For months, billionaires have been funneling swaths of money into Republican midterm campaigns. But a New York Times report published Tuesday shows one of the most prominent GOP donors has quietly backed off.
Ronald Lauder, the billionaire heir to cosmetics conglomerate Estée Lauder and longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, has pumped tens of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns over the past couple of decades, campaign donation records show. So much so that the NYT even referred to him as a “one-man bank for Republicans in New York.”
But their report shows Lauder, 82, appears to have stopped his political donations, which goes against the grain of billionaires flooding the GOP zone ahead of midterms. According to Federal Election Commission records, the last political donation he made was in January for just $5,000 to Security is Strength PAC, a conservative super PAC.
Compare that to just two years earlier, when he made a $250,000 donation to the Truth & Courage PAC to help secure Sen. Ted Cruz’s reelection campaign in Texas; or his more than $13 million in donations between 2020 and 2022 to Safe Together New York Inc., a Super PAC to support Lee Zeldin’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign in New York.
