Hillary's surrogates telling GOP insiders that she represents them more in hunt for donations

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/hilary-clinton-bush-donors-222872

Hillary forces target Bush donors

Their message to moderate Republicans: She represents your values better than Trump.


NEW YORK -- Hillary Clinton’s supporters in recent days have been making a furious round of calls to top Bush family donors to try to convince them that she represents their values better than Donald Trump, multiple sources in both parties told POLITICO.

The moves come as Clinton and the Democratic Party try to take advantage of deep unease among establishment Republicans on Wall Street and elsewhere with Trump’s emergence as the presumptive Republican nominee.

Top targets for the Clinton team include people like Woody Johnson, Jeb Bush’s former finance chair and the owner of the New York Jets. In recent days, Bush’s brother and father, former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, have said they plan to skip Trump’s nominating convention.

One person close to Clinton said supporters of the former secretary of state drew up a list of Wall Street donors who supported Jeb Bush and other unsuccessful Republican candidates months ago but wanted to wait until Trump locked down the nomination before beginning to make the calls.

“When you think about it there is no downside to making these calls, including for Hillary herself to make then,” this person said. “They may say no but they will talk to her for half an hour about their view of the world and probably say nice things when asked about her publicly. And they might stay away from Trump.”

Clinton spokesman Josh Schwerin did not deny the calls were happening. “There's no official outreach from the campaign but I would not be at all surprised if our supporters are doing it on their own.”
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One big Clinton donor on Wall Street said that Bush donors are prime targets and that "we're a big tent." Potential sources of support for Clinton could include people like Jack Oliver, who also served as a top fundraiser for Jeb Bush. Both Johnson and Oliver did not respond to requests for comment.

The race for Wall Street cash will be intense. Trump said this week that while he would help fund a general election campaign that could cost well over $1 billion for each candidate he will also seek donations. On Thursday, Trump named Steven Mnuchin, head of private investment firm Dune Capital Management and a former partner at Goldman Sachs, as his national finance chairman.

Mnuchin himself has donated to Clinton in the past, highlighting the politically ambidextrous nature of many Wall Street donors. But Mnuchin’s hiring could open Wall Street doors for Trump that might otherwise be closed, making the Clinton effort event more important.

Two major Bush donors who received calls from Clinton supporters said they would not switch their allegiance to the likely Democratic nominee despite misgivings about Trump’s ability to win and his rhetoric on trade, immigration and government spending. But both suggested it was a smart play for Clinton supporters to try and peel off establishment Republicans who might otherwise grudgingly support Trump.

“I got a call from a friend, a Hillary supporter, and he said he’d love to chat about what a disaster Trump is,” said one major Bush donor and bundler who declined to be identified by name. “Then I got a call from another guy, also a big Democrat, who said exactly the same thing. I responded to one in an email and said I didn’t really think Trump was a disaster and I’d be supporting him because Hillary would be a bigger disaster. It’s smart that they are doing it but I don’t know how much it will work.”

This donor added that Jeb Bush would not likely direct his donors to help Clinton in any way. “As much as Jeb hates Trump, and he really does hate Trump, he doesn’t want to help Hillary.”

In addition to both former presidents Bush, 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney and 2008 nominee John McCain also plan to skip the GOP convention in Cleveland, highlighting how splintered the Republican Party has become in the age of Trump.

Romney and the Bush family have powerful fundraising networks that Trump, who recently announced his desire to tap traditional fundraising sources for the general-election campaign, is likely to try to exploit. But Clinton supporters are hoping to limit Trump’s ability to tap into that money.

Anthony Scaramucci, co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital and a former Bush supporter who has been wooed by Clinton’s supporters, said he would not be swayed into backing the Democrat but that other Republicans on Wall Street might be.

“I’m a loyal Republican and I’m going to stay with the Republicans and to the extent I can be helpful to Trump, I will be. But it’s hard to see how the fundraising is going to flesh out for him. They are six months behind,” he said.

Scaramucci said he thought establishment Republicans would break down into three camps, loyalists who will donate and work for Trump, “ostrich Republicans who will stick their heads in the sand and not do anything,” and a small group that will vote and fundraise for Clinton.

Robert Wolf, an investment banker who helped raise Wall Street money for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and now backs Clinton said he wasn’t aware of an organized effort to target moderate Republicans. But he said it was only natural to expect “organic efforts to reach out to some prominent, reasonable Republicans to see if they want to get involved with electing the Secretary.”

In interviews across Wall Street this week, top executives who have supported both Republicans and Democrats in the past said they were not worried enough about Trump at this point to get strongly behind Clinton. The theory going around the financial industry is that Trump is likely to lose and that even if he wins, the real estate magnate would be constrained by both Congress and the judicial branch from executing many of his proposals on trade and immigration.

“I’m not worried about it at all,” the CEO of one large bank said this week. “[Trump] is going to lose and we will all wake up after election day and things will be just like they’ve been the last eight years with a Democrat in the White House and Republicans controlling Congress.”

Another bank CEO who has supported politicians in both parties laughed when asked if there would be a massive exodus to Clinton in the wake of Trump emerging as the presumptive nominee. “First of all I don’t think it would be helpful to her for a bunch of Wall Street people to come out in support,” he said. “And he’s probably not going to win and if he did it would probably be OK.”

But this executive added another thought that is now a driving motivation behind the Clinton campaign’s efforts to attract deep-pocketed Wall Street donors for the general election effort: “There are risks with Trump and you do need to do some contingency planning. Having him as the nominee is like playing around with the puck in front of your own net in hockey. There is some danger there.”

So far, the nonchalant reaction to Trump among executives is also reflected in the financial markets. Stocks are off slightly since Trump’s remaining rivals all dropped out but there has been no major reaction either in the U.S. or globally. Investors are much more focused on economic data, the threat that the U.K. could leave the Eurozone and central bank moves than they are on the 2016 campaign.

Analysts say that could change if it looks like Trump is closing in on Clinton. But for now, there is no sign of panic about a President Trump.

“One reaction in the market is that whatever happens on the presidential side will not remove the gridlock in Washington and little will happen in Congress which means maintaining slow but steady growth with the Fed doing much of the heavy lifting,” said Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz.

Another factor that could make it harder for Clinton to peel off GOP donors is that some are holding out hope for a third-party candidate to get in the race. Some are now looking to first-term Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, as potentially that option. Sasse has been highly critical of Trump and wrote a lengthy essay on Facebook Thursday called for an “adult” candidate to enter the race.

“I don’t know that big Republican donors are at that point [of backing Clinton] yet,” said another big Bush bundler who asked not to be identified by name. “Some people are still nosing around to see if there’s a third party option, and the Ben Sasse piece today is getting a lot of email traffic.”


Clinton’s outreach to moderate Republicans is not without political risks for her, especially as she contends with a rival, Bernie Sanders, who has based his campaign around the idea that she’s too supportive of banks and too eager to compromise with Republicans.

“There's nothing that will hurt her more with the Bernie Sanders/Bill De Blasio/Elizabeth Warren wing of the party than aligning herself with Wall Street,” said GOP donor Gregory Slayton.

But those risks are apparently outweighed by the need for money. Clinton bundler Jay Jacobs said he’s reached out to a few of his Republican friends who he knows to be anti-Trump “to get them interested in Hillary’s campaign.” While Jacobs said some have told him they intend to vote for Clinton, none have committed to donating to her yet.

Another Clinton fundraiser agreed the outreach was useful to Clinton, even beyond the need to collect money.

“We’re making sure anyone who wants to be part of this campaign can be part of this campaign, including Republicans who feel disenfranchised by Donald Trump,” this person said. “There’s no question there’ve been a lot of incoming calls from Republicans."