Billionaire Republican donor Thomas Peterffy wants to bet on someone he thinks can win the White House in 2024. But this year, he gave $2mn to a political action committee supporting Virginia’s governor Glenn Youngkin — who is not running for president.
Like other Republican megadonors, Peterffy fears frontrunner Donald Trump would lose in another run-off with Joe Biden. He does not love the former president’s primary rivals either. He told his friends not to back any other candidates until January, by which time he hopes the Virginia governor has changed his mind.
“We’re hoping for Glenn Youngkin,” Peterffy, who founded Interactive Brokers, told the Financial Times.
The yearning for Youngkin is a sign of the donor dilemma: for some deep-pocketed Republicans, no single, compelling alternative to Trump has emerged in the primary. And while the billionaires want to see such a candidate break from the pack before giving, the candidates need the money first to help them make that break.
“Is Trump beatable? Yes, but the first step is the field consolidating,” said an adviser to one donor. “Without consolidation, there’s not a viable path.”
Several big GOP donors — from billionaire hedge fund bosses such as Paul Singer and Ken Griffin, to Miriam Adelson, the wife of the late casino emperor Sheldon Adelson — are now on the sidelines. Peter Thiel, who gave $35mn to two Senate candidates in 2022, “does not plan to donate to any 2024 race”, said a person familiar with his thinking.
Traditional conservatives in the party are urging both donors and contenders to face reality before it is too late, fearing that the hesitancy could help pave the way for Trump to win the nomination.
Utah senator Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, has said donors must push underperforming contenders out of the race by late February, but has been discouraged by donors’ reaction.
“They all think it should be someone else’s candidate that makes that decision,” Romney told the FT. “Some candidates ought to be able to see the writing on the wall at this point.”
Romney’s call comes at a crucial period for the anti-Trump wing of the party, with the second Republican primary debate scheduled for September 27, and a deadline for donors to file their contributions with federal authorities at the end of the month.
None of the alternatives to Trump has made much of a dent on the former president’s lead, despite the criminal charges against him, including those related to his effort to subvert the 2020 election he lost.
“I just refuse to believe that Donald Trump is our inevitable nominee,” said Bobbie Kilberg, a Republican donor supporting former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, one of the few GOP candidates who has said he would not support Trump as the party’s nominee if he were convicted of a crime.
Trump presents “a clear and present danger to the rule of law and to the future of our democracy”, Kilberg said.
But like other contenders, Christie has struggled to break out from a pool of six serious candidates vying to catch Trump, who leads polling in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two primary contests, by well over 20 points, according to Real Clear Politics’ polling averages.
“I don’t know who I would vote for right now,” Chris Sununu, governor of New Hampshire, told the FT.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis was “probably the number two” in New Hampshire, but he could still be “overtaken” by up to five candidates, Sununu said.
The donor class appears just as scattered.
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the shipping and packaging billionaires who once funded Trump, back DeSantis. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is for South Carolina senator Tim Scott. Jan Koum, the co-founder of WhatsApp, supports former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, whose strong performance in the debate garnered some interest from other donors.
Poultry magnate Ronald Cameron and retail baron Art Pope are helping to fund vice-president Mike Pence. The private investment banker Warren Stephens has donated to former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson. Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota’s governor Doug Burgum are largely self-funded.
Some donors are also splitting their cash. Federal filings show that billionaire investors Stanley Druckenmiller, Jeff Yass and Cliff Asness have each given $250,000 to a political action committee supporting Christie, as well as to other candidates. Yass has given at least $600,000 to a super Pac backing Scott, whose supporters are also about to unleash a $30mn ad blitz.
But the big donors have reason to be cautious about how their money is spent.
DeSantis was once seen as Trump’s biggest threat, given his convincing 2022 re-election in Florida, pandemic-era leadership, military background and backing from a $130mn super Pac.
Since then, he has lost the support of some donors for signing a six-week abortion ban bill, fighting Disney and calling Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute”. His campaign has gone through staff cuts and replaced its manager.
Jay Zeidman, who is fundraising for DeSantis in Texas, said the Florida governor was still “clearly” in second place. DeSantis has continued to raise lots of money, including more than $1mn since last month’s debate. Never Back Down, a super Pac supporting DeSantis, had exceeded its August fundraising goal of $10mn, Zeidman said.
But DeSantis’s national polling numbers have dwindled from more than 40 per cent before the primary race to 13 per cent now, according to the most recent average from FiveThirtyEight — putting him squarely among the pack chasing Trump.
The distance of those contenders to the frontrunner leaves anti-Trump GOP donors wondering why they should bother, suggested Francis Rooney, a former congressman who was a big donor to Romney’s 2012 campaign.
“As long as Trump owns so much of our base, what is there to coalesce around?”
While donors wait for an alternative to Trump, Youngkin remains focused on a battle for control of Virginia’s legislature this November, his senior adviser said. But the governor “greatly appreciates” Peterffy’s support.
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