(Bloomberg) — Wealthy Democratic donors are engaged in the same battle their Republican counterparts fought and lost months ago — and are finding that when it comes to electing a president, their power has limits.
Some of the most powerful figures on Wall Street poured hundreds of millions of dollars into finding an alternative to Donald Trump and failed. Now, a group of deep-pocketed liberal donors have revealed that their dollars aren't likely to be a deciding factor if President Joe Biden decides to drop out of the race.
After four years of testing Trump's limits, Biden won over business-minded progressives and moderates in 2020 with a pledge to restore dignity and normalcy to the office of the presidency. However, after a disastrous June debate that raised questions about his health and acuity, many donors have publicly and privately urged the 81-year-old president to yield to a younger candidate.
Several donors who have publicly called for Biden to drop out of the race just weeks ago raised millions of dollars for his re-election, including actor George Clooney and Netflix Inc. co-founder Reed Hastings. Some have threatened to withhold the money until the party chooses a new candidate, prompting a sharp drop in contributions since the debate two weeks ago, according to people familiar with the campaign's fundraising.
Read more: Biden's biggest donors were powerless to push him to end the bid
On Thursday evening, Biden signaled his intention to remain at the top of the Democratic ticket, saying at a news conference in Washington that he intends to “finish this job” and win a second term.
While the drama over whether Biden should continue in the race is far from over, donor preferences are likely to take a back seat to the direction of Biden's family and top-ranking elected Democrats, including the Senate majority leader. , Chuck Schumer and the House Minority Leader. Hakeem Jeffries.
“When they lead, everyone will follow and the focus of the party will turn to defeating Trump,” said Josh Galper, a Democratic strategist.
More than a dozen conversations with Democratic donors and operatives indicated that there is no centralized effort to plan a Biden alternative. Some donors are making talks based on game theory, poker and psychology, but are up against the reality that Biden holds all the cards.
Republican iteration
Republican donors played a similar game during the GOP nominating process, only to find that their capacity to shape the race was limited.
After their party's poor showing in the 2022 midterm elections, major donors including Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone Inc., Harold Hamm of Continental Resources and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus criticized Trump. For months, donors floated alternatives and pushed for candidates who could give Republicans a better chance at victory.
But donors never systematically pursued this. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis emerged as Trump's strongest challenger a year before the primaries began, but some donors had concerns about how the relatively green politician would perform on the national stage.
After DeSantis' campaign imploded, it left an opening for Trump's former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, to attract wealthy donors. Jonathan Bush and other donors backed an effort to promote Haley to independent voters in New Hampshire.
“I was kind of shocked, frankly, that with just a small number of millions of dollars, we added almost 40,000 votes to Nikki Haley,” said Bush, a co-founder of a health technology company and a relative of two former the presidents. in an interview. Through Trump's dominance in the state, Bush said he would do it again.
“I wish I had done it earlier and I wish I had done it deeper,” he said.
After Haley dropped out of the race, Republican donors gave up. Trump cemented his status as front-runner, and many of the wealthy people who had once called for his removal began writing checks. Schwarzman, Hamm and Marcus have all publicly endorsed Trump since he became the presumptive nominee in March.
Challenging the millionaires
Biden's situation now is not so different from that faced by Trump, who turned 78 in June. Since he launched his campaign, donors have worried about the president's lack of appeal among young voters, his stance on the Israel-Hamas war and his reluctance to take questions at fundraisers.
The biggest difference between the efforts of some Republican donors to anoint a Trump alternative and the push by some Democratic contributors to convince Biden to bow out is that the former took place in a normal, orderly process for choosing a major-party nominee. for president, while the riots around Biden in the peak stages of the race are without historical precedent.
As a sitting president, it would have been unusual for Biden to face significant opposition from longtime Democratic sympathizers. To be sure, financier Bill Ackman was willing to back a longtime Biden challenger, Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, but few others did. Phillips ended his campaign in March.
Biden has consistently broken monthly fundraising records for Democratic presidential candidates for most of his campaign. At times, he had roughly three times as much cash on hand as Trump.
Biden spokesman Michael Tyler openly mocked the Republican's money disadvantage, saying in a statement “if Donald Trump puts these kinds of numbers in learner, he would dismiss himself.” That trend was reversed in May when Trump nominated Biden for the first time.
Avoiding pleas from wealthy donors is also likely to be politically useful as Biden seeks to convince voters that he is running to protect democracy.
Earlier this week, a defiant Biden told MSNBC that he doesn't care what millionaires think. For now, that leaves wealthy Democratic contributors looking for a plan B in a bind.
“There are donors out there who would rather give money to any Democrat but Joe Biden,” said Robert Shapiro, a professor of government at Columbia University. “But the problem is at this point, Joe Biden is the candidate of the Democratic Party. And so they are stuck.”