Jonathan Mahler reported this article over two months from New York and San Francisco with Ryan Mac, who covers corporate accountability in the tech i

How Tech Billionaires Became the G.O.P.’s New Donor Class

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2024-10-18 13:30:08

Jonathan Mahler reported this article over two months from New York and San Francisco with Ryan Mac, who covers corporate accountability in the tech industry, and Theodore Schleifer, who covers billionaires’ influence on American politics.

Last February, the billionaire financier Nelson Peltz summoned a group of about 20 wealthy, predominantly Republican donors and a handful of G.O.P. strategists to dinner at his $334 million waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Fla. There were plenty of people in the room who had publicly disavowed former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol — Peltz among them — but it was pretty clear now that he was going to be the candidate, and it was time to get onboard and figure out how to help him win. There were a lot of problems. An especially uncomfortable one was that a lot of donor money was going to paying Trump’s mounting legal bills rather than building a serious political campaign.

Peltz, who was 81 at the time and made his fortune via junk bonds and leveraged buyouts, had gathered some traditional high rollers, including the hedge-fund manager John Paulson and the Las Vegas casino tycoon Steve Wynn, as well as Ronna McDaniel, then the chair of the Republican National Committee. He had also invited Elon Musk.