Major GOP donor gives $2M to anti-Clinton PAC
CLEVELAND — Hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer late last week pumped $2 million into a new super PAC focused on attacking Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the super PAC’s leader said Tuesday.
David Bossie, who is running the Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC, said he also has secured “several, seven-figure commitments” this week at the Republican National Convention, as the group ramps up its fundraising to confront Clinton.
“In a matter of days and weeks, we will receive enough funding to make us very effective,” he said.
The PAC is a new incarnation of Keep the Promise, a super PAC that Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, funded to aid Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign. It bills itself more as an anti-Clinton vehicle than a pro-Trump operation.
Bossie described that as a “marketing decision.”
“People are comfortable in their lanes,” he said. “There are already several established pro-Trump super PACs.”
Bossie has a long history as a Clinton foe. He runs the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, and his 2007 anti-Clinton movie was the genesis of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision that allowed unlimited corporate and union money to flow into federal, state and local elections.
Bossie also has ties to Trump.
Citizens United’s former spokesman, Bryan Lanza, recently joined the Trump campaign. Kellyanne Conway, a veteran Republican pollster who ran Keep the Promise, recruited Bossie to run the super PAC. This month, she became a senior adviser to Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Robert Mercer, the co-founder of Renaissance Technologies, and his daughter, Rebekah, donated more than $13 million to Keep the Promise. The new PAC began operations with $1.3 million in leftover funds from that PAC and now will have about more than $3 million in available cash, Bossie said.
Mercer has provided the seed money to get the PAC running and to signal to “every other donor in America that the business of the PAC was taken care of and that their gift would be going 100% to the project of defeating Hillary Clinton.”
The group is barred from using Clinton’s name in its formal title, so it is known as Make America No. 1 in its filings with the Federal Election Commission. Its June report is due Wednesday.