Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn who has for years funded several liberal and anti-Donald Trump causes, is taking the unusual step of donating a quarter of a million dollars to a super PAC backing Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley in 2024.
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Hoffman’s longtime political adviser, Dmitri Mehlhorn, confirmed the donation to the pro-Haley PAC called SFA Fund.
Mehlhorn told The Washington Post that the donation is motivated by Hoffman’s desire to prevent Trump from winning the 2024 presidential election.
“We have two shots to take out Trump, and we better use them both,” Mehlhorn said, referring to the presidential primary and general elections. “Nikki actually has a chance to win. If she does well in Iowa, she can win New Hampshire and that would change things.”
Hoffman has not ruled out future donations to Haley.
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The New York Times first reported Hoffman’s donation.
The roster of Republican presidential candidates has shrunk in recent months, with some in the party seeking to coalesce around one candidate who could be their best shot to defeat the former president. Trump remains the clear front-runner among Republicans in polls, but Haley has in recent weeks pushed past Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to become the party’s top Trump alternative, surpassing or tying DeSantis for second place in polling in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Americans For Prosperity Action, the powerful political network led by conservative billionaire Charles Koch also endorsed Haley for president last week.
As Haley has gained momentum, DeSantis’s campaign and the super PAC supporting him have faced recent turmoil, with the PAC that has overseen much of his presidential operation firing its chief executive less than two weeks after the previous CEO resigned. Trump, meanwhile, continues to campaign and maintain a solid polling lead while also grappling with a slew of legal issues, including 91 criminal counts across four cases.
News of the unorthodox donation also comes one day before Republican presidential candidates are set to take part in the fourth GOP presidential debate. Haley will take the stage with DeSantis, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, where her campaign and super PAC may take heat for accepting such a significant donation from a liberal donor.
The DeSantis-affiliated super PAC Never Back Down — along with the DeSantis campaign — is already weaponizing Hoffman’s donation against Haley.
Trump did not participate in any previous GOP primary debates and is not expected to appear on the debate stage this week. The Iowa Republican caucuses, meanwhile, are just over a month away.
Hoffman — who is also a Microsoft board member and has long funded Democratic and anti-Trump causes — hosted Biden at a California fundraiser this past summer. And he donated millions to the Republican Accountability PAC, a group of Republicans who want the party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024.
Hoffman organized an effort through a group called Investing in US that worked with private donors to raise funds to aggressively campaign against Republican election deniers ahead of the 2022 midterms over fears that they could play a role in overturning election results and install Trump in 2024. He also helped fund a lawsuit by writer E. Jean Carroll against Trump. A Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the case, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages.
Hoffman also helped fund Project Birmingham, a secret effort to influence the 2017 Senate election in Alabama, which included fake accounts to deliver misleading messages on Facebook to hundreds of thousands of voters to help elect Democrat Doug Jones in his race against Republican Roy Moore. Hoffman in 2019 acknowledged that his money funded the project, but he said he did not know how his funds were used until details began to emerge in the New York Times and The Washington Post.
Haley is expected to face several challenges in the coming months, with her pitch to move on from Trump being out of step in a party in which he is largely beloved. She is likely to face attacks from critics over her shifting political stances, including on abortion, and there are questions about the strength of her campaign’s strategy in important states like Iowa.
Haley’s campaign sees a calendar that lines up well enough to open a narrow path, wagering that the field will shrink by the time of the South Carolina primary, she and her allies have said, setting her up for a head-to-head contest against Trump in her home state.
Keeping up with politics is easy with The 5-Minute Fix Newsletter, in your inbox weekdays.
Hoffman’s longtime political adviser, Dmitri Mehlhorn, confirmed the donation to the pro-Haley PAC called SFA Fund.
Mehlhorn told The Washington Post that the donation is motivated by Hoffman’s desire to prevent Trump from winning the 2024 presidential election.
“We have two shots to take out Trump, and we better use them both,” Mehlhorn said, referring to the presidential primary and general elections. “Nikki actually has a chance to win. If she does well in Iowa, she can win New Hampshire and that would change things.”
Hoffman has not ruled out future donations to Haley.
ADVERTISING
The New York Times first reported Hoffman’s donation.
The roster of Republican presidential candidates has shrunk in recent months, with some in the party seeking to coalesce around one candidate who could be their best shot to defeat the former president. Trump remains the clear front-runner among Republicans in polls, but Haley has in recent weeks pushed past Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to become the party’s top Trump alternative, surpassing or tying DeSantis for second place in polling in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Americans For Prosperity Action, the powerful political network led by conservative billionaire Charles Koch also endorsed Haley for president last week.
As Haley has gained momentum, DeSantis’s campaign and the super PAC supporting him have faced recent turmoil, with the PAC that has overseen much of his presidential operation firing its chief executive less than two weeks after the previous CEO resigned. Trump, meanwhile, continues to campaign and maintain a solid polling lead while also grappling with a slew of legal issues, including 91 criminal counts across four cases.
News of the unorthodox donation also comes one day before Republican presidential candidates are set to take part in the fourth GOP presidential debate. Haley will take the stage with DeSantis, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, where her campaign and super PAC may take heat for accepting such a significant donation from a liberal donor.
The DeSantis-affiliated super PAC Never Back Down — along with the DeSantis campaign — is already weaponizing Hoffman’s donation against Haley.
Trump did not participate in any previous GOP primary debates and is not expected to appear on the debate stage this week. The Iowa Republican caucuses, meanwhile, are just over a month away.
Hoffman — who is also a Microsoft board member and has long funded Democratic and anti-Trump causes — hosted Biden at a California fundraiser this past summer. And he donated millions to the Republican Accountability PAC, a group of Republicans who want the party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024.
Hoffman organized an effort through a group called Investing in US that worked with private donors to raise funds to aggressively campaign against Republican election deniers ahead of the 2022 midterms over fears that they could play a role in overturning election results and install Trump in 2024. He also helped fund a lawsuit by writer E. Jean Carroll against Trump. A Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the case, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages.
Hoffman also helped fund Project Birmingham, a secret effort to influence the 2017 Senate election in Alabama, which included fake accounts to deliver misleading messages on Facebook to hundreds of thousands of voters to help elect Democrat Doug Jones in his race against Republican Roy Moore. Hoffman in 2019 acknowledged that his money funded the project, but he said he did not know how his funds were used until details began to emerge in the New York Times and The Washington Post.
Haley is expected to face several challenges in the coming months, with her pitch to move on from Trump being out of step in a party in which he is largely beloved. She is likely to face attacks from critics over her shifting political stances, including on abortion, and there are questions about the strength of her campaign’s strategy in important states like Iowa.
Haley’s campaign sees a calendar that lines up well enough to open a narrow path, wagering that the field will shrink by the time of the South Carolina primary, she and her allies have said, setting her up for a head-to-head contest against Trump in her home state.
