At Least 15 Billionaires Have Now Donated To The Anti-Trump Lincoln Project

At least eight more billionaires or spouses of billionaires recently donated to the Lincoln Project, a super-PAC led by former Republican consultants trying to defeat Donald Trump in November.

The largest billionaire contribution came from oil heir Gordon Getty, who gave $1 million to the super-PAC last month, according to committee records filed with the Federal Election Commission Wednesday.

Other new donors include Hyatt hotels heir John Pritzker (who gave $100,000), IT equipment entrepreneur Michael Krasny ($10,000), Cargill heiress Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer ($10,000), investor Robert Ziff ($10,000) and hedge fund tycoon Joseph Edelman ($2,000). Karen Finerman, who is married to another hedge fund billionaire, Lawrence Golub, gave $5,000. Lizzie Tisch, the wife of Loews Hotels CEO Jonathan Tisch, also gave $1,000. Counting this new group of donors, at least 15 billionaires or billionaire spouses have given to the Lincoln Project this year.

Donors can’t contribute more than $5,600 per election cycle directly to presidential campaigns, but there is no limit to what they can contribute to super-PACs like the Lincoln Project. Some donors who gave earlier in the year donated even more between July and September, the latest month that donor information is available.

Billionaire producer David Geffen, who first contributed to the super-PAC in June, gave another $200,000 in August and September. Sequoia venture capitalist Michael Moritz, another earlier donor, gave another $50,000 in July. Walmart heiress Christy Walton first gave to the group in January. She donated another $10,000 in July, bringing her total contributions to $40,000. The Lincoln Project raised $39.4 million between July and September, according to filings. At least 3% of that came from billionaires. In total, the Lincoln Project has raised $58 million this year.

The super-PAC started in late 2019, launched by a group of former Republican strategists who once worked for the likes of John McCain, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. It has focused on turning Republican voters away from Trump and provoking the president with viral ads and social media posts.

Their ad called “Mourning In America,” a riff on the famous Ronald Reagan campaign commercial from the 1980s, became an early viral hit, sending Trump on a Twitter tirade back in May. “I never thought it would be the political consulting class that would have to stand up for moral righteousness,” said Mike Madrid, one of the group’s founders, in a recent New Yorker interview.

This post was updated on October 14, 2020 at 2:35 p.m.