GOP Donors Worth $85 Billion Say It’s Time to Move on From Trump

Amanda Gordon and Magan Crane
·4 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Republican mega-donors Stephen Schwarzman and Thomas Peterffy won’t be backing former President Donald Trump’s bid for a return to the White House, saying it’s time for the party to move on.

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“America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” Schwarzman, Blackstone Inc.’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “It is time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.”

Peterffy, the founder of Interactive Brokers Group Inc. who contributed $250,000 to Trump’s 2020 campaign, agreed it was time to flip the page.

“We need a fresh face,” Peterffy said Wednesday in an interview. “The problem with Trump is he has so many negatives. He can’t get elected, period.”

Peterffy, 78, said he would vote for Trump if the former president ends up being the nominee in 2024, but added, “I will do whatever I can to make sure he is not.”

Ronald Lauder also doesn’t plan to support Trump in the next presidential election, a spokesperson for the cosmetics heir said Wednesday. Lauder contributed $200,000 to Trump’s 2020 campaign.

The three are the latest big GOP donors to say publicly they won’t be backing Trump’s campaign. Citadel’s billionaire founder, Ken Griffin, who said last week he was supporting Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, on Tuesday called Trump a “three-time loser” who should not run again.

Read more: Ron DeSantis Is Just One of Trump’s Possible GOP Challengers

Trump officially declared his widely anticipated third White House bid on Tuesday, hoping to discourage rivals from challenging him for the GOP nomination in 2024.

Ultra-Rich

Griffin, Peterffy and Schwarzman are among the world’s richest people, worth a collective $85 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

It’s unclear how much the rejection of big GOP donors hurts Trump, however. He was successful in 2016 without major party backers and appeals to his base with a populist message.

Still, losing the support of deep-pocketed backers can send a signal to other potential wealthy donors, said David Tamasi, a Republican fundraiser and lobbyist.

“When folks like this don’t get involved, you lose the money and you also lose the multiplier effect that they have in their respective political orbits,” he said.

Griffin never donated to Trump. And Schwarzman didn’t support him until he was already president, giving $344,400 in December 2017 to a committee that supported Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee. In all, Schwarzman gave $3.7 million to committees that supported Trump.

Schwarzman also did not support Trump’s false claims that he had really won the 2020 election and called the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol an “insurrection.”

“I am shocked and horrified by this mob’s attempt to undermine our Constitution,” Schwarzman wrote at the time. “As I said in November, the outcome of the election is very clear and there must be a peaceful transition of power.”

War Chest

Trump has a massive war chest he built up through donations from smaller donors around the country, but the defection of major GOP fundraisers could give cover to elected officials who are still deciding who to back.

Peterffy, who lives in Palm Beach, Florida, said he’d recently tried to organize a group of donors to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club.

“The idea was to try to talk him into not announcing, but once he announced the die is cast,” Peterffy said. “It is much more difficult now to stop him.”

Trump’s formal announcement complicates his finances by triggering election law, but his political committees had $84 million in the bank according to their latest filings with the Federal Election Commission. Under federal law, his leadership PAC, which has $70 million, can only donate $5,000 to his presidential campaign.

Trump also won’t be able to coordinate with a new super-PAC, which got a $20 million infusion from his leadership PAC before the midterms. It had more than $23 million cash on hand on Oct. 19.

Peterffy said he’d prefer to see DeSantis, former CIA Director Michael Pompeo or Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin get the GOP nomination, while persuading Trump to “come over to our side and campaign with us for a younger person.”

Trump “could be a kingmaker or a loser,” said Peterffy, who has a fortune of $23.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg wealth index. “It’s a relatively simple choice.”

--With assistance from Bill Allison and Amanda Albright.

(Updates with proposed Mar-a-Lago visit in 17th paragraph.)

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