Wall Street Is Booming Under Trump. But Many of Its Donors Are Embracing Democrats. nyti.ms/2CvpaCy
2/"When Charles Myers, the chairman of a financial advisory firm, hosted four relatively unknown Democratic congressional candidates at his Midtown Manhattan home last month, he netted more money than he can remember collecting from an event that wasn’t headlined by a
3/"presidential candidate. “More than ever in my 26-year career on Wall Street, donors are willing to look way beyond concerns of overregulation from Democrats,” said Mr. Myers, a longtime Democratic fund-raiser. They just want to elect “Democrats to serve as a check” on
4/"President Trump. The stock market may be booming. Unemployment is hitting record lows. Republicans pushed through $1.5 trillion in tax cuts. But despite all that, for the first time in a decade, the broader financial community is on pace to give more money to Democratic
5/"congressional candidates and incumbents than their Republican counterparts, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign donations. Some of the same grass-roots energy coursing through the Democratic Party — House
6/"candidates from Kentucky to Montana to New York are reporting record sums of small donations — has spilled into the corporate boardrooms of American finance, even amid increasingly hostile rhetoric from Democrats in Washington and on the campaign trail toward Wall Street.
7/"“When one party controls all the levers, it is a lot easier for the opposing party to motivate donors,” said Marc Short, the former Trump White House director of legislative affairs, who has deep relationships in the donor world. “It’s both money and activism.
8/"But obviously much of the money comes from Wall Street.” In interviews with two-dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who raise money from them, Democrats described an extraordinary level of investment and excitement from the finance sector. And many
9/"Republicans fretted about a softening of donor enthusiasm — Mr. Short warned of “complacency” — in what has long been one of the party’s most critical and reliable sources of campaign cash. The numbers are stark. Four years ago, in the last congressional midterm, Republican
10/"incumbents and candidates outraised Democratic counterparts by more than $50 million in direct donations from the broader finance, insurance and real estate industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And in 2016 and 2012, Republicans outraised Democrats from
11/"that group by nearly $50 million and $100 million respectively, the data show. This year, Democrats held a narrow $5 million advantage through the middle of the year. That figure will shift, possibly substantially, when candidates reveal their latest fund-raising hauls later
12/"this month. But Democrats have already surpassed their 2012 and 2014 totals, and most Republicans with ties to Wall Street described a grim political outlook, even as the confirmation of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court brought renewed energy nationally to the G.O.P.
13/"“You’ve got a midterm election coming up that looks right now fairly bleak for the Republicans,” said Stephen Moore, the conservative economist who founded the Club for Growth and maintains close ties to Wall Street donors.
14/"“Wall Street is — and corporate America is — pretty famous for hedging their bets,” Mr. Moore said. “They just want to follow winners. They just want to make sure they have access to the people who win. This is no exception.” Some Republicans, including Mr. Moore, cited
15/"residual anger from the tax-cut bill, which eliminated a key deduction for state and local taxes in blue states such as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, where most of Wall Street’s big earners live. Others pointed to Mr. Trump’s personality and his social and cultural
16/"agenda that has proved divisive, especially among college-educated voters. “A lot of Mitt Romney donors are doing nothing,” said one New York financial executive and Republican fund-raiser, who, like many, spoke on condition of anonymity to maintain relationships with
17/"contributors. “A lot of these guys just completely disappeared.” Many midlevel donors seem to be simply sitting out this cycle, according to Republican officials; some big contributors have been slower or more reluctant to give ahead of expected losses.
18/"From donors in just the securities and investment sector, Democratic congressional incumbents and candidates have so far received $39.3 million in 2018, compared to $28 million for Republicans. That is a reversal from 2014, when Democrats raised $28 million and Republicans
19/"$41.5 million. In 2018, 15 of the top 20 congressional recipients of securities and investment industry cash are Democrats; in 2014, 15 of the top 20 were Republicans. The totals do not include independent super PAC giving, and the next round of disclosures,
20/"which will run through the end of September, will be released later this month...some of the industry’s prominent Republican donors have flipped parties entirely, most notably Seth Klarman, a hedge fund manager and former top Republican contributor, who is now pledging to
21/"give as much as $20 million to help Democrats in 2018. Finn Wentworth, the founder of a real-estate investment firm and the former chief operating officer of the holding company that owns the New York Yankees, was a fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee as
22/"recently as 2016. But he said he has found Mr. Trump’s “lack of empathy for others” to be “distressing” and said he has raised hundreds of thousands for Mikie Sherrill, a Democratic House candidate and Navy veteran in northern New Jersey, who has excited many donors.
23/"Mr. Wentworth questioned the deductions provision of the tax bill, among other policies pursued by a Republican-controlled Washington. “It was almost like the New York metropolitan area — we had a target on our back,” he said. This year, Democrats in New York and on
24/"Wall Street have organized a new effort, called the House Victory Project, where “partners” are asked to contribute more than $100,000 to be divided among key battleground House races; three people familiar with the effort said the group has raised more than $10 million.
25/"Congressional candidates blessed by the effort are in line to receive as much as $500,000 each. Giving to once-obscure House candidates is suddenly in vogue, with Democratic donors saying it has never-seen-before cachet in finance circles.
26/"“What I have never seen in my lifetime is the level of energy for all these local races,” said Orin Kramer, a veteran Democratic fund-raiser and founder of a hedge fund. “I’ve never seen such an appetite for candidates who people have never heard of.” “It’s not a matter of
27/"degree,” added Mr. Kramer, who has contributed to the House Victory Project and hosted events of his own. “It’s a phenomenon that hasn’t existed before.” Democrats have cut into the G.O.P. financial edge even as Republicans are still receiving 60 percent of the political
28/"action committee cash from the broader financial sector, roughly the same share as past cycles. That means that the industry’s formal lobbying and political arms are still donating to Republicans, while employees and executives are increasingly giving to Democrats.
29/"...The single biggest donor of the cycle is former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who made his multi-billion-dollar fortune selling computer terminals to Wall Street. He has pledged $100 million for the Democrats. The largest Republican contributor is the casino
30/"magnate Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife have contributed $55 million to Republican super PACs...For Democrats, Mr. Trump himself has proved a unifying message when seeking out financial industry contributors. “You would expect, with the economy doing as well as it is today,
31/"that there would be a desire to keep the status quo,” said Thomas R. Nides, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton now working on Wall Street. But he said, “I don’t think people care. They’re worried about the direction of the country.” ~NYT, 10/7/18
