Why would a middle-class guy volunteer to send a check to a billionaire like Donald Trump?

Ask Iraq War veteran Rudolf Pohlreich of Arizona, a $250 donor. “It’s like the police when they arrive on the scene — when there’s chaos, you want the police on the scene, you want a—holes to show up and take control, nullify the situation and maybe apologize later.”


Tough, bold, a candidate like no other who is “willing to stand up and say it like it is. When things don’t go well, the worst thing you can do is pretend things are going well,” said Steve Farland of Colorado, who dashed off a $250 check to Donald J. Trump for President Inc. “five minutes after he began his [announcement] speech.”

Trump is so rich he’s said repeatedly he doesn’t need other people’s money to compete in a packed GOP field of 17 candidates. He loaned his own campaign $1.8 million of the $1.9 million it recorded in the second quarter, and he’s only recently softened his public position on accepting donations. Car dealer Ernie Boch Jr. will host him Friday at a $100-a-head fundraiser in Norwood, Massachusetts.

But Trump lovers gave anyway — 63 people contributed $250 or more in the first two weeks after Trump announced. Ten of them have already “maxed out,” meaning they’ve given the legal contribution limit for a federal primary election, $2,700.

They span a wide political spectrum, counting in their ranks a three-time Democratic candidate for governor in Mississippi and a retired New Jersey trader who donated to Pat Buchanan. Trump contributors also span a different sort of spectrum, from a health supplement guru who sells smoothies “designed to sustain life indefinitely” to an undertaker to a sheep farmer to the former head of an industrial waste management company.

If there’s a common thread among them, it’s an appreciation for Trump’s blunt brand of independence and a near-apocalyptic concern for the state of the country.

Trump’s bravado would translate well overseas, supporters say.

“I believe he can stand up to Putin,” said Jackson, Mississippi, trial lawyer John Eaves, who sought his state’s Democratic nomination for governor in 1975, 1979 and 1987.

Eaves, 80, voted twice for President Barack Obama — “I supported him wholeheartedly, I still like him,” he said — but “we have to have someone who can deal with Russia, China, Mexico. … More than anything we need somebody to stand up for America.”

That’s true in the Middle East too, said Pohlreich, who uses the same kind of blunt talk Trump is famous for. He supports Trump’s take-all-the-oil approach to Iraq.

“I agree with him 100 percent,” he said. “When you’re dealing with authoritarian dictatorships, you have to hold the line. There’s no respect for Obama.”

(Pohlreich, for the record, is decidedly not an Obama supporter: “There was no way Obama got in the position he’s in without being able to create a birth certificate,” he says, when asked about Trump’s previous flirtation with so-called “birthers.”)

The birther dalliance is just one example of Trump’s capacity for outrageousness that makes some supporters a little wary of being identified with him publicly. They suspect that Trump may attract some unsavory characters, and they don’t want to be lumped in with the likes of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who this week announced his support for Trump.

“Please be kind to us,” LivingFuel CEO K.C. Craichy of Florida pleaded last week after sharing his take on the bombastic billionaire’s appeal. Craichy, who donated $250 to Trump and has given previously to Trump rivals Rick Santorum, Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee, is the author of “7 Golden Keys to Unlock Lifelong Vitality” and “The Super Health Diet: The Last Diet You Will Ever Need!”

“I don’t like the whole process of politics, OK? I don’t like it. When I’ve seen men of character sometimes in the past I’ve sent money. … This particular year, I think this is the most significant year of my lifetime to pick a president,” Craichy said.

He supports Trump because he’s fed up with conservatives who “don’t do what they say. … One reason to like Trump is the Republican establishment doesn’t.”

Manhattan insurance executive Pamela Newman, meanwhile, has a long history of donating to establishment candidates on both sides of the aisle. Newman, whose $2,700 donation to Trump’s campaign is dated June 1, 15 days before he announced, said “I don’t have to talk to you about anything,” when asked about her support for Trump.

Newman, a prominent New York fundraiser, gave to both the Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns in 2012. She’s even given to two Democrats currently running for president, dropping $700 on Lincoln Chafee’s 2000 and 2005 Senate campaigns and several donations to front-runner Hillary Clinton over the years. As of June 30 this cycle, however, Newman had contributed only to Trump, whose campaign spent $6,933 on an insurance policy from Aon Risk Services, where Newman works.

Jim Shore, an artist from York, South Carolina, whose religious and Disney-themed figurines are hot items on QVC, isn’t worried about his brand. Shore’s $5,400 donation to Trump maxes him out for both the primary and the general contest, but he said it’s not like he’s going to pull “a Dixie Chick” and flaunt his politics from the stage.

“When I’m with folks who are my potential customers, I don’t discuss things that would alienate me from them,” he said. “And I think Trump has a wide enough base of support personally even if people don’t like him politically.”

Shore donated to Trump after a nine-year break from political giving.

“I guess it’s a matter of being somewhat disillusioned or disappointed oftentimes with even the candidates that I like and that I’ve supported as a conservative Republican,” Shore said.

Craichy echoed that point: “The Democrats, they have terrible policy and they get in office and they enact their terrible policy — at least that’s consistent. Republicans say ‘give us control and we’ll take care of it,’ then they get in office and they don’t take care of it.”

Craichy’s website sells “The Perfect Words of Jesus Christ,” a book compiled by his wife, Monica, former Miss Florida of 1985, alongside diet books, “blender bottles” and smoothie mixes. The tagline for LivingFuel — “the super meal you can drink!” — is trademarked.

Which raises the possibility that supporters like Shore or Craichy hope to win Trump’s blessing for their brands — do their contributions pass Trump’s standard of “no strings attached”?

“If I wanted him to endorse LivingFuel, I would have made some effort to reach him because I know people who know him,” Craichy said.

Shore said he’d be happy to give Trump a figurine if he wanted one but “that hadn’t crossed my mind really.”

Shore’s wife, Jan, meanwhile, said that while Trump has “a lot of interesting things that he’s doing, I just wish he’d temper his conversation a little.”

Trump occasionally crosses a line, even with early supporters who generally find his candor refreshing.

Take real estate agent Shirley Lindefjeld, who left a career as a currency trader to raise sheep and renovate historic homes in Bedford, New York.

“I’d rather not be a part of this,” Lindefjeld said Wednesday when asked about her $250 contribution. “And I’ll tell you why. I love that he says what a lot of us feel … but, you know, I’m just not so happy that he’s lashing out at women’s issues and stuff. … He’s just got to curb it a little bit for me.”

Yet if some donors are leery of aligning with Trump, others are downright suspicious of the media.

“If you’re just calling up pretending to be who you are and you’re on the other side, you ought to know I’m fired up for Trump,” said Pamela Sue Bridges, the owner of International Fire & Safety Inc., a fire protection equipment company in Mississippi.

Bridges, who donated $250, drove two hours and waited in line six hours to attend Trump’s Friday rally in Mobile, Alabama. She says she has never been “this fired up about any candidate” but allows she was “close to this … [in] the Reagan days.”

Bridges demonstrates an element of the Trump coalition confounding pundits: The twice-divorced mogul who said “I’m not sure I have [asked God for forgiveness]” and spoke of eating “the little cracker” at church is leading among evangelicals.

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“I’m a Christian, and I was concerned at first … but I like him more and more the more I hear him,” Bridges said, pointing out that Trump did talk up the Bible at the Mobile rally.

Retired computer programmer Larry Taylor of Birmingham, Alabama, who donated $500, couldn’t make it to Mobile because he was recovering from surgery. But the two-time Obama backer supports Trump largely because he wants to reform campaign finance laws.

“You take all the candidates, you take every one of them, they all take PAC money from all of these big super PACs and these interest groups, and — use common sense, when they get elected, who controls them?” Taylor said. Trump “doesn’t need that stuff.”

Told that Trump last month attended a fundraiser for Make America Great Again, a PAC supporting his effort, Taylor expressed surprise but said he still believes Trump is the best candidate for the economy.

Fellow Obama-and-Trump-supporter Eaves has made dozens of political donations, mostly to Democrats, in the past, including a $10,000 donation to the Democratic National Committee in 2001 and $225 to MoveOn.org in 2004. He built his own three runs for governor largely around economic issues.

Asked whether he’d ever voted for a Republican, Eaves named Ronald Reagan. His second choice for president in 2016? Hillary Clinton. A general-election match between Trump and Clinton, he said, “would be a hard choice, but at the present time, I probably would go Trump.”

Florida retiree Andrew Sadanowicz, the former head of a helicopter transmissions manufacturer, donated $2,700 to Trump “as a gesture of support — I know it doesn’t mean anything to him [financially].” Giving to Trump, he said, was a “no-brainer,” even though his only other recorded contributions were to Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd’s 2003 Senate campaign.

Sadanowicz, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Warsaw, Poland, said his second choice is probably Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “He has [a] background similar to mine,” he said. Trump’s recent comments about immigrants don’t bother him, he added.

Many of the supporters appear to see Trump with Reagan-tinted glasses, describing the candidate who said in May, “this country is a hellhole, and we’re going down fast,” as the second coming of the Republican icon known for his sunny optimism.

“I think he’s going to bring this country together with the race issue and a lot of other things, because I believe he’s more bipartisan than anyone, and it just doesn’t matter to him with that — black, brown or white, he’s Trump,” said Bridges.

And, as the founder of the Art of the Deal PAC, Dan Gallegos, said, “it’s going to be all of us who benefit, Americans who benefit” from a Trump presidency, so why should he have to bear the cost himself?