Right to Rise USA super PAC. It raised an astounding $119 million to boost Bush, but spent only a small fraction of that attacking Trump, frustrating donors who wanted a more aggressive campaign against him. Spies said that “if Trump is the GOP nominee, then major donors are already planning to shift their focus to saving close Senate races.”
Similarly, sources say that the deep-pocketed conservative outfit helmed by the Koch brothers also is exploring re-focusing its spending down ballot in the event Trump wins the GOP nomination.
“If it’s Trump, we may be significantly less involved in the presidential than some would have anticipated,” said a source within the network, which is planning to spend $889 million on political and small-government policy advocacy in the runup to Election Day. “His positions are so far off what ours are, that there’s some serious soul searching about whether our network is going to try to defeat the Democratic nominee if he is the Republican nominee.”
Frayda Levin, a major GOP donor who sits on the board of the Koch network’s most aggressive group, Americans for Prosperity, said “I think my money would be better spent on Senate candidates if Trump is the nominee.” Levin also serves on the board of the Club for Growth, which has spent $2.5 million on ads opposing Trump, and has warned that it might withhold backing from congressional candidates who endorse Trump.
Of course, if Trump wins the nomination, there is bound to be some support for him among donors to the Club for Growth and the Koch network. The latter network is comprised of hundreds of wealthy conservatives, including the Minnesota billionaire Hubbard.
Perhaps the biggest wild card are neo-conservative donors like the New York hedge funder Singer and the Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. They are said to be concerned with Trump’s commitment to Israel’s defenses.
Fred Malek, a businessman and GOP donor who is among the leading big-money fundraisers on the right, said a Trump nomination likely will create a divide in the donor class.
“It will be mixed. There are some who would sit it out because they do not feel that Trump represents their beliefs and they may be offended by some of this statements," Malek said. "There are others who feel that he would take the country in a better direction than we’ve seen the last eight years, so they’d be willing to support him even if they’re not big fans of Trump."
One way in which a Trump nomination could unite GOP donors, Malek said, is the prospect that they could open their wallets wider to big-money groups focused on gubernatorial and congressional races.
“Donors will be very concerned by the prospect that we could lose at the top, so they will be want to make sure that the down ballot races are protected,” said Malek, who chairs a major-donor fundraising program for the Republican Governors Association and serves on the board of a House-focused super PAC.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-makes-inroads-with-mega-donors-220531
