‘Shadow Party’ Donors Split Between Cruz, Rubio
Complicating efforts to deny nomination to Trump
(NY Times) – The wealthy donors who have built a powerful shadow Republican Party of outside groups are rapidly cleaving into two mutually hostile and deep-pocketed factions, complicating efforts to deny the party’s nomination to Donald J. Trump, reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday showed.
Many of the Wall Street financiers who have been mainstays of Republican “super PACs” in the six years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision have rallied behind Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, betting that he is the party’s best chance to win a general election battle against Hillary Clinton.
In the last six months of 2015, F.E.C. records show, a “super PAC” backing Mr. Rubio raised $14.3 million, including $2.5 million each from the hedge fund founders Paul Singer and Ken Griffin. The super PAC also drew significant support from donors who previously gave to groups backing Jeb Bush, among them Chris Cline, a coal executive, and Brian Ballard, a prominent Florida lobbyist.
But the steady rise of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Tea Party favorite reviled by party leaders, has unleashed a new counter-establishment of conservative donors, some from outside the universe of traditional Republican giving. They include wealthy evangelicals, libertarian businessmen, Israel hawks and others disenchanted by the party’s past nominees, and are drawn to Mr. Cruz’s uncompromising social conservatism and his promise to disrupt the party’s traditional power brokers in Washington.
Mr. Cruz’s backers include the Wilks family of Texas, who made a fortune in the shale oil boom and are prominent donors to anti-abortion groups; Edward Czuker, a Los Angeles real estate developer and board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition; and the Illinois businessman Richard Uihlein, who gave $1 million to a pro-Cruz super PAC in January.
“I think we’re rewriting history,” said Mica Mosbacher, a longtime Republican fund-raiser with ties to the Bush family, who decided to back Mr. Cruz because she was tired of the party nominating “moderates and career politicians.”
“We’ve got a civil war within the party,” Ms. Mosbacher added. “And people want someone who is strong.”
Mr. Trump has responded to their largess with an influx of his own money: In the last quarter of 2015, the billionaire businessman lent his campaign $10.8 million, according to F.E.C. reports, and raised just $2.7 million from other donors.
Yet as caucusgoers gather in Iowa on Monday, Mr. Trump is at the top of the polls, and most of the money flowing into the Republican primary has been spent on attack ads targeting candidates other than the leader.
Conservative Solutions PAC, which supports Mr. Rubio, has spent $3.2 million attacking Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — an effort to stifle Mr. Christie in New Hampshire — and $3.3 million against Mr. Cruz. The main group supporting Mr. Bush, Right to Rise USA, has spent $1.5 million against Mr. Rubio and $366,000 against John Kasich. Super PACs backing Mr. Cruz have spent more than $1.4 million against Mr. Rubio.
The expensive five-way shootout is a sharp departure from 2012, when virtually all of the Republican donors inclined to write seven-figure checks rallied behind a single candidate, Mitt Romney. And it presents a stark contrast to the Democratic contest, where the biggest checks raised by outside groups have all gone to Priorities USA, a super PAC backing Mrs. Clinton. Priorities reported that it had raised $51 million since the beginning of last year, including a $6 million contribution in December from the liberal hedge fund billionaire George Soros. The biggest outside group supporting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is funded entirely by a nurses union, pooling small contributions from members.
The vast amounts of money still flowing into the race — combined with Mr. Trump’s knack for running an effective campaign without the benefit of substantial super PAC support — suggest that there may be no quick end to the nomination battle, despite Mr. Trump’s lead in most of the early Republican contests.
While Mr. Bush raised less money for his campaign in the last quarter of 2015, the super PAC supporting him, Right to Rise, had $59 million on hand at year’s end, and likely has enough remaining to bludgeon other Republicans. Many of the group’s donors could move to support Mr. Rubio if Mr. Bush falters in New Hampshire.
The pro-Rubio group, Conservative Solutions, had $14 million cash on hand, not including money held by an affiliated nonprofit that is not required to disclose its fund-raising. Mr. Cruz’s groups have recently spent another $1.4 million attacking Mr. Trump, who has overtaken Mr. Cruz in Iowa, a state where 60 percent of the Republican electorate identifies as evangelical. But the Cruz groups remain flush: As of the end of December, they had $32 million in cash on hand.
David Barton, an evangelical activist in Texas who runs Keep the Promise, an umbrella group of pro-Cruz super PACs, said the group’s success was a reaction to earlier outside groups that wasted money on candidates uninspiring to conservative voters. Anti-establishment donors, he said, “finally have something that is closer to where they would like to give. And it is also closer to what they believe.”
Yet the filings on Sunday reflect another reaction, as well. Mr. Sanders reported raising more than $33 million during the three months ending in December, most of it from grass-roots donors. In January, his campaign announced on Sunday, he took in an additional $20 million. The money has sustained him against Mrs. Clinton, who has built a more traditional campaign operation relying far more on donors giving the maximum contribution of $2,700. In Iowa, the two candidates are neck-and-neck, with Mr. Sanders holding on to a lead in New Hampshire. Both have enough money to compete effectively in the primaries and caucuses that follow.
And Mr. Trump, beyond his loans to himself, has raised most of the rest of his money from small donors, including $2.7 million in the final quarter of 2015. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders have appealed to smaller donors in part by promising supporters they cannot be bought by the bigger ones. Both have eschewed the dominant super PAC model of the 2016 cycle, where candidates typically have dispatched a trusted aide to raise unlimited money for an outside group. Neither has set up committees of wealthy “bundlers” drumming up checks from friends and family members. Neither man spends much time at fund-raisers.
“The traditional campaign spends most of its time raising money so that it can pay to get its message out,” said John Pudner, executive director of Take Back Our Republic, a conservative group that promotes small-donor giving. “Trump broke down the means, which is collect a lot of money. He’s found a different means to the same end.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/us/politics/rival-factions-of-top-donors-get-behind-marco-rubio-and-ted-cruz.html
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