Clinton was New York’s senator for eight years, where Wall Street was a key constituency. Wall St. Republicans' dark secret

NEW YORK — The biggest parlor game on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms these days is guessing whether former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will run for president and save the GOP’s old establishment base from its rising populist wing.

The second most popular game is guessing what happens if Jeb says no.


Two dozen interviews about the 2016 race with unaligned GOP donors, financial executives and their Washington lobbyists turned up a consistent — and unusual — consolation candidate if Bush demurs, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t recover politically and no other establishment favorite gets nominated: Hillary Clinton.

Most donors and Wall Street titans have not lined up with any candidate yet, waiting for the field to take shape after the midterms. But if Bush doesn’t run, the list of Republican saviors could be short. Some donors fear Christie will never overcome the Bridgegate scandal. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin so far seems more inclined to stay in the House than to run for president. And to varying degrees, other candidates — such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio — are either unknown or untrusted.

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The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation.

“If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would love that and either outcome would be fine,” one top Republican-leaning Wall Street lawyer said over lunch in midtown Manhattan last week. “We could live with either one. Jeb versus Joe Biden would also be fine. It’s Rand Paul or Ted Cruz versus someone like Elizabeth Warren that would be everybody’s worst nightmare.”

Most top GOP fundraisers and donors on Wall Street won’t say this kind of thing on the record for fear of heavy blowback from party officials, as well as supporters of Cruz and Rand Paul. Few want to acknowledge publicly that the Democratic front-runner fills them with less dread than some Republican 2016 hopefuls. And, to be sure, none of the Republican-leaning financial executives are so far suggesting they’d openly back her.

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But the private consensus is similar to what Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said to POLITICO late last year when he praised both Christie — before the bridge scandal — and Clinton. “I very much was supportive of Hillary Clinton the last go-round,” he said. “I held fundraisers for her.”

People close to Blankfein say the same calculus applies to a Jeb Bush-Hillary Clinton race as it would to a Christie-Clinton contest. “Those would be two very good choices and we’d be perfectly happy with them,” a person close to Blankfein said. Blankfein is a self-described Democrat, but his comments about Christie and Clinton reflect the ambidextrous political approach that many Republicans and Democrats on Wall Street take.

There are, of course, other GOP candidates who could emerge as favorites of the financial industry after making their case over the next few months.

Rubio, even with his rocky start on immigration, has impressed many on Wall Street, including the Blackstone Group’s Steve Schwarzman, during his forays to the city.

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Both Walker and Ryan will be in New York on May 13, Walker for an Republican National Committee fundraiser and Ryan for a reelection event hosted by a wide range of major donors, including hedge fund magnates Cliff Asness and Paul Singer and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. Walker also will be holding meetings in New York this week as the “Wall Street primary” continues. Kasich, a former Lehman Brothers managing director, is viewed as a candidate who might fit the consensus, center-right mold favored by Wall Street. But multiple GOP operatives and donors said they see few signs Kasich, who is in the midst of a reelection fight, is currently organizing for a run.

Instead, the donors, financial executives and Washington representatives offered a consistent refrain: If we can’t nominate someone like Bush or Christie from the pro-business wing of the party, and if the GOP nominee is from the far right, then we will hold our noses and tolerate Clinton.

“Most people in the industry find her approachable and have a track record with her,” one Republican financial services executive said. “They wouldn’t align with her on every policy, but they won’t view her as hostile to the sector. If it turns out to be Hillary walking away with it, there would not be any panic.”

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Clinton, after all, was New York’s senator for eight years, where the financial district was a key constituency. She had many Wall Street rainmakers as advisers and friends. Her family has continued to work that network to try to stock the Clinton Foundation with a $250 million endowment before a presidential run. And she’s been out on the financial services speaking circuit, giving talks to Goldman Sachs and fireside-style chats with the heads of the Carlyle Group and the investment firm KKR.

Clinton warmed some hearts on Wall Street during a paid, closed-press speech to Goldman Sachs executives and other big donors last year when she said of the financial crisis, in essence: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. That line, as the people on hand interpreted her speech, reflects the feelings of many financiers. They know they played a role in the 2008 financial collapse but argue that many other factors did as well, including federal housing policy and irresponsible borrowers lying on mortgage documents. Wall Street sees in Clinton someone who would not look to score easy political points at its expense.

This is not to say that Clinton is the preference of Republicans in the financial sector — far from it. Most shake their heads when asked directly if Clinton is someone they could support. But when the contrast is against some of the non-establishment hopefuls, their comfort level becomes clearer.

This line of thinking is a direct response to fiery rhetoric from people like Rand Paul, who used the 2013 CPAC conference in Washington to rip the financial industry, saying “there is nothing conservative about bailing out Wall Street.”

Ted Cruz, whose wife works at Goldman Sachs, is viewed negatively by many in the industry for his support of last year’s government shutdown and scorched earth approach to political battle. Cruz fired up an activist gathering in New Hampshire earlier this month with the kind of provocative populist message that makes bankers very nervous. “The rich and powerful, those who walk the corridors of power, are getting fat and happy,” Cruz thundered. At the same event, Paul argued that the GOP “cannot be the party of fat cats, rich people and Wall Street.”

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That kind of talk leaves some rich people contemplating the notion of supporting Clinton in what would amount to a reversion to 2008, when Wall Street money went nearly 2 to 1 for then-Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. John McCain. Even those who could never back her don’t see her as a huge threat to the business community.

“I tell you this, I hope he does decide to run,” Al Hoffman, a GOP megadonor who chaired George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns, said of Jeb Bush, noting the former Florida governor’s positions on immigration reform and national education standards rile populists but line up well with business groups and the broader electorate.

He said his clear preference is not to see Clinton as president, and he hopes GOP ideals will triumph in 2016. But he added: “Is [Clinton] anti-business? I don’t think so. I hope not. I don’t have any reason to believe that.”

The current fervor for Bush, stoked by the former governor’s multiple appearances in New York and elsewhere in which he has said he‘ll decide about a presidential run after the midterms, follows the rapid decline of Christie as a Wall Street darling.

Thus far, nothing has come out directly tying Christie to the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal, and lawyers hired by his office released their own internal review exonerating him of involvement. But his association with the debacle and the ongoing inquiries about it have left even Christie’s biggest boosters unsure about his chances in 2016.

“He is basically one email away from extinction,” said one deep-pocketed Christie supporter, who asked not to be named in order to speak candidly.

One Christie backer said the New Jersey governor’s political fate could rest on the ascension of people like Paul and Cruz, arguing their rise could force the party’s donor class to embrace Christie’s positives as a candidate, even with the baggage that Bridgegate may bring.

“The bulk of the big money guys are either Big Boy or Jeb,” said one top GOP donor, referring to Christie. “Rand Paul still is a grass-roots phenom and a boardroom horror show.”

Paul has made multiple efforts to woo the donor class, including appearing with a handful of Mitt Romney backers and his finance director Spencer Zwick in Massachusetts just last week. But many New York financial bundlers remain concerned.

Others say Christie receding and Bush’s indecision has left the GOP 2016 field in a state of limbo as donors focus on the midterms.

“There’s a good sense on the GOP side that we’ve got a decent chance to win a majority in the Senate and thus make a major impact on legislation in the next two years,” said Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union and former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. “Most of the major donors who I know are keeping their powder dry in terms of the presidential elections. It’ll take a longer time for major donors to get comfortable with the major contenders than it has in previous years.”

That may be true for all the candidates except Bush, who already inspires great confidence on Wall Street and would have little trouble collecting the money in both direct and super PAC donations to play a long game in the primaries should he lose an early state or two to a candidate perceived as more conservative on social or fiscal issues, as happened to Romney in 2012.

So the big question remains, will Jeb run?

People close to him say that he’ll decide over the summer whether issues in his family life, including his wife’s Columba’s distaste for the public eye, will allow him to enter the race in a fully committed way.

Bush, who has worked hard in recent years to build up a sizable nest egg, also would face questions over his business dealings, as highlighted in a recent New York Times article that noted his work on behalf of Lehman Brothers and a bankrupt Miami building materials company.

So far, people close to Bush say that nothing has arisen that would make the former governor decide against running. “Most of the issues that could be raised have surfaced,” said a person who knows Bush. “The immigration reform issues and now the business dealings and the family questions. And that’s it. There’s no more big surprises out there.” This person described Bush’s decision as a true tossup.

Others big donors who do not know the governor well say they are much more skeptical that he will ultimately decide to run given the fierce attacks he would face in early primary states from presumably very well-funded conservative candidates.

Should Bush announce after the midterms that he is not running, a frenzy would ensue among others to fill the establishment slot in the primaries.

“If a scenario unfolds where neither Christie nor Jeb Bush are running, what you would see in the major donor community would be regional factionalization clustered around the sitting governors,” said Phil Musser, a GOP consultant and former executive director of the Republican Governors Association. “What Jeb and to a slightly lesser degree Christie have is the ability to reach nationally and solidify major donor support if they were to enter the race.”

And if none of the sitting governors or a Wall Street-friendly candidate like Ryan can wrest the nomination from the likes of a Paul or a Cruz?

“In that situation,” one Wall Street executive said, “then Hillary seems relatively tolerable.”