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Ronald Lauder and his wife Jo Carole arrive at the White House for a state dinner April 24, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images
For some members of the three-comma-club, making political contributions is a family affair. Take New York City oil and real estate billionaire John Catsimatidis. He, his wife Margo, and their two adult children Andrea and John Jr. have all given thousands of dollars to support President Donald Trump.
Not all billionaires, however, are on the same page with their families. Real estate heiress Jane Goldman donated to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, while her husband Benjamin Lewis gave $100,000 to a committee supporting Trump. Corporate raider Ronald Perelman gave $125,000 to Trump in 2017, his wife Anna Chapman gave some $6,000 to a pro-Biden super-PAC in February. Rupert Murdoch reigns over a media empire known for friendly coverage toward the president, but his wife, former supermodel Jerry Hall, gave $500 to the Biden campaign.
There is only one billionaire couple that Forbes has found, however, who has donated directly to the presidential campaigns of both Biden and Trump. Cosmetics king Ronald Lauder has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into committees that support the president and the Republican National Committee, but his wife Jo Carole has given more than $50,000 to groups supporting Biden and the Democratic National Committee, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.
The Lauder and Trump families go back decades. Ronald Lauder and Donald Trump were both college students at the University of Pennsylvania before they took leading roles in their own family empires. In his 1987 autobiography, The Art of the Deal, Trump recalls Ronald’s brother Leonard hosting a luncheon, where the future president happened to have a seat next to the ambassador to Russia. The Lauders have long held international connections. Ronald served as ambassador to Austria under Ronald Reagan in 1986.
Ronald Lauder has stayed loyal to the Republican party, having donated to candidates like Bob Dole, Orrin Hatch and Mitt Romney over the years. In November 2017, he donated $100,000 to Trump Victory, a committee supporting Trump and the Republication National Committee. The next year, he released a statement touting the president as “a man of incredible insight and intelligence.” In 2019 he gave another $100,000 to the same committee supporting Trump.
Those actions didn’t sit well inside Estée Lauder, the New York City-based company where Ronald Lauder serves on the board of directors. Earlier this year, Estée Lauder employees started a petition requesting that he be removed from the board because of his support for the president. He stayed in place.
It also may have sparked some controversy between Lauder and his wife of more than 50 years, Jo Carole. (Representatives for the Lauders did not comment on the contributions.) Having previously donated in a bipartisan way—giving to Mitt Romney in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016—she settled on Biden this year. She donated $2,800 to the Biden campaign in January, gave another $2,800 in April, then poured $50,000 into a joint fundraising committee supporting the former vice president in June.
Jo Carole is not the only Biden backer in the family. Ronald Lauder’s son-in-law, investor Eric Zinterhofer, and sister-in-law Judith Glickman Lauder have also made contributions to Biden’s campaign. Same with nephew Gary Lauder and his wife Laura. Leonard Lauder, Ron Lauder’s brother and the chairman emeritus at Estée Lauder, has donated more than $100,000 this election cycle to Democratic candidates running for Congress, though he has yet to pony up for Biden.