The former South Carolina governor and her allies are now spending more on TV than any of her rivals.
Much of the Republican donor class has a distaste for Donald Trump — and maintains the classic tycoon belief that fat wallets can shape the world.
Nikki Haley’s campaign is becoming a grand test of whether they can still change the course of a presidential run.
Major political financiers who have gotten behind Haley in recent weeks include billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, metals mogul Andy Sabin and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a Democratic megadonor. Citadel hedge fund founder Ken Griffin and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, have also expressed interest in backing her campaign.
It’s a group of people who can buy anything. Except, perhaps, the Republican nomination for president.
“It’s like having the best bows and arrows in the age of gunpowder,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “That doesn’t mean (big money) is not relevant. You can still do some damage with it. You’d rather have it than not, but it’s not going to win the battle anymore.”
Haley and her allies, newly embraced by a cohort of the country’s wealthiest people, are now spending more on television than any of their competitors, including Trump. And as voting starts this month in the first nominating states, she has a trove of resources at her disposal, with the recent endorsement from the Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity, a top conservative spending group. But it is far from clear that all this financial power can generate a breakthrough for Haley. Big donor kingmakers have lost power steadily in recent years, with their influence eroded by a torrent of small-dollar donations online and Trump’s overpowering grip on the GOP base.
It didn’t help that Republican megadonors vacillated for months before settling on Haley as their preferred champion.
