Appearances are everything until two reporters working for the New York Times happen to have tracked their travel plans to the same $18-Million Mansion in Dallas for fund-raisers to fill their re-election coffers with streams of cash from outside the normal Democratic channels.
G.O.P. Donors Back Manchin and Sinema as They Reshape Biden’s Agenda
The two Democratic senators are attracting campaign contributions from business interests and conservatives as progressives fume over their efforts to pare back the president’s domestic policy bill.
(Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both Democrats, have been winning campaign contributions from donors more usually associated with republicans. Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times)
Here are some details from Kate Kelly and Martin P. Vogel:
"WASHINGTON — Over the summer, as he was working to scale back President Biden’s domestic agenda, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia traveled to an $18 million mansion in Dallas for a fund-raiser that attracted Republican and corporate donors who have cheered on his efforts.
In September, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who along with Mr. Manchin has been a major impediment to the White House’s efforts to pass its package of social and climate policy, stopped by the same home to raise money from a similar cast of donors for her campaign coffers.
Even as Ms. Sinema and Mr. Manchin, both Democrats, have drawn fire from the left for their efforts to shrink and reshape Mr. Biden’s proposals, they have won growing financial support from conservative-leaning donors and business executives in a striking display of how party affiliation can prove secondary to special interests and ideological motivations when the stakes are high enough. [...] But the stream of cash to the campaigns of Ms. Sinema and Mr. Manchin from outside normal Democratic channels stands out because many of the donors have little history with them.
The financial support is also notable for how closely tied it has been to their power over a single piece of legislation, the fate of which continues to rest largely with the two senators because their party cannot afford to lose either of their votes in the evenly divided Senate.
> This month, the billionaire Wall Street investor Kenneth G. Langone, a longtime Republican megadonor who has not previously contributed to Mr. Manchin, effusively praised him for showing “guts and courage” and vowed to throw “one of the biggest fund-raisers I’ve ever had for him.”
> Stanley S. Hubbard, a billionaire Republican donor, wrote his first check to Ms. Sinema in September and said that he was considering doing the same for Mr. Manchin because of their efforts to trim the sails of the Democrats’ agenda. . .
> Cash has also poured in for Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema from political action committees and donors linked to the finance and pharmaceutical industries, which opposed proposals initially included in the domestic policy bill that the lawmakers helped scale back, including changes to Medicare and the tax-rate increases. . .
> The lawmakers share a campaign finance consultant, who helped organize fund-raising swings through Texas for both lawmakers that yielded cash from Republican donors, as well as a fund-raiser for Ms. Sinema in Washington in late September with business lobbying groups that oppose the domestic policy bill. . .
Mr. Manchin has long been to the right of his party on litmus-test issues like abortion rights and fossil fuels, while Ms. Sinema started her political career as a liberal activist before shifting to the center. One Wall Street executive joked that in his industry, Ms. Sinema — who as a young politician once likened political donations to “bribery” — was now referred to as “Saint Sinema”...
This year, Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema have received donations from major Republican donors who had never before given to them, including James A. Haslam III, who owns the Cleveland Browns football team, and the Dallas real estate developer Harlan Crow, who is close to Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court.> Several other prominent Republican donors who supported Mr. Trump also wrote their first-ever checks to Mr. Manchin in the last few months. They include
- the Oklahoma oil and gas billionaire Harold Hamm, who pushed the former president to deregulate the energy industry;
- the Dallas-based lobbyist and investor Roy W. Bailey, who helped lead fund-raising for Mr. Trump’s inauguration and a pro-Trump nonprofit group; and
- the banker Andrew Beal, who donated a total of $3 million to a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump from 2018 through last year.
- Executives at Goldman Sachs, including the firm’s president, John Waldron, combined to donate tens of thousands of dollars to Ms. Sinema in the spring and summer. In July, she attended a meet-and-greet at the offices of the Blackstone Group, which is headed by a major Republican donor; some Blackstone employees made donations around the same time.
- A handful of employees from the investment firm Apollo Global Management, including Marc J. Rowan, the chief executive and a major donor to predominantly Republican candidates and causes, donated to Ms. Sinema in late September after the firm sent a plea to industry contacts seeking donations for her.
FACTOIDS:
(1) The $2.6 million raised by Ms. Sinema’s campaign through the first nine months of this year was two and a half times as much as she raised in the same period last year, while the $3.3 million raised by Mr. Manchin’s campaign was more than 14 times as much as his haul through the end of September last year.
(2) Overall, Ms. Sinema’s campaign took in about $6.1 million in donations between the beginning of 2019 and the end of September, and it had $4.5 million in the bank with three years to go until she faces the voters in Arizona. Mr. Manchin’s campaign raised about $3.8 million and had $5.4 million on hand.
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