Bernie’s Capitalism

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Several lifetimes ago, when I was at CNN back in 2017 covering political and philanthropic donors, I profiled a spry 88-year-old named Bernard Marcus. Marcus was famous even then, obviously, as the billionaire founder of Home Depot, but during the intervening Trump years he became deeply intertwined with the president’s political operation, and a real player.

Much has changed since then, of course, and I’ve been curious whether Marcus would re-up with Trump in 2024. Or, now that he has a real choice for the first time in eight years, would the Trump mega-donor choose to back someone else? His decision, below…

The Other Bernie Revolution

Both Trump and DeSantis are soliciting the financial support of Home Depot gazillionaire Bernie Marcus, the ultra prolific G.O.P. donor who’s suddenly noncommittal. Should Mar-a-Lago be worried?

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, turned 94 years old last week. He can’t golf anymore, after experiencing some health scares, but friends say he is still as compos mentis as he was during the last decade of Republican politics, when the multi-billionaire made a name for himself as one of the party’s most ambitious, most prolific contributors. Marcus, who has gifted $65 million and counting to G.O.P. causes over the years, remains a top target for both Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis during this cycle’s shadow primary. But both camps are watching him warily, not only because of his deep pockets, but also because he may be a bellwether for the donors who learned to live with Trump in ’16 and ’20. Will they sign up again when, for the first time in eight years, other credible choices are on the table?

And it hasn’t escaped attention that Marcus is proving to be skittish about backing Trump again in 2024. In his first public comments about the presidential primary, Marcus told me that, so far, he’s declining to make a commitment to any candidate. “I look forward to seeing the candidate field and will much later in the political process make my decision,” he said, through a representative. “In the meantime, I am focused on many of the issues facing all of us including the opportunities and challenges we see today.” (Whatever that means.)

Marcus’s statement—no endorsement until “much later” in the G.O.P. primary—will be interpreted as a major let-down inside Mar-a-Lago. This is a guy who spent $10 million for Trump during the fall of 2020 through a pro-Trump super PAC that he assembled with his buddies Sheldon Adelson and Chris LaCivita, who is now leading Trump’s ‘24 campaign. It’s also a negative signal for Marcus’s peers in Trump’s orbit. This cycle’s Trump donor universe is widely expected to be a subset of those who backed him in 2020. Or, put another way: If Bernie Marcus isn’t excitedly backing Trump in the G.O.P. primary, it’s hard to imagine who else will be predisposed to back him again, either.

Marcus, after all, was unusually enmeshed with the Trump team. When I first profiled him, at the very beginning of the Trump presidency, Marcus didn’t have a particularly deep relationship with this orbit. But Marcus and his aides quickly grew close to Steve Bannon and Rebekah Mercer. He roamed the White House, repeatedly dining with Trump, with the president once allegedly asking him to execute the firing of Jared Kushner, according to Peter Navarro’s recollection. (The firing never happened, of course.) Marcus was truly one of the few G.O.P. mega-donors to stick with Trump through everything—the Muslim ban, Charlottesville, “stand back and stand by”—all the way through the 2020 election.

Trump reciprocated the favor, at one point tweeting out his support for Marcus as a “truly great, patriotic & charitable man” when liberals tried to boycott Home Depot. “They bonded over the fact that they were in the same stratosphere,” one person familiar with their relationship said. But that was then, and this is now. “I think cycle to cycle, he still needs to be won. He’s a discerning cat,” this person continued. But “when he donates, others follow. The ripple effect of Bernie Marcus’s support is fairly remarkable.”

The Marcus Primary

Over the last few months, both the Trump and DeSantis camps have been competing vigorously for Marcus’s endorsement, I’m told, making entreaties to Marcus’ staff for checks. Really, though, the informal competition has been going on for years: Marcus, who spends most of his time in Boca Raton, has been an active member of one of Trump’s golf courses, and the two spent a small amount of private time together shortly after Trump left the White House (though they have not met in the last year or so). DeSantis, too, has sought time on Marcus’s calendar when he’s been near Boca, although they’re not as social with one another as Marcus is with Trump.

Part of Marcus’s apparent disengagement stems from some significant health issues he’s experienced during the last twelve months, complications that have slowed his usually vigorous political metabolism. But the core reason for Marcus’s indecision, I’m told by multiple sources, is his lack of certainty over whether Trump can actually beat Joe Biden, who Bernie has called “the worst president in the history of this country.” And that’s what matters to him the most, by far. “He’s looking for a Republican candidate who can win,” said a source close to him.

Given that predisposition, is Trump even in the running? “He doesn’t think Trump can win. That’s clear,” said the source, who believes that Trump and Marcus are “done” and that the Marcus Primary is really a contest between the non-Trump candidates. A second source close to him pushed back on that, arguing that it’s still possible Marcus ends up backing Trump in the primary, provided that Trump can demonstrate he has a real path to victory. “He’s not happy with the backdrop of turbulence that Donald Trump brings with him, but he’s not sour on him,” this person said.

That’s not entirely surprising—like many among his peer set, Marcus has often been preoccupied with specific policy wins on which Trump’s character has little bearing. Marcus, whose primary political concern is Israel, was delighted that Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, for example. Marcus has also pumped millions into his dark-money nonprofit, the Job Creators Network, that he founded to push for tax cuts and pro-business endeavors; the group helped lobby for the tax bill that Trump signed in 2018. Marcus, who loves to wax romantically about capitalism, said recently that Trump’s economic policies were “spot on.” But the Home Depot founder is also an unrepentant partisan, and he evidences genuinely insurgent, MAGA-inflected sensibilities: His team, led by campaign-finance impresario Steve Hantler, remains close to Bannon, and Marcus was one of the few G.O.P. mega-donors to make an endorsement in the R.N.C. chair race, backing the insurgent Harmeet Dhillon.

And then there’s DeSantis. Marcus gave $250,000 to back DeSantis for both his 2018 and 2022 gubernatorial bids. (His philanthropy, the Marcus Foundation, donated $5 million in part to sponsor a speech-and-debate school competition in Florida that DeSantis announced to much fanfare.) So Marcus could very well end up supporting the governor this time around.

Nevertheless, one person who has spoken with Marcus about politics said that he, like Ken Griffin, has not been enthused with DeSantis’s more extreme positions, such as the near-total abortion ban that he signed into law recently, or the fight that DeSantis has waged against Disney. If DeSantis moderated on some of those positions, he’d stand a good chance of getting Marcus’s support, according to one Marcus confidante. If not, perhaps he’d look at someone like Nikki Haley, who Marcus maxed out to in March. Marcus has also talked recently with Glenn Youngkin, I’m told.

Langone’s Read

Ken Langone, the New York billionaire donor who helped Marcus found Home Depot over four decades ago, told me that he shared some of Marcus’s same concerns about DeSantis—specifically that he wishes “cool heads would prevail” between Bob Iger and DeSantis, who should “tone it down.” Langone, back in New York after wintering in Florida, told me that he is leaning toward backing DeSantis, himself, but couldn’t say for sure where his friend will land. “He was a big supporter of Trump for a long time. And he may end up supporting Trump again,” Langone said of Marcus. “But the last I heard from Bernie—I saw him before I left Florida—he’s keeping his options open.”

Langone also echoed something that I’ve heard from plenty of Republican fundraising sources: No matter an individual mega-donor’s gripes, Trump and DeSantis are going to have no trouble raising money. DeSantis, who is expected to announce his presidential campaign in the coming weeks, will quickly move to transfer some $85 million from his state campaign account to his federal super PAC, Never Back Down, a legally-controversial, but probably-doable gambit that will instantly put him at something close to parity with Trump in terms of outside money. “When he opens the floodgates, it’ll pour in,” said Langone. (Officially announcing will also mean cutting the umbilical cord between DeSantis and the super PAC team led by Jeff Roe.)

Both DeSantis and Trump can live without Bernie Marcus’s support, of course. Trump has a reliable geyser of small-dollar cash that he can activate at the drop of an indictment or Truth bomb. And even with a diminished high-dollar juggernaut, there are probably some diehards like a Dick Uihlein, a Timothy Mellon, or a Diane Hendricks that can be counted on to fill the Trump super PAC’s coffers. But a defection by Marcus, even if he’s simply sitting out the primary, would send a powerful signal of just how much has changed since 2016 and 2020. His peers are watching. And, for the first time in eight years, they have a choice.