Collins filmed leaving another billionaire-hosted Park Avenue fundraiser

On the evening of Oct. 24, Senator Susan Collins was filmed leaving a fundraiser hosted by Wall Street billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, a GOP megadonor and the biggest backer behind a new group running ads for Collins in Maine.

The video, posted by the American Bridge 21st Century PAC, shows Collins getting into a car outside Schwarzman’s $35-million apartment at 740 Park Avenue, a building that was the former abode of the late industrialists David Koch and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., among other billionaires.

Watch as @SenatorCollins’ handlers try their best to block our tracker from catching Collins leaving ANOTHER high-dollar fundraiser in Manhattan last night. Is she even trying to raise money from her home state? #MESen #MEpolitics #Maine pic.twitter.com/KvgtlSgo21 — American Bridge (@American_Bridge) October 25, 2019

Schwarzman, the CEO of international investment firm The Blackstone Group, is the largest donor to a political action committee launched earlier this year to help fund Collins’ re-election bid, the 1820 PAC, a reference to the year Maine was granted statehood. He has given a total of $500,000 to the group.

As of June, the 1820 PAC had already spent $276,780 on “media placement” in Maine in support of Collins.

Schwarzman and his wife Christine are also the fourth biggest individual contributors to Republicans and conservative outside groups, having handed out $12.9 million during the 2018 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

On Dec. 2, 2017, the same day that Collins cast the deciding vote for the passage of Trump’s tax bill in the Senate, Schwarzman hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for the president. The couple was also highlighted in a February 2019 report by the Center for Public Integrity and Mother Jones entitled “Did Billionaires pay off Republicans for passing the Trump tax bill?” for being among the GOP megadonors who showed “a marked change in their giving behavior” after the 2017 tax vote, contributing $416,000 to conservatives in the last two months of that year.

The Blackstone Group is also currently listed as Collins’ top campaign contributor, with the company’s employees and owners contributing over $60,000 since the start of the year directly to Collins’ re-election.

Last April, Collins was seen leaving another Manhattan cocktail party fundraiser, that time at the $32-million Park Avenue apartment of offshore drilling magnate Andrew Tisch.