Jan 31, 2016 · Graphic: Which Presidential Candidates Are Winning the Money Race . But the steady rise of Senator TedCruz of Texas, a Tea Party favorite reviled by party ...
Jan 31, 2016 · But the steady rise of Senator TedCruz of Texas, a Tea Party favorite reviled by party leaders, has unleashed a new counter-establishment of conservative ...
Rival Factions of Top Donors Get Behind Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz
Photo
Senator Marco Rubio
campaigned Sunday in Davenport, Iowa. In the last six months of 2015,
Federal Election Commission records show, a “super PAC” backing Mr.
Rubio raised $14.3 million.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York 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.”
A version of this article appears in print on February 1, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Rival Factions of Top Donors Get Behind Rubio and Cruz . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
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