Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

In Choosing Mike Pence, Donald Trump Moves Closer to Big Donors Like the Kochs

Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana at Americans for Prosperity’s annual conference in August 2014 in Dallas. He called the organization run by David H. and Charles G. Koch “the finest grass-roots organization in the United States of America.”Credit...Cooper Neill for The New York Times

From his days as a dissident Republican congressman challenging President George W. Bush to his battles against his own party while governor of Indiana, Mike Pence has often relied on strong support from powerful allies: the conservative philanthropists David H. and Charles G. Koch and the vast political network they oversee.

When Republican leaders in the state legislature balked at Mr. Pence’s plan to turn a $2 billion budget surplus into a huge tax cut, the Indiana chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the primary political group backed by the Kochs, staged town hall meetings in the districts of vulnerable lawmakers, convened raucous rallies outside the Capitol and ran hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ads against Republicans. The resulting deal was Mr. Pence’s first major victory as governor.

“Americans for Prosperity made a difference in the Hoosier State,” Mr. Pence told an audience at the group’s national conference in 2014, calling it “the finest grass-roots organization in the United States of America.”

But now those ties will be tested. In selecting Mr. Pence as his running mate, Donald J. Trump is not only tapping someone who differs with him on policy and in tone. He has also picked a partner with deep ties to some of the party’s most powerful donors, who have spent years — and hundreds of millions of dollars — trying to steer Republicans away from Mr. Trump’s brand of populism.

Mr. Trump has promised to protect Social Security and erect trade walls with China and Mexico, while he inveighed against the donor class that backed his rivals for the Republican nomination. Groups supported by the Kochs and organizations like the Club for Growth have invested heavily in rolling back regulations, reducing taxes and promoting a libertarian-tinged conservatism among Republicans, an agenda Mr. Trump has come to back only piecemeal, and only recently.

During the Republican primary season, the club was an early and visceral critic of Mr. Trump, spending millions of dollars on ads to weaken his insurgent candidacy. And Charles Koch himself has been publicly critical of Mr. Trump, calling his attacks on a federal judge of Mexican ancestry “unacceptable.” Speaking last week at a business conference, he compared a contest between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton to a choice between “cancer or a heart attack.”

This year, the network overseen by the Kochs — consisting of several political groups backed by hundreds of donors — signaled that it would stay out of the presidential race, instead focusing on Senate elections.

Video
bars
0:00/1:46
-0:00

transcript

What Mike Pence Brings to Donald Trump's Campaign

Donald J. Trump, then the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, announcing Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana as his vice-presidential running mate.

na

Video player loading
Donald J. Trump, then the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, announcing Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana as his vice-presidential running mate.CreditCredit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

A spokesman for Freedom Partners, James Davis, said on Thursday that Mr. Trump’s choice of running mate was unlikely to change that decision.

“Our efforts will remain focused on the Senate,” Mr. Davis said.

But for Mr. Trump, who has only recently begun to build a modern presidential fund-raising apparatus, the choice of Mr. Pence could yet yield financial dividends. Mr. Pence has his own relationships to donors aligned with the Kochs, along with many other big givers who have until now been reluctant to get behind Mr. Trump or contribute to pro-Trump groups.

David M. McIntosh, a longtime friend of Mr. Pence — and also a former Indiana congressman who is now the president of the Club for Growth — said his group was not planning to get involved in the presidential race. But he predicted that Mr. Pence’s presence on the ticket would prompt some club donors to give or raise money for Mr. Trump.

“There will be some who say, ‘I will give to Mike Pence and help the ticket because of him,’” Mr. McIntosh said. “And you’ll see others who will say, ‘I am still not going to support that financially, but will contribute in other ways.’”

In Indiana, where state law puts no limits on the amount of money individuals can give to candidates for governor, Mr. Pence has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy businessmen like Frederick S. Klipsch, the retired founder of an Indiana-based loudspeaker company, and John Childs, the Florida-based leveraged-buyout investor. Both are involved in Freedom Partners, and Mr. Childs is a major donor to the Club for Growth.

David Koch is Mr. Pence’s third-largest all-time individual donor, while Mark Holden, the general counsel of Koch Industries, is sixth on the list.

In an interview, Mr. Klipsch said he had enormous respect for Mr. Pence, particularly the governor’s education initiatives, such as expanding charter schools in Indiana.

“He has done an outstanding job,” Mr. Klipsch said.

Mr. Pence’s ties to the Kochs and their political work reach back to Mr. Bush’s presidency, when the billionaire brothers and a handful of like-minded executives lamented what they considered the president’s leftward drift. Mr. Pence, then a Republican member of Congress, voted against some of Mr. Bush’s signature programs, like the expansion of Medicare and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, accompanying each vote with a carefully reasoned statement of opposition. In 2009, with the club’s endorsement, his colleagues elected him Republican Conference Chairman.

“Governor Pence rose in leadership in the House while taking hard votes,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity. “He voted against the bailout, he voted against TARP, he voted against Medicare expansion. Most guys with aspirations to move up didn’t take those principled votes.”

Mr. Pence has attended the Koch network’s invitation-only seminar series, where conservative rising stars mix with some of the wealthiest donors in the country.

This spring, he was among a handful of governors who dined at David Koch’s Florida mansion, at a luncheon organized by Mr. Koch and the Republican Governors Association.

Matt Schlapp, a longtime Republican consultant and former Koch Industries official who now leads the American Conservative Union, said Mr. Pence had the credentials to reassure a range of conservative activists and donors. Mr. Schlapp described Mr. Pence’s potential selection as a “tonic” to worries about Mr. Trump’s intellectual commitment to conservative ideas.

“He’s a well-known conservative political leader who has worked in Congress and Indiana,” Mr. Schlapp said.

“I think donors will see this as an indication of the type of decisions Donald Trump is going to make about who he is going to surround himself with.”

Whether Mr. Pence’s credibility translates into donations to Mr. Trump will not be clear for weeks.

Mr. Klipsch, who has given more than $190,000 to Mr. Pence in recent years, said he had not decided whether to support a Trump-Pence ticket.

“That’s a whole other personal question,” Mr. Klipsch said. “I’m going to pass on that one.”

A correction was made on 
July 21, 2016

An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Mark Holden, the general counsel of Koch Industries, as the sixth-largest all-time donor to Indiana governor Mike Pence. The donor, Mark R. Holden, is a different individual.

How we handle corrections

Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Choice of Pence Moves Trump Closer to Donors Who Shun Him. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT