Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump (left) and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Reuters
The country’s wealthy opened their purse strings in August with a focus on election season, donating millions of dollars to super PACs supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump and Democrats and Republicans across the country, according to monthly reports filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission.
The largest contribution from a single donor went to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supports Trump, when Diane Hendricks, a Wisconsin roofing billionaire and Republican megadonor, gave $10 million to the group.
Howard Lutnick, CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, and Paul Singer, president of investment management firm Elliott Management, have both donated $5 million to MAGA Inc.
Annette Caldwell Simmons, widow of businessman Harold Simmons, donated $2 million to MAGA, and Warren Stevens, CEO of investment bank Stevens & Co., donated $1 million.
On the Democratic side, tech entrepreneurs were the largest donors to FF PAC (also known as Future Forward), the super PAC supporting Harris’ presidential bid.
Facebook and Yahoo! JAPAN were the top donors to the group in August. Asana Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Netflix With co-founder Reed Hastings Twilio Co-founder Jeff Lawson and his wife Erica.
Moskovitz donated $3 million to FF PAC, while Hastings, Jeff Lawson and Erica Lawson each donated $1 million.
Hastings, a major Democratic supporter, was one of the Democratic party’s largest donors who publicly called on President Joe Biden to step aside from his reelection campaign earlier this year.
The report released Friday included only donations from Aug. 1 to Aug. 31, the first month that Harris was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and later formally nominated.
Super PACs like FF PAC and MAGA Inc. have become havens for big political donors like Hendricks, Lutnick and Hastings because, unlike campaigns and their affiliated committees, super PACs don’t have limits on how much an individual can give.
Further down the line, the Club for Growth Action, a conservative super PAC that supports Republican House and Senate candidates, received two large donations in August of $5 million each from Jeff Yass, co-founder of the trade group Susquehanna International Group, and Richard Uihlein, founder of shipping supply company Uihlein.
Both Yass and Uihlein are major Republican megadonors who have donated to the Club for Growth and other conservative groups during multiple election cycles.
On the Democratic side, House Majority PAC, a group that supports Democrats running for Congress, received $600,000 in August from Continental Cablevision co-founder Amos Hostetter Jr., the group’s largest donation of the filing period.
Hostetter has a history of donating to anti-Trump groups.
