A network of Republican megadonors has invited advisers to Donald J. Trump and Nikki Haley to give presentations at the group’s winter meeting next week, as the wealthy donors size up the presidential race with just nine months until Election Day.
The network, known as the American Opportunity Alliance, is expected to hear from Betsy Ankney, Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, and Susie Wiles, Mr. Trump’s top adviser, at the meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, according to two people familiar with it Event.
Puck had previously reported on the group’s meeting.
The network was founded a decade ago by a group of wealthy donors, including members of the Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs, and investors Paul Singer and Kenneth Griffin.
But donors in the American Opportunity Alliance are not moving in unison, and people who support Ms. Haley — and who had supported Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who dropped out of the race last Sunday — are part of the network. Some members of the group have been open about wanting a candidate other than Mr. Trump.
But even as officials representing Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis appeared at the group’s meeting in Dallas in early October – when their campaigns were the only ones whose advisers had been invited – it was clear to some people working with the AOA the focus was more on the general elections than on the primary level. A Republican strategist who worked with the group described Mr. Trump’s path to the nomination at the time as “straightforward.”
Since then, Mr. Trump has won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire caucuses, beating Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley in the first campaign and Ms. Haley in the second, despite having few major donors. He also has some supporters who have worked with AOA in the past, such as Linda McMahon, who ran the Small Business Administration under President Trump.
Both invitations went out before the New Hampshire primary last Tuesday, according to one of the people familiar with the plans.
Ms. Haley has been fundraising vigorously and is well-financed as the race heads toward the Feb. 24 primary in South Carolina, her home state but where Mr. Trump is also popular.
Mr. Trump has begun courting major donors as he and his team prepare for a general election in which they expect Democrats to be well-funded. But Mr. Trump has a complicated relationship with the party’s major donors. He also faces four criminal charges and was ordered by a federal jury on Friday in a civil case to pay more than $83 million in damages to writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her decades ago.
Many of the donors are closely tied to the remnants of the pre-Trump Republican Party and sought to halt his rise in 2016. Mr. Trump has also repeatedly attacked major donors as part of the “swamp” he derides. He made such a threat this week on his social media platform Truth Social, when he vowed to exclude any future donors who support Ms. Haley.
Ms. Haley’s campaign said the response to that threat was the opposite of what Mr. Trump had intended, saying it saw a huge increase in fundraising in the following 24 hours.
This weekend, the political network Americans for Prosperity, founded by the industrialist Koch brothers, is hosting its own meeting. The network supported Ms. Haley, but as The New York Times recently reported, some of its donors regretted that support.
At the meeting in Indian Wells, California, a small group of donors received a briefing from two senior officials from the network’s political arm, Americans for Prosperity Action.
According to two people briefed on what was said, senior advisers Emily Seidel and Michael Palmer said supporting Ms. Haley was the right decision but that officials knew it would be difficult for anyone, Mr Beating Trump for the nomination.
They also indicated they would focus intensely on the Senate and House races, particularly if Mr. Trump becomes the nominee.
At the meeting, Ms. Haley held a video call with donors and answered questions about their path forward, according to one of the people briefed on the event.
Source link
2024-01-28 14:16:21
www.nytimes.com