To woo Trump, VP contenders show off their rich friends

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump orchestrated a takeover of the Republican Party in part by blasting wealthy political donors as the root of corruption and delivering a populist message that appealed to working-class voters.

Eight years later, one of his key decision points in choosing a running mate is connections to the superrich.

As the end of the selection process approaches, with an announcement expected in the next two weeks after months of suggestion and misdirection, Republican hopefuls are looking to convince Trump that they have the financial backing behind them that could help swing the race.

There are other factors that could make for a good match. Trump is said to be considering candidates with discipline on the campaign trail, who will not steal his precious spotlight and would fare well in a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

But the money definitely matters — and some Republican donors with direct access to Trump have left unmistakable fingerprints on his process. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, for example, became a top contender late in the selection process after persistent lobbying from Steve Wynn, the billionaire former casino mogul who is close to Trump. Wynn has also played a role in persuading some other donors, such as Elon Musk, to be more supportive of the campaign.

Many vice-presidential hopefuls, including some outside contenders wise to the financial dynamic, have responded, boasting — and sometimes exaggerating — the amount they could raise for the ticket. The posturing, in some cases, has drawn sneers from some Republican donors, who feel like they are being used as pawns in internecine warfare.

But the most successful financial jockeying has come from the three contenders who are, as of now, viewed as the top candidates for the job: Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

Burgum, a former software executive who sold a company to Microsoft, has an estimated net worth of at least $100 million, according to Forbes, suggesting he could inject some of his fortune into the race. He spent more than $10 million on his own short-lived, long-shot presidential bid last year.

He has also sought to demonstrate his fundraising potential for Trump by luring wealthy first-time donors to the former president’s corner. On Tuesday, Burgum hosted a video conference with donors where the campaign charged $10,000 merely to join the call, and $25,000 to participate in a Q&A session, according to a copy of the invitation.

Tom Siebel, a billionaire tech investor, wrote his first check to Trump — for $500,000 — because Burgum was in the mix for the Republican ticket. Dick Boyce, a longtime Republican fundraiser in Silicon Valley who is a former chair of both Burger King and Del Monte Foods, said he had also made his second donation to Trump — a $100,000 contribution — in part owing to his consideration of Burgum, who was a classmate at Stanford Business School.

“I’m inclined to do more with Doug in the VP position, and the complimentary nature of him and Trump would give confidence to a lot more people, too,” Boyce, a former partner at Bain & Co., said in an interview. “The vice president is someone who you could picture being president, not someone who might deliver a certain state, and sometimes that gets lost.”

Then there is Vance. A former venture capitalist, Vance organized a $12 million fundraising event this month in Silicon Valley, part of an attempt to show his ability to draw tech industry donations.

Despite those efforts and Vance’s rise in Trumpworld, Vance’s single biggest donor remains a glaring holdout: Silicon Valley megadonor Peter Thiel. Thiel, who put $15 million into an effort to elect Vance to the Senate in 2022 and used to employ him, said definitively on Thursday, for the first time, that he would not be a major financial supporter of Trump, as he had been in 2016. And it didn’t sound as if naming Vance to the ticket would change that.

“If you hold a gun to my head, I will vote for Trump,” Thiel said at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “I’m not going to give any money to his super PAC.”

Rubio, who built a formidable fundraising operation for his own presidential bid in 2016, could be an attractive option for Republican donors and groups who helped plow more than $146 million into an effort to nominate former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who was Trump’s last remaining primary opponent this year.

Haley’s supporters include some prominent Republican holdouts in the billionaire class, such as hedge fund titans Paul Singer and Kenneth Griffin.

And then there are outside contenders such as Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who has aggressively sought to position himself as a darling of the donor class, claiming support from people including Singer and Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder. A week ago in Washington, Scott hosted a gathering for supporters of his new policy group that, three attendees say, had little subtlety as to its purpose.

The event, in their view, was an overt show of his support among well-heeled Republican donors. Speakers included billionaires such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, billionaire investor Bill Ackman, oil developer Tim Dunn and Marc Rowan, CEO of the investment firm Apollo Global Management.