A few names gets you this? "hard evidence the Republican establishment is rallying to his presidential candidacy" http://t.co/LficrEbQB1
— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) July 29, 2015
From the WSJ article:
… Mike Fernandez, a Cuban-American billionaire who gave $3 million, is the biggest donor to the Right to Rise super PAC, which set a record fundraising pace and bested all of Mr. Bush’s rivals—Democrats and Republicans—by amassing $103 million in the first six months of 2015.
The names help confirm that the Republican establishment, supplemented with a healthy dash of Florida financial backers from Mr. Bush’s days as governor, are prepared to deliver a powerful flow of money that no other GOP candidate is likely to match.
Brad Freeman, chairman of a California private-equity firm, who gave $1 million to the super PAC and recruited other big donors, said people write seven-figure checks for different reasons. “They really believe in the candidate [or] they like to be one of the in-club,” he said. Other donors might be looking for favors, Mr. Freeman added: “For some, when it gets time to have appointments, those names stand out.”…
… The Wall Street Journal obtained the names of many of Mr. Bush’s top supporters through interviews with donors and other sources familiar with the super PAC’s fundraising. Many, such as Mr. Freeman, have been connected to Mr. Bush’s family for decades, from the 1966 election of his father George H.W. Bush to Congress to the elite “Ranger” and “Pioneer” fundraising program for the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns of his brother George W. Bush…
While campaigns traditionally tout their pool of small donors who gave $200 or less, Right to Rise noted in a July fundraising summary that 95% of its 9,900 donors gave $25,000 or less. “I can make fewer calls and raise more money,” Mr. Freeman said…
My emphases. Those philanthropic Florida donors? Per the Washington Post:
… [A]ccording to interviews with economists and a review of data, Florida owed a substantial portion of its growth under Bush not to any state policies but to a massive and unsustainable housing bubble — one that ultimately benefited rich investors at the expense of middle-class families.
The bubble, one of the biggest in the nation, drove up home prices and had many short-term benefits for the state, spurring construction, spending and jobs. But the collapse of the housing bubble as Bush left office in 2007, after eight years of service, sent Florida into a recession deeper than that in the rest of the country, and hundreds of thousands lost their homes…
In the four years after Bush left office, median income in Florida declined by $5,700 — more than a 10 percent drop and double the percentage drop for the nation as a whole. The typical Florida family’s net worth fell 60 percent in that time, according to the Census Bureau. In a state where so much of the economy revolves around real estate, and where many foreclosures that began years ago are only now winding through the court system, there are 200,000 fewer families who own their homes than there were in 2005.
Many of those families now pay rent to Wall Street firms. Institutional investors have bought up huge inventories of Florida condos and single-family homes, often at foreclosure auctions where they pay less than the assessed value of the properties. They’ve watched the value of those properties rise as the housing market heats up again — and they’ve charged escalating rents to people who no longer own their own homes. Florida metro areas have the largest concentration of investor-owned homes in the country, according to RealtyTrac data.
JEB! and the Power of “Establishment” MoneyPost + Comments (34)