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
Donald Trump Appoints Media Firebrand to Run Campaign
Mr. Bannon was appointed a day after the recently ousted Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, emerged in an advisory role with Mr. Trump. It was not lost on Republicans in Washington that two news executives whose outlets had fueled the anti-establishment rebellion that bedeviled congressional leaders and set the stage for Mr. Trump’s nomination were now directly guiding the party’s presidential message and strategy.
Mr. Bannon’s most recent crusade was his failed attempt to oust the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, in this month’s primary, making his new role atop the Trump campaign particularly provocative toward Republican leaders in Washington.
.. Mr. Bannon is likely to be more amenable to letting him run the sort of media-focused campaign he prefers.
.. “This is Trump going back to the nativism and nationalism that fueled his rise in the primary,” said Lanhee J. Chen, who was Mr. Romney’s policy director in 2012. “But it’s very dangerous to the future of the party because it only further narrows the appeal of a party whose appeal was already narrow going into this cycle.”
.. the possibility that the coming weeks could resemble a conservative publicity tour more than a conventional White House run, fueled speculation that Mr. Trump was already looking past November.
.. the growing influence of Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, conservative donors from Long Island. The Mercers are investors in Breitbart
.. Before Mr. Ailes’s ouster, some of the network’s most prominent journalists and contributors privately complained that Mr. Ailes was pushing them to be more supportive of Mr. Trump.