Trump donors 'coming out of the woodwork' in blue states

FPI / August 19, 2019

Though they risk severe backlash from the Left, supporters of President Donald Trump are “coming out of the woodwork” in the bluest of blue zones.

The president has a larger number of donors to his 2020 re-election campaign in Washington state than the top six Democratic presidential candidates combined, according to Federal Elections Commission (FEC) filings. The last Republican to win Washington state in a presidential contest was Ronald Reagan in 1984.

“With nearly 15 months to go before the 2020 election,” Trump “already has drawn more donations from Seattle addresses than he did during the entire 2016 campaign,” Danny Westneat noted in an Aug. 16 column for The Seattle Times.

“I’m not talking about total dollars raised — though on that front Trump is a juggernaut, too,” Westneat wrote. “But the total number of donations reflects how many people are inspired enough by a candidate to send any amount of money, sometimes repeatedly. As I wrote in 2016, about how democratic socialist candidate Bernie Sanders was swamping the field in the donations category, ‘it’s like a measure of people power.’ ”

In the 2020 campaign as of Aug. 16, Sanders had 8,080 itemized donations in Seattle — Trump had 21,657, “the most ever recorded at this point in an election, by any candidate in either party,” Westneat noted.

The FEC requires that political campaigns disclose the names and addresses of individuals who contribute over $200 to their campaigns during an election. Campaigns report their big-dollar donors to the FEC in itemized contributions.

In his column, Westneat cited the example of Seattle developer Martin Selig.

“When word got out during the last presidential election” that Selig “would be supporting Donald Trump, the blowback from our liberal town, he said, was ‘stunning.’ ”

Selig told The Seattle Times: “Do you know what it’s like being a Jewish Republican in Seattle? The repercussions of what you hear from people is stunning.”

In 2016, Westneat noted, Selig “retreated from any affiliation with Trump” and “said he wouldn’t even vote for him. It had become problematic just getting along in the city while wearing a MAGA hat.

“But that was then. This spring, Selig went all-in for Trump, maxing out to the president’s campaign with a donation of $5,600.”

Selig is hardly the lone vocal Trump supporter in deep blue Seattle.

“So Trump’s full of outspoken bombast, so what?” said Suzie Burke, who has given $375 to Trump’s campaign. “With the past Republicans, there was nothing to be passionate about. That’s why you’re seeing all these people coming out of the woodwork.”

Westneat wrote: “So what, you may be saying, Trump’s not going to win out here anyway. True. But when your fundraising is breaking records, it indicates an intense passion for the candidate, as it did for Bernie Sanders. That counts for a ton in politics.”

It also signals, like 2016, that Trump is stronger than polls indicate.

“It also suggests Trumpism is a force in the state, even as it’s in the minority,” Westneat wrote.

Since the names of itemized donors are open to the public, the Left has been known to go more than a little cray cray when high-profile Trump donors are mentioned, in some cases calling for boycotts of the donors’ businesses.

Many in the Aug. 16 column’s comments section noted that Westneat listed the top Trump donors in bluest of blue Seattle.

Additionally, an editor’s note at the end of Westneat’s column may have been a sign of some leftist gaskets blowing. It reads: “Due to a high number of comments that violated our terms of service, the thread has been closed to new comments.”

Free Press International