New York investor Robert Mercer, has carved an idiosyncratic path through conservative politics, spending tens of millions of dollars to outflank his own party’s consultant class and unnerve its established powers. His fortune has financed think tanks and insurgent candidates, super PACs and media watchdogs, lobbying groups and grass-roots organizations.
.. Kellyanne Conway, is a veteran Republican pollster who previously oversaw a super PAC financed by the Mercers.
.. Mr. Mercer reportedly invested $10 million in Breitbart several years ago
.. Mr. Trump is also relying on Cambridge Analytica, a voter data firm backed by Mr. Mercer
.. A Mercer-backed super PAC supporting Mr. Trump is now being shepherded by David Bossie, a conservative activist whose own projects have been funded in part by the Mercers’ family foundation, according to tax documents.
.. Mr. Mercer, 70, a mathematician and competitive poker player who spent his early career at I.B.M., joined Renaissance in the 1990s and rose to become the co-chief executive, earning hundreds of millions of dollars along the way. Today, he and his wife, Diana, live on a sprawling estate on Long Island’s North Shore where
.. They have given to libertarian organizations, such as the Cato Institute, and political organizations like the Club for Growth
.. Mercers were deeply involved in the Republican nominating battle this year
.. During the early phase of the campaign, Mr. Mercer donated $13 million to a super PAC supporting Mr. Cruz.
.. They were helped in part, according to a person who asked for anonymity to describe the family’s thinking, by Mr. Trump’s growing emphasis on traditional conservative ideas, such as tax cuts.
.. the family broke with Mr. Cruz in highly public fashion after his speech at the Republican convention, when the Texas senator refused to endorse Mr. Trump
Trump paid dearly to boost fundraising
The campaign increased its spending in July, but not on building a staff or field organization.
Though the campaign touted an $80 million figure for its July fundraising, just $36.7 million of that total went directly to the campaign.
.. The campaign more than doubled its spending from the previous month to $18.5 million in July, far more than in any other period of the campaign. Most of that money went toward expanding the campaign’s online fundraising operation.
.. A full 45 percent, or $8.4 million, went to Giles-Parscale, the San Antonio-based digital marketing firm that has done Trump’s online advertising. (The company had never worked for a campaign before 2016.) The campaign also paid $100,000 to the Prosper Group for fundraising consulting.
.. Legal fees for the campaign’s outside law firm, Jones Day, gobbled up more than $660,000. The Clinton campaign paid its outside counsel about a sixth of that.
The Problem With Congress, and How to Fix It
Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard Law professor and 2016 candidate for the Democratic nomination. In this interview filmed at the Aspen Ideas Festival, he explains how money’s influence in politics threatens American democracy. Congress has become deeply unrepresentative, he says, because politicians are focused on answering to their biggest campaign donors rather than the general population. This is why people are drawn to anti-establishment candidates like Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders. “We could fix these problems if we had a Congress with the will to address the corruption that has broken the representative system,” Lessig says. “Unfortunately we don’t have that will right now, we have to find a way to create it.”
Trump’s economic advisers are also his biggest donors
“He is following the path he has said was corrupt: raising large sums of money and then giving donors special access,” said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
Steve Deace, an influential conservative activist in Iowa and anti-Trump radio host, said he was not surprised that Trump was granting his biggest donors titles and insider access. But he was still angry.
“It is complete and total hypocrisy,” Deace said.
“He got a lot of mileage out of taking advantage of a lot of low-information voters who are rightfully frustrated that government left them behind,” Deace said of Trump’s claims during the primary that he was a self-funding billionaire who could not be bought. “They were an easy mark for a P.T. Barnum con man.”
.. Trump’s new economic team leans heavily on Wall Street investors and hedge-fund managers, despite Trump’s railing against them during the early parts of his presidential campaign.
“The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around. And they get lucky,” Trump said last year on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Look, they’re energetic. They’re very smart. But a lot of them, it’s, like, they’re paper pushers. They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It’s ridiculous, OK?