As primary challengers to House and Senate GOP losers are popping up like dandelions after a summer storm, the big money guys are now turning their backs on those in the Republican leadership who have failed them.
Tensions reached a boiling point at a recent dinner at the home of Los Angeles billionaire Robert Day. In full view of around two dozen guests, Thomas Wachtell, a retired oil and gas investor and party contributor, delivered an urgent message to the night’s headliner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: Just do something.
Wachtell, who has given tens of thousands of dollars over the years to Senate Republicans, recalled that McConnell responded defensively. Passing legislation takes time, the Republican leader responded, and President Donald Trump didn’t seem to understand how long it required.
“Anybody who was there knew that I was not happy. And I don’t think anybody was happy. How could you be?” said Wachtell, who has previously given over $2,000 to McConnell but recently stopped donating to Senate GOP causes. “You’re never going to get a more sympathetic Republican than I am. But I’m sick and tired of nothing happening.”
With the GOP’s agenda at a virtual standstill on Capitol Hill, the party is contending with a hard reality. Some of the party's most elite and influential donors, who spent the past eight years plowing cash into the party’s coffers in hopes of accomplishing a sweeping conservative agenda and undoing Barack Obama’s legislative accomplishments, are closing their wallets.
It's probably not helping the GOP that donors are well aware of the fact that Mitch and Paul Ryan are most likely complicit in Trump's Russia collusion scheme too. Giving lots of money to guys who are about to end up crashing and burning in disgrace is a bad investment.
The backlash is threatening to deprive Republicans of resources just as they're gearing up for the 2018 midterms. Party officials are so alarmed that North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who oversees fundraising for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told his colleagues at a recent conference meeting that donations had fallen off a cliff after the Obamacare flop. The committee’s haul plummeted to just $2 million in July and August, less than half of what it raised in June.
"When you’re in a business and you tell your stakeholders you’re going to build a building or something, you have to follow through," said Houston-based energy executive Dan Eberhart. "I can’t borrow money to build a building and then not follow through, which is what these guys are doing.” He said he's spoken to four Republican senators over the past month to express his displeasure, mostly over the party's failure to repeal Obamacare.
Behind the scenes, the GOP has begun to try to smooth things over with its most important givers. On Monday, Trump met with the party’s most prominent donor, Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who has privately expressed frustration that the president hasn't moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And in the wake of an establishment-backed candidate’s loss in Alabama, a top McConnell political lieutenant, Steven Law, held a series of frank discussions with key benefactors.
Some of the donors are giving lawmakers an earful. Bruce Rastetter, an Iowa agribusiness mogul who has funded a long list of Republican elected officials, said he had informed his state’s two GOP senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, that he would not donate to Republican senators “unless they pass new legislation or get new leadership.”
In the world of campaign politics, big donors have long been known as gripers — an exclusive group accustomed to stroking and attention. But this year is different. Veteran fundraisers say they’re having an unusually hard time setting up meetings with major contributors, lining up checks and organizing events.
One seasoned GOP fundraiser forwarded along a curt email from a sought-after donor. “The GOP leaders should know, no movement on remaining agenda: tax reform, infrastructure, deregulation, etc. means no funding from supporters like me,” it read. “No meetings, calls, contributions until we see progress.”
The true leaders of the country have spoken. They bought and paid for the Republican-controlled government under the Trump regime, and now they want their money back.
So they're going around the GOP altogether and targeting vulnerable Trump state Democrats.
A Charles and David Koch-backed group is launching a $4.5 million ad campaign targeting three Democratic senators, urging them to support the Republican tax reform plan.
The television ad buy, announced Thursday morning, will target Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, all of whom are facing tough re-election efforts next year in states that President Donald Trump won.
The conservative-leaning Koch organization has made passing tax reform a priority and has pledged to spend tens of millions of dollars organizing voters and pressuring elected officials to support an overhaul.
In the ad, a woman looks at the camera and says that tax reform will help "average" Americans.
"People are sick of politics. I am too. But fixing our broken tax system isn’t about politics — it’s about helping people," she says. "That’s what tax reform will do. So, what’s stopping us?"
Grab your wallets, folks. Sooner or later they're get every penny and then some from Trump's "populist agenda" Count on it.
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