Some Democratic Billionaires Vow to Fight On, Others Are Giving Up

What is a billionaire Democrat to do after dumping money into a campaign that lost badly? The answers to that question vary. Some are doubling down and getting ready to fund Resistance 2.0.

Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay and a backer of progressive groups spearheading anti-Elon Musk campaigns, is behind a new initiative led by Democrats aiming to champion the second Trump resistance, records reveal…

In September, Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, a private foundation steering the left-wing billionaire’s fortune, routed $500,000 to the Governors Action Alliance to support “coordinating and strengthening the work of governors to address specific threats to American democracy,” Democracy Fund’s grants database shows.

Also vowing to fight on despite the loss is Alex Soros, son of George Soros.

Mr. Soros, a 39-year-old history Ph.D., acknowledged in a brief interview the widespread worry of some Democrats that the party’s donors might withdraw from politics.

“I’m always concerned about that,” he said. But was he still committed to progressive giving after Mr. Trump’s victory? “Of course,” he said as he walked to a black S.U.V. waiting to whisk him away. “Have I not made that clear?”

But other billionaires aren’t so sure. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linked In (pictured above) is said to be thinking about leaving the country.

Mr. Hoffman, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on politics over the last few years, has told friends and allies that he is weighing a move overseas, according to three people with knowledge of the talks who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Mr. Hoffman, who declined to comment through a spokeswoman, has helped pay for some of the most aggressive private litigation against Donald J. Trump, and he is worried about retribution from a president who has promised to go after his political opponents, including major Democratic donors.

People who advise Democratic billionaires on how to spend their money are also in disagreement about what to do next. Seth London who advises big donors wrote a memo to party officials begging them to learn the lesson of the 2024 election, which in his view was that identity politics are poison.

“Parts of the Democratic establishment accepted as gospel the myth that elections are won by mobilizing the ‘base’ through appeals to group, not individual, identities,” London wrote in the 3½-page memo, which I obtained.

Calling for a new cadre of “Common Sense Democrats,” London said the reform movement should “begin with a complete rejection of race- and group-based identity politics and a wholesale embrace of a politics centered on delivering the American dream through simple, concrete action.”

But another adviser to limousine liberals seems to have given up on politics all together.

Dmitri Mehlhorn, another influential adviser to top Democratic donors who formerly helped guide Mr. Hoffman himself, had a darker, more nihilistic takeaway. Two days after Election Day, he wrote an email to his network saying that “The Second American Republic (1868-2024) is over.”…

On Tuesday, he sent a second note suggesting he was largely giving up on American politics. “With federal power dominated by anti-Enlightenment forces, our focus will shift to supporting humanist ideals globally,” he said.

It’s hard to get a real sense of what all of this might mean in a future election, but at least for the moment it sounds like some billionaire donors are stepping back from politics while others are going to be pushing back against the kind of far-left extremism that helped doom Harris’ campaign. There will of course be some billionaires who never stop giving to far left causes but if there are fewer of them going forward that’s good news for the country.