Some of the biggest Republican donors, who collectively have contributed tens of millions of dollars to shape the presidential race, are tightening their purse strings out of frustration with their inability to boost their favored candidates, or to slow Donald Trump.

Rather than continuing to write huge checks to support the cluster of establishment candidates jockeying to emerge as the leading alternative to Trump, a billionaire real estate showman roundly despised by the GOP elite, these donors have mostly retreated to the sidelines. They’re watching anxiously, hoping that the field sorts itself out, according to interviews with a half dozen major donors or their representatives.


Many of the donors are urging the deep-pocketed groups they’ve already funded to begin spending against Trump, even as some recognize the potential for such spending to backfire, and are increasingly questioning the efficacy of big-money advertising campaigns more generally.

“It’s unbelievable. I mean Jeb Bush spent $42 million in New Hampshire ― what did he get for it?” said billionaire GOP mega-donor Stan Hubbard, a Minnesota media mogul. “It’s frustrating.”

Hubbard and his family initially supported Scott Walker’s now-aborted campaign for the GOP nomination, donating more than $105,000 to the various committees supporting the Wisconsin governor. He was seen as a leading contender to unite the party’s conservative and business-centrist factions, but he never caught on, despite $24 million in super PAC support.

After Walker dropped out, the Hubbards played the GOP presidential field a bit, donating nearly $40,000 to committees supporting Bush, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson, as well as the since-aborted campaigns of Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie.

“That’s money down the drain,” Hubbard told POLITICO, adding that his latest hope to take down Trump is John Kasich. Hubbard and his wife each gave the maximum $2,700 contribution to the Ohio governor’s campaign for the nomination after he came in second in Tuesday’s New Hampshire’s primary. While Kasich finished well behind Trump, the showing was enough to attract interest from a handful of mega-donors who had previously supported other GOP candidates.

Home Depot founder Ken Langone, who previously had donated $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Christie, declared his support for Kasich and began calling other mega-donors, including Hubbard, to make the pitch.

“Guess what, Ken? You and I are on the same page,” Hubbard said he told Langone. “We just did the same thing ― sent money to Kasich.” But Hubbard said he planned to wait to see how Kasich did in the upcoming primaries before writing a check to his super PAC — and fundraising sources said that’s the way that many free agent GOP mega-donors are approaching the tumultuous primary.

“Most donors are sitting tight not knowing what to do,” said one top GOP fundraiser.

Rubio was close to coalescing support from the elite donor class, the fundraiser said, until his widely panned debate performance in New Hampshire primary and subsequent fifth-place finish in the state’s primary. “If he had finished second in New Hampshire or even a really close third, it would be a three-man race between Trump, Cruz and Rubio,” said the fundraiser. “If Rubio pulls it back together and gets on a minor roll in South Carolina, I think he can relatively quickly come back. Not because there’s such a deep loyalty to him from donors, but because they are so worried and desperately want someone to step forward to take on Trump.”

Several donors expressed frustration that the establishment candidates and the super PACs supporting them spent considerable time and money attacking one another ― and not Trump ― in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

Perhaps as a result, many donors who supported candidates who have since dropped out appear inclined to wait until after the Feb. 20 South Carolina primary to pick a new horse.

Wisconsin roofing billionaire Diane Hendricks, who gave $5 million to a pro-Walker super PAC and is being hotly courted by supporters of both Rubio and Ted Cruz, intends to wait until the cluster of primaries and caucuses on March 1 ― Super Tuesday ― before backing another candidate, said sources familiar with her plans.

Wyoming mutual fund pioneer Foster Friess, who supported Rick Santorum, this week told POLITICO ― presumably with tongue planted in cheek ― “I am still in the fetal position in my bed where I probably will be for the next 30 days after Rick's decision to drop out.”

He added on a more serious note that he’s not interested in backing candidates or groups training their fire on GOP rivals. “I want to try to play a conciliatory role. For us to win in November, all of these warring factions must kiss and make up,” Friess said. “I have huge respect for the efforts all the candidates are extending, but only wish they would direct their attacks toward the goofy Democrat ideas rather than a circular firing squad.”

Arkansas poultry magnate Ronnie Cameron, who donated $3 million to a super PAC supporting former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s since-aborted presidential campaign, said he had no immediate plans to give to any of them. “Maybe after South Carolina,” Cameron told POLITICO, though he added he “may not do anything else” with super PACs for the rest of the cycle.

GOP mega-donor John Jordan, who decided to support Rubio after Walker ― his first choice ― dropped out, predicted that one of the remaining establishment candidates would emerge from the pack on March 15, when a handful of delegate-rich states hold primaries.

“One of them will do better than the other, and it will be impossible for the relative loser to make the case to donors that he should continue," he told the Associated Press. Pointing specifically to Bush and Rubio ― the former governor and current senator, respectively, from Florida, which is among the March 15 states ― he said "donors will simply move to whoever wins that state, and it will happen nearly instantly.”

But some donors worry that, by then, Trump might be unbeatable.

They’re looking for one of the existing deep-pocketed outside groups to take action sooner to halt Trump’s rise, with several donors specifically citing the political operation helmed by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

At its winter gathering of major donors a couple weeks ago in Indian Wells, Calif., operatives floated the possibility of launching an anti-Trump campaign, according to sources who attended. They said donors were mostly receptive. The Koch network, which intends to spend $889 million on policy and political advocacy in the run-up to the 2016 election, hasn’t previously ventured aggressively into GOP primaries, and sources familiar with the network say there is an intensive debate about the timing and details of a possible anti-Trump campaign.

The Minnesota mega-donor Hubbard, who has donated hundreds of thousands to the Koch network over the years (including at least $50,000 last year), but did not attend the winter meeting, said he planned to call Koch operatives to make the case that they should intervene.

“It’s time to start educating,” he said. “It’s obvious that there is no way that we’re going to be able to make Mexico pay for a wall and all this other nonsense. I don’t think anybody’s done an effective job of pointing that out. Hopefully, we’ll have somebody like Americans for Prosperity and the Kochs who will step up to the plate and do it,” he said.

But, he warned, there’s a risk to it. “It could help Trump. It helps him say 'The establishment is against me. They’re out to get poor me. I’m the victim.'”