Who are the biggest donors to Trump and Harris?

In presidential fundraising these days, the donors who matter most are the very small and the very, very big.

The very small are the lifeblood of campaigns, cultivated via email after email, and hounded for recurring donations.

But the very, very big can make contributions that eclipse 1 million small-dollar donors.

The campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, when combined with their super political action committees, have raised $1.3 billion, and that’s not counting money raised by dark-money organizations that are active in the presidential race and don’t disclose their donors. The final two months of the election typically see donors write some of the biggest checks of the campaign season. So we’re just getting started.

Here’s a look at the billionaires that are powering the campaigns.

Trump’s donors

Trump has not added many new megadonors to his fold since his 2020 campaign. He has not traveled to many fundraising events across the country — a point of frustration for some of his fundraisers who sometimes have to travel to Trump’s own properties to get access to the candidate. Some traditional Republican donors who are uncomfortable with Trump are focusing their energies on down-ballot campaigns.

But Trump has, since 2016, transformed the Republican contributor class, developing a network of peculiar big donors loyal to him.

Tim Mellon: There is no donor who has publicly spent more for Trump this cycle than Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon banking fortune. He has put more than $125 million into Trump’s campaign — and it’s only September.

Mellon, a reclusive businessperson, burst onto the political donor scene seemingly out of nowhere. And while he has almost no relationship with Trump, he has financed much of MAGA Inc., a super PAC, providing almost half of the total money it has raised this cycle.

Mellon is also a friend of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s and put $25 million into a pro-Kennedy super PAC, becoming this cycle’s largest disclosed donor.

Elon Musk: The rise of Elon Musk as a political donor has been one of the most extraordinary stories of the 2024 campaign. Musk, the owner of the social media platform X and CEO of Tesla, had never displayed much interest in politics, and his own proclivities were liberal.

But this spring, he decided to start a super PAC that had grand ambitions to spend as much as $180 million on transforming the Republican Party’s field organizing program.

It had a rocky start. But there’s time, and Musk has brought in new leadership, including a new personal aide to help him make political decisions. Musk, at the very least, is someone whom Trump talks to and listens to: He took Musk’s advice to choose JD Vance as his running mate, and Musk appears to have led Trump to soften his hostility toward electric vehicles.

Miriam Adelson: Miriam Adelson, a fervent supporter of Israel, decided earlier this year to break with the rest of Trump world and start her own super PAC. She is planning to put more than $100 million into the group.

Adelson took some criticism from Trump just a few days after meeting with him at the Republican National Convention in July, drawing his ire because she is working with more traditional establishment Republican operatives. But Trump then showered her with praise at a recent event focused on antisemitism, at which Adelson spoke.

Dick and Liz Uihlein: Dick and Liz Uihlein, the founders of the shipping company ULine, are staunch conservatives and have long been significant donors to the anti-tax organization Club for Growth. So they were drawn to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign during the Republican primary.

But they are team players, and they have returned to the Trump fold. Like Adelson, the pair met with Trump at the Republican National Convention, according to a person briefed on their meeting.

Linda McMahon: Linda McMahon is a longtime friend of Trump’s as well as a major donor. Trump named her as the head of the Small Business Administration when he was president and granted her a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.

On another night, she joined Trump in his box at the convention.

Her power comes not just from her money but from her role: She joins another major Trump donor, Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, as one of the co-chairs of the Trump transition effort.

Harris’ donors

There has been significant consolidation in the world of Democratic megadonors since 2020, as there are few new big players like Sam Bankman-Fried, who stormed into Democratic politics in 2022 and was convicted of fraud and related crimes in 2023.

But President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race and the Democrats’ quick endorsement of Harris has energized some female donors — people who were not particularly active in the Biden campaign, but may be in a Harris campaign.

Here are the people who matter most.

Reid Hoffman: Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, has transformed himself into a relentless political creature since Trump’s election in 2016, at one point telling other donors during the 2020 campaign that he would step out of a board meeting if U.S. politics demanded it.

In addition to being one of the country’s top Democratic donors, Hoffman has also emerged as a confidant to other wealthy Democrats in Silicon Valley looking to make political donations.

George and Alex Soros: George Soros has long been making donations to support Democrats.

What’s new is that there is a different Soros also engaged in giving: Alex, Soros’ son.

Alex Soros is equally, if not more, interested in U.S. politics than his father is. Alex Soros is engaged to Huma Abedin, the longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Soros family tends to be in the old guard of Democratic big-money politics: He is a supporter of more establishment-minded groups, and likes to fund organizations that try to build change over the long term.

Michael Bloomberg: “Where’s Mike?” is a question that Democrats routinely ask around this time of year. Bloomberg, an entrepreneur and former mayor of New York City, has had a frosty relationship with Biden and has not invested as much as he usually does in the 2024 presidential election yet.

But he tends to be a very late donor, often funding a final-ditch effort that isn’t obvious by summertime.

Dustin Moskovitz: Dustin Moskovitz may be the only person on this list who has not yet donated significantly to support Harris.

But Moskovitz, the biggest donor in the charitable movement known as effective altruism, is widely expected to cut a major check in the closing months of this race to Future Forward, the Democratic group that he seeded with tens of millions of dollars in 2020.

Moskovitz, one of the founders of Facebook, is not well-known outside of Silicon Valley, but he has a team of political advisers who wield significant influence in donor circles.

Moskovitz has in recent months become one of Silicon Valley’s leading anti-Musk voices and expressed alarm about the rightward shift of some in the tech community.

Jeffrey Katzenberg: Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former chair of Walt Disney Studios, is not as wealthy as the other people on this list, but his influence comes from his access to Harris’ campaign. Katzenberg, an extraordinary political fundraiser in Hollywood for decades, became one of Biden’s national campaign co-chairs and has remained in that role with Harris now leading the ticket.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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