Donors from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood helped boost donations to Vice President Kamala Harris in August, helping Democrats build a $109 million cash advantage over Republican Donald Trump ahead of the most expensive period of the presidential election, the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission show.
While polls show the race is very close, Harris has led in the money race. She boosted her war chest in August after raising $361 million, while Trump spent $32 million more than the $130 million he raised when he launched an expensive advertising campaign to sap her momentum. His allied super PAC has also depleted some of its cash reserves.
Trump has drawn support from new sources including crypto industry donors, whom he has been courting assiduously, and some longtime Republican donors who have recently begun backing him, such as hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who did not contribute to his previous campaigns.
The filings listed the largest single donation ever made by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He gave $289,100, the maximum, to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which backs GOP House candidates. Musk also set up a political action committee this year to support Trump and House Republicans, which has spent millions in recent weeks. It won’t disclose its donors until next month.
Trump’s newfound support wasn’t enough to offset the cost of running expensive advertising campaigns. Harris and her main political committee, Future Forward PAC, booked $421 million in paid media from September through Election Day, nearly double the $216 million Trump and his allied political committee, MAGA Inc.
Kamala Harris
- Harris and the Democratic Party raised $361 million in August and entered September with $404 million in cash on hand.
- Future Forward, an allied political action committee, raised $36 million and had $84 million in cash on hand.
Harris’ campaign held several fundraising events including stops in San Francisco, where she tapped into her donor network in her home state of California, and in the Hamptons on Long Island.
Donors from the finance industry include Bruce Karch of Oak Tree Capital Management, Robert Stavis of Bessemer Venture Partners, and Sadek Wahba, co-founder of I Squared Capital. Also donating were Janice Savin Williams of Siebert Williams Shankey, legendary oil trader Andy Hall, Glenn Foreman, who managed Michael Dell’s money, and E. John Rosenwald, vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase.
Celebrity donors included Scarlett Johansson, Carol Burnett, Frances McDormand, Mayim Bialik and Alan Alda. Fashion brand founders Stacey Bendet of Alice + Olivia and Rebecca Hessel Cohen of Love Shack Fancy also donated.
Bronson Van Wyk, known for designing and planning the 70th birthday party for donor Stephen Schwarzman, joined Florida historian Carl Hiaasen and Susan Phyllis Hill, a writer and television producer, as donors to Harris.
Harris-aligned political action committee Future Forward received $3 million each from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and the Pacific Environmental Coalition, a nonprofit led by tech investor Matt Kohler. Kohler’s nonprofit donated to the Nikki Haley-aligned PAC during the Republican primary. Netflix’s Reed Hastings and Ripple Labs co-founder Christian Larsen donated $1 million each, the latter in the form of the XRP cryptocurrency.
(Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix, is a member of Bloomberg’s board of directors.)
Donald Trump
- Trump and the GOP raised $130 million in August and ended the month with $295 million in the bank.
- Super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $25 million and ended September with $59 million.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Thomas Peterffy, president of Interactive Brokers Group, and Edward Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, were among the top donors to the Trump campaign and the Republican Party in August.
Also contributing to the event were Joseph Kraft of Alliance Resource Partners, casino owners Frank Fertitta and Lorenzo Fertitta, and country singer Lee Greenwood, who performed at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Wall Street donors to Trump include hedge fund manager Andrew Rechtshaffen, John Sargent of Rockefeller Capital Management, and Emile Henry of Tiger Infrastructure Partners.
Diane Hendricks, owner of ABC Supply Co., donated $10 million to MAGA Inc. and was a featured speaker at the Milwaukee convention, described by Timeline as an “ordinary American.” Cantor Fitzgerald’s Howard Lutnick, who hosted an August event in the Hamptons for Trump that raised $15 million, and Singer each donated $5 million.
Other political action committees that support Trump, including Elon Musk’s America Committee and billionaire Miriam Adelson’s Preserve America Committee, will not provide detailed information about their finances until October 15.
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