Some of the biggest donors in the Republican presidential primaries are sending six figure checks to multiple candidates, despite the fact that they are arming these candidates to compete against each other.
Billionaire Houston Texans owner Robert McNair, for example, sends $500,000 apiece to super-PACs supporting Republicans Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), and Lindsey Graham (S.C.).
{mosads}Nebraska billionaires Joe and Marlene Ricketts are spending $5 million on candidate Scott Walker, while sending $10,000 apiece to super-PACs supporting former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Cruz, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Graham, according to the mid-year FEC reports.
Interviews with nearly a dozen major donors, fundraisers and political operatives, as well as analysis of professional ties and donation histories help explain why donors do something that might seem counterintuitive to others. It boils down to four main reasons:
- Longstanding personal relationships and professional ties.
- Wanting to give oxygen to the ideas expressed by the unpopular candidate, even if that person has no hope of becoming president, while at the same time wanting to support the likely nominee.
- Wanting to ensure access to the winning candidate.
- Supporting career politicians when they’re at their most vulnerable, is a “cheap way to buy loyalty,” as campaign finance reformer and current presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig puts it.
The motivations of the largest givers are opaque, as all these donors tend to avoid the media, and none of the largest multi-contributors in the 2016 cycle agreed to comment on the record about why they support multiple candidates.
Graham, currently registering slightly above 0 percent in polls, is a magnet for many of these “multi-donors”, with large checks sent his way to help air his hawkish foreign policy views, in the full knowledge that, as one donor puts it, he has “no chance in hell” of ever becoming the Republican nominee.
Donors spending six figures on Graham while supporting other candidates include leveraged buyouts billionaire Ronald Perelman, who gave $500,000 apiece to Graham’s and Bush’s super-PACs and billionaire investor Len Blavatnik whose company spent $500,000 on Graham and $1 million on Scott Walker.
A donor who plans to support both Rubio and Graham said he, and some of his donor friends, were supporting Graham despite knowing he has “zero chance” of becoming the GOP nominee.
“You want to have support for ideas that you think are important,” the donor said. “A number of Lindsey Graham donors have said to me: ‘I don’t think Lindsey has a chance of winning but I’d like to have a serious foreign policy person in this race and Lindsey Graham brings foreign policy to the debate table.’
“I’ve got a friend who adores Jeb Bush, just adores,” the donor added, “but he doesn’t think Bush is strong enough on foreign policy so to get more foreign policy in the race he just gave a significant gift to Lindsey Graham.”
While heavyweight political donors have always given to multiple candidates, what’s new is the scale of this spread-out giving, which has only become possibly since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that paved the path for unlimited corporate and political spending in American elections.
One of the top donors to Bush’s super-PAC Right to Rise, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his relationship with the Bush family, says he doesn’t understand the psychology of giving big to competing candidates. “I have friends that are doing more than one,” he said. “I know people who’ve given $100,000 to more than one candidate. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Asked about the trend of sending huge checks to multiple candidates, wealthy investor Foster Friess said, “I think some of those donors might just want to make sure for business reasons they have access.”
“Others of us, however, who give mainly because we share the ideology of the given candidate… ‘spread the love’ out of a sense it is good for our country,” Friess said in an email. He spent more than $2 million on Rick Santorum in 2012, taking the longshot surprisingly close to the Republican nomination.
“We present a woman, a black, two Hispanics, and a governor from Indian descent,” Friess added. “It’s good for the American public to know the diversity the Republicans represent.”
Friess has yet to announce a six or seven-figure donation for 2016. “While I am clearly in Rick Santorum’s corner, he has encouraged me to support other candidates and it’s most likely I’ll do that when friends of mine ask me to do so,” he said.
Joe and Marlene Ricketts, who have contributed to seven candidates so far, could not be reached for comment but relationships have likely played a part in their donations.
The Ricketts have friendships and political relationships woven throughout this group of candidates. One of their sons, Todd Ricketts, was appointed co-chair of Walker’s national fundraising efforts. Another son, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, benefited from Christie’s support and stump speech as the New Jersey Gov. lent his backing last year as chairman of the Republican Governors Association.
Texas is a magnet for many of these donors, who have sent checks to one or more candidate with ties to that state.
The most prominent example is Robert Mercer, who runs a $25 billion Long Island hedge fund and has already spent $11 million on Texas senator Cruz, along with $250,000 on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and – in an unusual diversion through a pro-Cruz super-PAC – a $500,000 donation to businesswoman Carly Fiorina.
Others have multiple loyalties in Texas from ties going back, in some cases, decades. Nobody understands these competing relationships better than Austin Barbour, the senior adviser to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s super-PAC.
“[In Texas] you have the longest serving governor in the history of Texas in Rick Perry, then you have the current U.S. senator in Ted Cruz, then you have the former governor and former president of the United States, George W. Bush’s brother Jeb Bush, and you have Rand Paul whose father was a congressman from Texas for a long time,” Barbour said.
“There’s obviously some number of people in Texas who say ‘I got relationships with, you know, two of these people, three of these candidates, four of them.”
“Texas has so much wealth,” Barbour added. “And what I have come to find is that people are really generous, too.”