Millionaire and longtime Democratic megadonor Alan Patricof is furious with Donald Trump. That’s why he’s doing everything within his legal means to overthrow Republican rule in the House of Representatives, he said.
“I will do anything I possibly can to get a Democratic Congress, to offset the factors that the president has put in place,” Patricof said in an interview with CNBC.
When asked what has upset him the most, Patricof responded bluntly with a question of his own: “Where should I start?”
He went on to list just a few of his grievances, including Trump and the Republican-led Congress overturning parts of the Dodd-Frank Act, the president’s efforts to dismantle former President Barack Obama’s legacy and even the way in which the commander in chief publicly shames his enemies.
Patricof, the founder and managing director of venture capitalist firm Greycroft LLC, explained that he’s taking on Trump and House Republicans during the midterm elections primarily by backing a new joint fundraising committee, the House Victory Project.
The group is led by several wealthy Democratic financiers, including Jane Hartley, Blaire Effron and Roger Altman, Patricof said.
Representatives for Hartley, Effron and Altman did not return requests for comment.
Patricof says their operation has grown from approximately 25 donors to over 100. Their goal is to help 24 candidates. Each donor is reportedly expected to give a minimum of $108,000 to participate.
He also noted the organization is getting requests from a variety of campaigns for its endorsement but emphasized the list of candidates will not be finalized until after the primary season.
“We are getting calls from people running in every state and every area for their help. Everything will be decided after the primaries,” Patricof said.
Eleven of the candidates the group is backing have been made public through Federal Election Commission filings. They are in districts considered toss-ups by Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
For instance, records show that the Democratic fundraising juggernaut is going to support Gina Ortiz, a former Air Force intelligence officer looking to unseat Texas Republican Will Hurd. In the last two election cycles, the district has swung, albeit by slim margin,- to Republicans and has been marked as a toss-up.
The team is also backing Tom Malinowski, a former politician trying to jump into the House of Representatives by unseating longtime New Jersey House Republican Leonard Lance. His district is also labelled a toss-up.
Both districts were won by Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.
Patricof himself was a major supporter of Clinton when she ran for president, records show.
He gave $33,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the equivalent amount to the Democratic National Committee in 2015. That same year he also contributed $10,000 to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s joint fundraising committee.
So far this cycle, Patricof has given $1,000 checks to a variety of House Democrats and has yet to equal his totals from 2016, a presidential election year.
New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer and New York’s Nita Lowey received the backing of Patricof in 2017. Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who’s looking to maintain her seat in the battleground state of North Dakota, also received $1,000 from Patricof last year.
For Patricof, getting involved with the House Victory Project is just the latest sign of outrage toward Trump coming from the donor class.
Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced last week he was going to back only Democrats in House races in 2018 after being enraged by Republican policies. CNBC later confirmed through a source close to Bloomberg that he’s looking to spend $80 million to help Democrats looking to retake a House majority.
Since Trump entered the White House, Tom Steyer, a liberal billionaire who runs NextGen America, a nonprofit organization that supports progressive positions on climate change, has invested $40 million in a grassroots operation to impeach Trump.
He’s contributed over $25 million to his organization’s super PAC, the NextGen Climate Action Committee.
