A growing group of Republicans who could run for president in 2024 are making their way to New York to meet with lucrative donors.
Potential candidates who will either congregate or meet with donors in the Big Apple include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Sens. Tim Scott and Marco Rubio, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, they said on the matter People and invitations to fundraisers.
Although Scott, Rubio and DeSantis are up for re-election in 2022, raising funds for these campaigns could mean financial backing for a 2024 presidential election. Pompeo recently launched the Champion American Values PAC to help Republicans running in 2022, including those in the House and Senate, and these meetings could end up helping him raise money for that endeavor.
Pompeo has made the biggest push in New York donor circles since the 2020 presidential election ended, according to insiders familiar with the effort. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely about private events.
“He’s basically running for the presidency,” said one of the people familiar with Pompeo’s New York meeting. A recent straw poll at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver found DeSantis ranked first among potential presidential candidates just ahead of former President Donald Trump. Behind Trump in this poll are Senators Ted Cruz, Pompeo and Scott.
Trump has not ruled out the possibility of running again for president after losing to President Joe Biden in 2020. Republican hopefuls will likely hesitate to run until Trump decides whether to try.
Many of those who travel to New York to connect with donors belong to the same group of potential contenders for 2024 who attended a meeting with political funders in Texas. As CNBC reported at the time, this event was organized by longtime political strategist Karl Rove.
A recent Morning Consult / Politico poll shows Biden 53% approve of his work and 44% said they disapprove of his first few months as Commander in Chief.
Representatives from Pompeo, Scott, Rubio, and DeSantis did not return requests for comments.
The New York metropolitan area is home to some of the country’s wealthiest financiers. Data from the bipartisan Center for Responsive Politics shows Republicans raised over $ 88 million during the 2020 New York election cycle. That is over $ 20 million more than the GOP candidates raised in the 2016 election in the region. Democratic candidates have fared better in the blue state, with New York donors contributing over $ 385 million to those running on this side of the ticket.
An invitation to an event on June 11 for Rep. Andrew Garbarino listed Pompeo as a special guest. Garbarino is running for re-election in New York’s congressional district, which he won in 2020 by around 6 percentage points.
The fundraising lunch was held in Manhattan, with a number of wealthy donors listed as hosts on the invitation, including billionaire John Catsimatidis, who owns New York supermarket chain Gristedes and ran for mayor in 2013, along with his daughter Andrea Catsimatidis , the chairman of the Manhattan Republican Party chair. Other financiers named as chairs the event’s host committee included real estate manager Peter Kalikow and Robert Rosenthal, a founder of a Long Island-based investment firm.
Tickets for the fundraiser cost up to $ 5,800 per person and political action committees had to pay up to $ 10,000.
People familiar with Pompeo’s efforts say he was also featured this month at one of the first private face-to-face meetings for the Hudson Institute since Covid. Pompeo is a respected contributor to the conservative think tank.
The meeting took place at the New York-based Mandarin Oriental in an apartment that according to people familiar with the meeting belongs to the Ricketts family. Attendees included several executives with connections to the think tank. The Mandarin Oriental in New York has hotel rooms and residential apartments.
Members of the Ricketts family are among the richest and most powerful business leaders in the Republican Party. Todd Ricketts is a co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Todd’s brother Pete is the governor of Nebraska and her father Joe is the former CEO of TD Ameritrade. The Hudson Institute’s 2019 annual report lists Todd Ricketts as a member of the group’s advisory board and a donor to the organization who donated $ 5,000 to $ 20,000.
A person familiar with the meeting said that neither Todd, Pete, nor Joe were present at the Hudson Institute meeting with Pompeo, but a lesser known family representative was present. Pompeo addressed national security issues in his speech, including reiterating his claim that the coronavirus pandemic had started due to the deadly virus from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
Biden ordered a closer review of intelligence information on the origins of Covid-19, focusing on two likely scenarios that the government believes are two possible scenarios for whether the virus was naturally occurring or a laboratory leak.
Representatives from the Ricketts and Hudson Institutes did not respond to inquiries.
Scott participated in a virtual fundraiser for his South Carolina re-election bid in May. The event was attended by lawyers based in New York City, according to an invitation, and organizers said they had raised $ 100,000. They will host a personal event for Rubio’s re-election campaign in Florida in September.
DeSantis allies have signaled that they are planning an event in the Hamptons for its Florida gubernatorial campaign.
