As he minimize into steak frites on the latest fund-raiser he hosted for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, the financier Omeed Malik surveyed the gang.
What he noticed on that July night was uncommon, he mentioned: Environmentalists and admirers of Mr. Kennedy’s household had been mingling at a restaurant in Sag Harbor, N.Y., alongside Hollywood figures, hippies and right-wing conservatives.
“It was a complete hodgepodge of characters that I have never seen at a political event,” recalled Mr. Malik, an investor and service provider banker based mostly in Palm Beach, Fla. “Because everyone is attracted to him for a different reason.”
Fueled by an uncommon mixture of views — passionate environmentalism, for instance, alongside a deep mistrust of the pharmaceutical business and public well being orthodoxy — Mr. Kennedy’s marketing campaign has stood out for its curious coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents of various backgrounds.
Financial filings this week from two tremendous PACs supporting him, which collectively have raised practically $10.5 million, appeared to underscore this theme. The pro-Kennedy tremendous PAC American Values 2024 acquired the majority of its cash from two megadonors: one who has contributed tens of hundreds of thousands to Republican causes, and one other who has backed each Democrats and Republicans.
Timothy Mellon, a Wyoming Republican who contributed $53 million in inventory to a Texas fund paying for development of a brand new border wall, gave that tremendous PAC $5 million. Gavin de Becker, a safety government who describes himself as a Democrat and consulted for the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos throughout Mr. Bezos’s textual content message scandal, donated $4.5 million.
“The fact that Kennedy gets so much bipartisan support tells me two things,” Mr. Mellon, beforehand a high donor to former President Donald J. Trump, mentioned in an announcement issued by American Values 2024. “That he’s the one candidate who can unite the country and root out corruption, and that he’s the one Democrat who can win the general election.”
In 2019 and 2020, Mr. Mellon gave $70 million mixed to tremendous PACs pushing for Republican management of the House and Senate and to at least one supporting Mr. Trump, information present.
The assist from Republicans is prone to heighten suspicions about Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy amongst Democrats who see him as a pawn in an effort to undermine President Biden. Dozens of enterprise capitalists, tech executives, real-estate builders and traders with various political alliances additionally contributed to the Kennedy-aligned PACs.
Patrick Byrne, the previous chief government of Overstock.com — and one of the distinguished supporters of the trouble to overturn the 2020 election — gave $100,000 in Bitcoin to Common Sense, one other PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy.
Abby Rockefeller, a daughter of the funding banker David Rockefeller who runs a hashish farm in upstate New York, gave $100,000 to the American Values 2024 PAC. She mentioned in an announcement that she all the time voted for Democrats.
Common Sense reported a complete fund-raising haul of about $711,000 within the three-month interval ending in June.
Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, the scion of a storied American political dynasty and a hero of the so-called medical freedom motion — which has seeded public skepticism about vaccines and different public well being measures — is unlikely to prevail in his quest for the Democratic nomination.
More than 5 months earlier than the Iowa caucuses, he’s trailing far behind Mr. Biden. He has the assist of simply 13 p.c of registered voters in contrast with Mr. Biden’s 64 p.c, in keeping with a latest New York Times/Siena ballot.
And his monetary assist is prone to pale compared with the powerhouse of fund-raising and institutional assist behind the incumbent president.
But the truth that a few of deep-pocketed supporters embody some who favored Mr. Trump previously recommend that these numbers could have room to develop.
“I don’t think he has the influential tech leaders,” mentioned Charles Phillips, a enterprise capitalist who co-founded a nonpartisan PAC to assist candidates with methods for financial progress in Black communities. Mr. Kennedy, he added, “won’t get broad support. Most of the tech guys supporting him are really Republicans.”
Mr. Mellon, the grandson of former Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, additionally gave $5 million final quarter to the Congressional Leadership Fund, an excellent PAC devoted to electing Republicans to the House of Representatives, and $1 million to Fair Courts America, a committee backed by different main Republican donors that has supported conservative candidates for state supreme court docket seats.
Some of Mr. Kennedy’s smaller-scale supporters mentioned their admiration was pushed by Mr. Kennedy’s unfiltered high quality in addition to his willingness to tackle legacy establishments just like the mainstream news media (which he says has censored him), the banking system (which he believes takes benefit of shoppers), the medical institution (he has mentioned that massive authorities has been co-opted by the pharmaceutical business), and the federal government’s response to Covid-19, which he has mentioned was each overreaching and ineffective.
Some are keen to put aside his extra excessive views — together with his vaccine skepticism and his conspiracy theories about anti-depressants and “Deep State” corruption — as a result of they admire what they see as his integrity.
The Sag Harbor dinner final month drew greater than 30 attendees who every pledged $6,600 to Mr. Kennedy’s marketing campaign, the utmost quantity that may be contributed by people to a marketing campaign for a main and a general-election bid mixed, in keeping with Mr. Malik. During the night, Mr. Kennedy took questions on topics together with Russia’s conflict in Ukraine and cryptocurrency.
In June, Common Sense PAC hosted a fund-raiser in San Francisco with two tech traders, David Sacks — a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Republican donor who has supported Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — and Chamath Palihapitiya, a former senior government at Facebook.
Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.
Source: www.nytimes.com