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According to a Guardian analysis, an anti-tax group funded primarily by billionaires became one of the biggest supporters of Republican lawmakers seeking to overturn the US election results.
The Club for Growth has supported the campaigns of 42 right-wing Republican senators and congressmen who voted last week to challenge the results of the U.S. election, handing out around $ 20 million to directly and indirectly support their campaigns in 2018 and 2020, according to the data. compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
About 30 of the Republican hardline supporters received more than $ 100,000 in indirect and direct support from the group.
The biggest beneficiaries of the Club for Growth are Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, the two Republican senators who led the effort to invalidate Joe Biden’s election victory, and newly elected gun rights activist Lauren Boebert, a theorist of the QAnon plot. Boebert was criticized last week for tweeting about the location of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the Capitol attack, even after police told lawmakers not to do so.
Public records show that the Club for Growth’s biggest backers are billionaire Richard Uihlein, the Republican co-founder of the Wisconsin-based shipping company Uline, and Jeffrey Yass, the co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, a group of options trading based in Philadelphia which also owns a sports betting company in Dublin.
While Uihlein and Yass have kept a lower profile than other billionaire donors such as Michael Bloomberg and the late Sheldon Adelson, their support of the Club for Growth has helped transform the organization from an organization traditionally known as a pro anti-regulatory and anti-fiscal. – from a business lobby group to one that supports some of the most radical and undemocratic Republican lawmakers in Congress.
“Here’s the thing about the super rich. They believe their hyper-wealth empowers them to be self-righteous. And it is not. If you’ve won billions of dollars, great. But that doesn’t make you any less responsible for funding anti-democratic or authoritarian candidates and movements, ”said Reed Galen, a former Republican strategist who co-founded the Lincoln Project, anti-Trump activists.
Galen said he believed groups like the Club for Growth are now serving the personal agendas of Republican donors, not what were once considered “conservative principles.”
The Lincoln Project said it would devote resources to lobbying not only Hawley, whom the group accused of sedition, but also his donors.
The Club for Growth has so far escaped scrutiny for its role in supporting undemocratic Republicans because it does not primarily make direct contributions to candidates. Instead, he uses his funds to make “outside” spending decisions, such as attacking a candidate’s opponents.
In 2018, Club for Growth spent nearly $ 3 million to attack Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri, a race that was ultimately won by Hawley, the 41-year-old Yale law graduate with presidential ambitions that amplified Donald Trump’s baseless lies about voter fraud. .
That year, he also spent $ 1.2 million attacking Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who challenged – then narrowly lost – to Cruz.
Other lawmakers backed by the Club for Growth include Matt Rosendale, who this week called for the resignation of fellow Republican Liz Cheney after saying she would support the president’s impeachment, and Lance Gooden, who accused Pelosi of being equally responsible for the riot last week. like Trump.
Dozens of Republicans backed by the Club for Growth voted to challenge the election results even after insurgents stormed the Capitol, killing five people, including the murder of a police officer.
The Growth Club has changed dramatically as the leadership of the group changed hands. Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who led the group, recently suggested he was willing to consider voting for Trump’s impeachment and criticized his colleagues for disputing the election results. Its current leader, David McIntosh, is a former Republican congressman who accompanied Trump on a final trip to Georgia last week, the day before Republican candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both strongly backed by the Club for Growth, lost the elections in the second round. their Democratic opponents.
Neither the Club for Growth nor McIntosh responded to requests for comment.
Public records show that Richard Uihlein, whose family founded Schlitz beer, donated $ 27 million to the Club for Growth in 2020 and $ 6.7 million in 2018. Uihlein and his wife, Liz, have been called “the most powerful conservative couple you have ever seen.” heard of ”by the New York Times. Richard Uihlein, the New York Times said, was known to endorse “anti-establishment” candidates like Roy Moore, whom Uihlein backed in a Senate race even after being accused of sexually abusing underage girls. Moore has denied the allegations.
A spokesperson for the Uihleins declined to comment.
Susquehanna International’s Yass, who is on public documents as having donated $ 20.7 million to the Club for Growth in 2020 and $ 3.8 million in 2018, also declined to comment. Yass is one of six founders of Susquehanna, described as “a crucial driver of the global $ 5 billion exchange-traded fund market” in a 2018 Bloomberg News profile. The company was founded on the six founders’ mutual love for poker and the idea that training in “probability based” decisions could be useful in trading markets. Susquehanna’s Dublin company, Nellie Analytics, works in sports.
At a 2020 sports betting trade conference, Yass said sports betting is a $ 250 billion industry globally, but with the “help” of lawmakers it could turn into an industry. a trillion dollars.
A 2009 profile of Yass published in the Philadelphia magazine described how secrecy permeates Susquehanna, and that people who know the company say “stealth” is a word often used to describe its modus operandi. The article suggested that Yass was largely silent about his business because he doesn’t like to share what he does and how, and those who know him think he is “very nervous” about his business. own security.
Yass, who is described in some media as a libertarian, also donated to Protect America Pac, an organization affiliated with Republican Senator Rand Paul. The Pac website falsely claims Democrats stole the 2020 election.
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