Republican megadonors are opening up their checkbooks — and not being shy about the number of zeros they write — to help former President Donald Trump and other Republicans as Vice President Kamala Harris’ fundraising operation breaks records.
Major pro-Trump super PACs pulled in more than $200 million from major Republican donors over the summer, according to new campaign finance filings, including Miriam Adelson (the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and the wife of the late casino executive Sheldon Adelson), Tesla CEO Elon Musk, venture capitalists Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz, former Marvel Chairman Ike Perlmutter, shipping magnate Dick Uihlein and more, according to fundraising reports filed Tuesday.
And that massive total doesn’t include fundraising by the main pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., which will file its fundraising reports by Sunday.
Adelson gave $95 million to Preserve America, a super PAC she’s almost entirely funded, during the third fundraising quarter, after previously giving the group $5 million in the prior quarter. Preserve America has spent $97 million already on television and digital ads criticizing Harris.
Musk, who has been increasing his public political presence in recent weeks amid his full-throated endorsement of Trump, gave $75 million last quarter to America PAC, a group that’s spent more than $100 million to support Trump.
Right for America, another pro-Trump group, raised $28 million last quarter — with multimillion-dollar checks from Andreesen, Horowitz and Perlmutter as well as Perlmutter’s wife, Lara.
Uihlein, one of the most prolific Republican donors of the last decade, gave his outside group, Restoration PAC, another $49 million. The super PAC has spent heavily on the presidential race as well as on the Wisconsin Senate and Maine 2nd Congressional District campaigns.
And Dianne Hendricks, a Wisconsin roofing billionaire, gave $5 million to another group, Turnout for America.
The huge checks are just one piece of the campaign finance puzzle, as Tuesday’s deadline saw some groups file only quarterly disclosures. The two most prominent super PACs playing in the presidential race, the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. and the pro-Harris Future Forward, won’t file reports until the monthly disclosure deadline on Sunday, the same day Harris and Trump will file their campaign fundraising reports covering September.
Harris has plenty of super PAC backup, too: Future Forward (known as FF PAC) had raised $200 million through August, while MAGA Inc. had raised $280 million.
But the more than $200 million in new disclosed fundraising to other pro-Trump groups, largely from prominent megadonors, comes as Republicans flock to Trump’s aid amid Harris’ historic fundraising.
Harris’ campaign and affiliated joint fundraising committees have already raised more than $1 billion since she became the party’s standard bearer after President Joe Biden announced on July 21 he wouldn’t run for re-election, NBC News previously reported, based on sources familiar with the campaign’s fundraising numbers.
While the byzantine nature of presidential fundraising doesn’t immediately allow for that number to be independently verified, a new filing from the Harris campaign Tuesday shines important light on the massive size of her fundraising operation.
Harris Victory Fund — the joint fundraising committee that raises money to the official campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties — raised $633 million since the beginning of July, the filing from Tuesday shows. Another Harris-affiliated account brought in $19 million over that same period. That’s money on top of what gets raised by those entities directly, or into other affiliated fundraising vehicles, which is how the campaign hit that $1 billion mark.
While it’s not a direct comparison, Trump’s top two affiliated fundraising committees raised about $340 million over the same period.
