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Mentioned in today’s email: G.O.P. mega-donors Ken Griffin, Peter Thiel and Robert Bigelow; Democratic fundraisers Tom Steyer, Michael Pratt and Jeffrey Katzenberg; Addisu Demissie and Chauncey McLean; Jason Linder and Republican FTX executive Ryan Salame.

A few nuggets to get us started…

• The Biden Blessing: I’ve recently learned that Future Forward, the Democratic super PAC that is widely expected to be the main “blessed” super PAC behind the Biden re-election campaign, has quietly added Addisu Demissie, the well-liked, effervescent Oakland-based strategist, as one of its leaders. Addisu is considered one of the party’s top operatives, previously managing Cory Booker’s 2020 presidential campaign and later helping to shepherd the first, virtual Biden convention. He joined the super PAC last year, but his involvement hasn’t been reported.

  Future Forward flew very under the radar during the 2020 cycle, but its profile is increasing dramatically among both curious Democratic donors and G.O.P. dirt-diggers, and it won’t be able to remain quite so private this time around. That’s precisely why I found Addisu’s hire interesting. The super PAC’s founder, Chauncey McLean, prefers to keep a low profile. But Addisu is much more comfortable in the public eye—he was recently on a D.C. panel as a representative for Future Forward, for instance—and that experience will be an asset to the group as it seeks to deal with scrutiny and raise hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 18 months.

• Ryan Salame’s F.B.I. Trouble: News of the F.B.I. raid on Ryan Salame’s suburban Washington home sent shockwaves of anxiety through the orbit of former political advisors to Sam Bankman-Fried. Salame is being investigated as part of D.O.J. probe into campaign-finance violations by the FTX crew, and a raid strongly suggests that agents were not satisfied with the voluntary cooperation of Salame and his lawyer, Jason Linder, people following the case tell me. A raid like that is usually avoidable. Salame, prosecutors have alleged, was a straw-donor for the tens of millions of dollars that S.B.F. made to Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms, although he hasn’t been charged with any crimes. Were there documents at his $4 million home in Potomac, Maryland with Michelle Bond that are relevant to the S.B.F. investigation? Perhaps the F.B.I. gave a judge reason to believe so.

The event was heavier on ego-stroking than insider details, based on conversations with a half-dozen attendees. While Biden worked the photo line just across from Jeffrey Katzenberg—who was busy with some gripping-and-grinning of his own—there was no announcement about whether Katzenberg, or anyone else, will serve as Biden’s national finance chair. Some attendees were similarly disappointed that the campaign didn’t reveal who will win the race for finance director, although D.N.C. fundraiser-in-chief Michael Pratt—the favorite for the latter role—earned rave reviews for the two-day confab, raising expectations that he’ll soon get the nod.

The weekend was a Politics 101 refresher for the Biden bundling network, which is hoping to raise north of $2 billion this cycle, in part by sweet talking their networks of lukewarm friends and business contacts into cutting checks for up to $900,000 for the 80-year-old president. (Biden’s age is a frequent source of groaning even among his bundlers, despite their own median age.) The prior evening, Biden and Kamala Harris hosted a cocktail reception and formal dinner, just in time for some bundlers to hit the White House Correspondents Dinner party circuit. Harris, another occasional source of donor groaning, received good reviews. But the real workday was Saturday, when Biden bundlers sat in on a half-dozen sessions over six hours on topics like digital fundraising and communications strategy, getting previews of ads and watching White House officials get awkward when they were posed campaign-related questions they weren’t legally allowed to answer.

Democratic officials were on surer footing when they were in control of the pitch. Sam Cornale, the executive director of the D.N.C., explained to donors just how much Trump would have to spend to raise $1—speaking in the familiar V.C. language of LTV and CAC—while reassuring them that his organization wouldn’t have to do the same. D.N.C. chair Jamie Harrison hyperbolically claimed that a $1 donation today has the same value as $100 four months before Election Day. Most importantly, the Biden people walked donors through math showing why this cycle would be the most expensive ever, greasing the wheels for the asks to come.

The real subtext of these briefings, after all, is to convince donors that their opinions and advice truly matters to campaign brass. Some cynics would argue this is essentially a con, wherein candidates buy off donors, and not the other way around, by creating the false impression that their thoughts on Ukraine or on climate change hold as much weight in Washington and Wilmington as they do when candidates drop into Holmby Hills or River Oaks. Regardless, the Biden mission was apparently successful. Biden’s team is preparing to press for a big round of early six-figure donations—an intimate 25-person, $1.5 million event in New York is in the works, I hear—and the Salamander Hotel lovefest was, by all accounts, a winner with the high-dollar crowd. “These things can be boring,” said one person who has been to many of these. “And it wasn’t.”

Over the last eight years, however, a few new donors have emerged who could shake up the G.O.P. fundraising universe and, potentially, the Republican primary field. One of the most chattered about in G.O.P. fundraising circles is Robert Bigelow, a 78-year-old Nevadan who initially made his money in commercial real estate, including the Budget Hotels chain, before investing his money into aerospace, including research into U.F.O.s and… life after death. Over the last two years, Bigelow has shot out from nowhere to become one of the country’s biggest donors—spending almost $50 million last cycle to elect Joe Lombardo as governor of Nevada. He is now preparing to do the same to elect DeSantis. Last year, Bigelow gave $10 million to the governor’s re-election campaign, an account with $86 million that will probably soon be transferred over to the DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down. Bigelow then gave another $20 million to the super PAC last month, making him the largest known donor of the presidential campaign. “I will give him more money and go without food,” Bigelow told Time last month.

Then there is Peter Thiel, who Reuters reported last week “won’t fund candidates in 2024.” No disrespect, but the Reuters “exclusive” was massively oversold. As I’ve reported, Thiel’s interest in being a G.O.P. powerbroker was never really true. And he is just plain tired of Republican politics after spending $35 million, and a tremendous amount of his personal political capital and energy, on boosting Blake Masters and J.D. Vance during the 2022 midterms. He went 1-for-2, and associates told me after the midterms that he was feeling “blackpilled” about politics and what he could achieve with his money. Thiel has jettisoned his main political adviser and, as I reported a few months ago, has declined to get involved in the presidential race for now, even turning down a recent request from the Trump super PAC for money. Still, Thiel has not made any final decisions, I’m reliably told. (How could anyone at this point in the cycle, especially when Blake might run again?)

Perhaps the most closely-watched new mega-giver is Ken Griffin, the Chicago-to-Miami transplant who runs Citadel and has donated $10 million to back DeSantis in Florida. The Times reported last week that Griffin has soured a bit on DeSantis recently, which syncs with my own intel. Griffin, I’m told, has privately conveyed in recent months that he has been unhappy with how DeSantis has handled the Disney situation (which he’s also said publicly). “I think he doesn’t like the retaliatory aspect of how DeSantis handles things,” said my source, who has spoken with Griffin. Nevertheless, this person predicted that Griffin would ultimately back DeSantis: “I don’t see anyone else on the playing field that he would support.”

It is a familiar dilemma for major Republican donors who want to beat Trump: Who, exactly, can do it, and how do they get their other rich friends to agree with them? There don’t appear to be many viable non-DeSantis options for now. The 2016 G.O.P. primary taught major donors the perils of incoordination, after all. Democrats have the luxury of coordination by default; Republicans, this time around, might have to force it.