An Arkansas poultry tycoon sends a $3 million check to Mike Huckabee’s super-PAC. A Louisiana shipping magnate gives $1 million to the group supporting Bobby Jindal. And a cowboy-hat-wearing evangelical multimillionaire says he will “definitely” spend more of his money on Rick Santorum.
A small number of wealthy conservatives are funding candidates to whom conventional wisdom gives no chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee in 2016.
The Hill dug into the records of these donors in an attempt to find out what motivates their lavish support for long-shot candidates. What emerges is a complicated blend of ideology, faith, business interests and what appears to be genuine personal affection.
Candice Nelson, a professor of government at American University who studies campaign finance, said she has seen no evidence that these large gifts to struggling candidates have been motivated by favors owed.
“I think it’s ideological,” Nelson said. She also mentioned a personal thrill that comes with proximity to power. “Nobody really thinks Huckabee or Jindal is going to win the nomination … [but] it’s sort of a heady thing to be on a first-name basis and getting phone calls from people who are running for president.”
Here are five conservative mega donors who are keeping alive the hopes of lower-tier candidates:
1. Ronald Cameron: $3 million to support former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, in ninth place on the RealClearPolitics national average of polls with just 4 percent support
- Net worth: Unknown
- Home state: Arkansas
- Business background: Owner of Mountaire Corp., an Arkansas-based agricultural food company with farms across the United States, reportedly with annual revenues exceeding $1 billon.
Known as “Ronnie,” Cameron is an intensely private man. Arkansas Times reporter Max Brantley, who has followed Cameron’s political donations for years, says Cameron is “not a Howard Hughes-type character,” but if he’s ever been photographed at a public event in his hometown of Little Rock it was news to him. “He just makes a ton of money and lives quietly … He doesn’t turn up in the society pages.”
An Arkansas conservative who knows Cameron described him as a soft-spoken and religious man. Cameron’s billing address is a small office space in Little Rock. This address is also used for the nonprofit called Jesus Fund, to which he and his company donated more than $6 million.
If Cameron has deeper ties to Huckabee beyond a shared hometown, ideology and faith, those connections are unclear from the public record. An assistant at Mountaire said Cameron does not talk to journalists.
Cameron is reportedly a regular at donor sessions held by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.
His $3 million donation to the pro-Huckabee super-PAC for the current presidential primary is more than triple what he had personally spent in a decade of donations to conservative groups preceding the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision. This ruling allowed corporations and individuals to spend as much as they want on political speech.
2. Gary Chouest: $1 million to support Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, in 14th place on the RealClearPolitics national average with 0.5 percent support.
- Net worth: Unknown
- Home state: Louisiana
- Business background: Runs a family-owned company, Edison Chouest Offshore, a private marine transportation company
A writer for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans described Chouest as “the richest man in Louisiana that nobody knows.”
Jindal’s mega-donor is the son of Edison Chouest, a commercial shrimp fisherman who, in the early 1960s, according to the Associated Press, bought a single ship and the family grew that business into a fleet that today exceeds 200 vessels.
The former minority stakeholder in the New Orleans Hornets (now the Pelicans), Gary Chouest reportedly had an NBA regulation-size basketball court installed on his estate in Galliano, La.
For more than a decade Chouest and family members have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans.
Two longtime recipients of Chouest’s generosity are Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) and the former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, also from Alaska, where Chouest’s company has ties to the oil and gas industry.
While Chouest clearly favors Jindal for the GOP presidential nomination, he also gave former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s super-PAC The Right to Rise $25,000. He did not return a call seeking comment for this story.
3. Kelcy L. Warren: $6 million to support former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in 12th place on the RealClearPolitics national average with 1.3 percent support.
- Net worth: $5.9 billion, according to Forbes’s latest estimate
- Home state: Texas
- Business background: Co-founded the pipeline company Energy Transfer
Warren is the 79th richest person in the United States, according to Forbes. A 2010 Wall Street Journal profile of Warren noted his Dallas mansion had a master bedroom requiring a security code and a “multiroom walk-in closet.”
A music lover, he had cabinets full of acoustic guitars and memorabilia including drumsticks signed by members of the Eagles. According to The Journal, Warren holds music festivals at his “8,000-acre ranch near Cherokee, Texas, a former exotic animal refuge where zebras, buffalo and gazelles still roam.”
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show Warren has made three donations, totaling $6 million, to super-PACs supporting Perry. Warren supported Perry during his last unsuccessful run for the GOP nomination, in 2012, when he gave $250,000 to a pro-Perry super-PAC. Asked to provide comment for this story, a spokeswoman for Warren said the businessman does not discuss his donations.
But Perry’s ties to Warren go beyond politics. In June, Mother Jones broke the story that Perry was serving on the board of his major donor’s company. Energy Transfer explains the decision on its website: “The Board selected Mr. Perry to serve as a director because of his vast experience as an executive in the highest office of state government.” While it’s not public how much Perry is being paid, the Securities and Exchange Commission filing says: “Mr. Perry will be eligible to receive cash compensation for his service on the Board of Directors and equity compensation.”
4. Foster Friess: Unknown amount to support former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) in 13th place on the RealClearPolitics national average with 1 percent support.
- Net worth: Believed to be in the hundreds of millions.
- Home State: Wisconsin
- Business background: Mutual fund investor
When first contacted by The Hill to ask about his spending plans for the 2016 presidential campaign, an automated reply bounced back: “Foster will be absent from his email inbox until August 24. … Foster’s focus is on helping to arm the Kurds so he will not be considering any new projects for several months.”
In a subsequent email conversation, Friess clarified that he was “not raising a private army” but was simply trying to “get our politicians to realize the Kurds are our true friends and deserve more official support.”
Friess, an evangelical Christian who is often photographed wearing cowboy hats, sees the fight against radical Islamic terrorists as the defining issue of our time. And he believes Santorum will be tougher than any of his Republican competitors on this issue.
Friess appeared on the national stage during the 2012 race, when he donated more than $2 million to a pro-Santorum super-PAC. Santorum, whom most pundits had counted out as he flagged in the early polls, ran a resurgent campaign and ended up winning the Iowa caucuses and becoming a serious challenger to Mitt Romney for the nomination.
Santorum has been written off again for 2016, but Friess says he still believes in him, though he is yet to write the multimillion-dollar checks that got him so much attention during the 2012 primaries.
“I certainly don’t believe he is a lost cause any more than the other dozen candidates who are under 10% in the polls,” Friess said in an email.
Asked if he would spend more money to help Santorum win the nomination, Friess replied, “Definitely, yes.” But he was coy about how much he was willing to spend this time around.
“Your next question will be how much do I plan to spend on my wife’s birthday present,” Friess replied.
5. Ronald Perelman: $500,000 to support Lindsey Graham, in 15th place on the RealClearPolitics national average with 0.3 percent support.
- Net Worth: $14.5 billion according to Forbes.
- Home State: New York
- Business Background: Leveraged buyouts
Graham announced in June that Perelman, a self-made billionaire, will be a national co-chair for the campaign.
“Lindsey Graham understands America’s leadership role in promoting an enduring peace on the global landscape,” Perelman said in a statement in June. “With conflicts raging in the Middle East and around the world that threaten the security of America and our allies, we need leaders with strategic purpose and moral clarity to confront these crises.”
Perelman has two horses in the 2016 race. FEC reports show that only six days after he sent $500,000 to Graham’s super-PAC he gave $500,000 to Jeb Bush’s super-PAC The Right to Rise.
Harper Neidig contributed.