The prospect of a Donald Trump nomination is accomplishing what a diverse and talented field of Republican presidential contenders could not: uniting the party’s big-money donor establishment.
Some of the wealthiest conservative givers in the country are helping pay for a series of last-ditch attacks to wound Mr. Trump, disclosures filed on Sunday night revealed. And officials involved with the political groups have made clear that they are aggressively raising more money to fight Mr. Trump, hoping to deprive him of enough delegates to win the Republican nomination outright.
Our Principles PAC, a group set up to highlight Mr. Trump’s past liberal positions, took in $4.8 million last month, with a roster of donors that shows it has significantly expanded beyond the Ricketts family, which provided the group’s early funding.
Beyond the Rickettses, who collectively provided another $2 million to the group, Our Principles raised $500,000 from William E. Oberndorf, a California investor who had previously backed Jeb Bush, and $100,000 from Harlan Crow, a Texas real estate developer, who had supported Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. The stream of new money confirms that the Republican Party’s financial elite — who put hundreds of millions of dollars behind more conventional presidential candidates, only to watch almost all of them falter — believes that a focused and well-financed attack campaign could still halt Mr. Trump in his march toward the party’s nomination.
Arkansas investment banker Warren Stephens and his brother gave $2.5 million last month to a super PAC connected to the Club for Growth, a free-market activist group that was one of the first outside organisations to take on Mr. Trump. Richard Uihlein, an Illinois shipping-supplies manufacturer and conservative activist, who backed Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign last year, gave the Club for Growth $500,000.
Figures reported on Sunday now suggest that Ted Cruz is the sole remaining Republican candidate with the financial wherewithal to challenge Mr. Trump. Mr. Cruz raised $11.9 million in February and, despite burning through $17.5 million over the course of the month, began March with $8 million in cash on hand. — New York Times News Service
