Wealthy Democratic donors who believe fielding another candidate is Democrats' best chance of keeping the White House are increasingly gritting their teeth and staying silent, fearing any move against President Biden could backfire.
As of late Tuesday, the party's wealthy were closely monitoring post-debate poll results and the positions of Democratic lawmakers for signs that support for Biden was crumbling.
In the past, donors have launched their own campaigns to pressure Biden to step down as the party's presidential nominee, but they have either failed or drawn backlash from other donors and activists.
The stalemate reflects broader paralysis within the party about how to handle a tense situation that could intensify rifts within the party, alienate key constituencies, damage personal relationships and favor a Republican candidate that most donors see as a threat to democracy.
Just hours after the debate, the movement began to take shape.
At a breakfast held Friday morning at the Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado, where about 50 Democratic donors gathered for a planned meeting convened by the super PAC American Bridge, someone asked the crowd for a show of hands to indicate how many people thought Biden should step down. Nearly everyone in the room raised their hands, according to two attendees.
Some members of the Democracy Alliance, a network of liberal financiers, had suggested issuing a public statement calling on Biden to step down, sparking a heated debate among some members of the group and sparking a list of dream candidates. But the group's board met after the discussion and decided to maintain its support for Biden, according to a person briefed on the decision.
On a private email list that included members of another liberal donor group called “Way to Win,” participants expressed frustration with the way Democrats have surrounded Biden and called for Vice President Kamala Harris to be considered at the top of the shortlist.
In a small, private online poll distributed after the debate to liberal donors and their advisers, more than 70% of the dozens of respondents said they were “open to considering a Plan B.”
And on Wall Street, some of Mr. Biden's wealthiest past backers, including Seth Klarman, the CEO of the hedge fund Baupost and a fierce critic of former President Donald J. Trump, have privately discussed looking at candidates other than Mr. Biden, according to two people briefed on Mr. Biden's thinking.
On Tuesday, both American Bridge and the Democratic Alliance hosted conference calls for donors worried about the situation. Of the dozen or so donors on the Bridge call, only one said the party should endorse Biden, according to one participant. Other donors expressed a preference to move on.
And the dilemma is expected to be a hot topic next week on the sidelines of the Allen & Company Summit annual meeting of chief executive officers in Sun Valley, Idaho, people close to several major donors said.
The debate among wealthy Democrats, detailed in more than two dozen interviews and written exchanges reviewed by The New York Times, intensified in the days after the debate as Biden's campaign and the party's mainstream formed a defensive wall around him.
Maggie Kulik, owner of a wealth management firm and board member of the Women Donors Network, said the party's aggressive defense of Biden has made donors hesitant to publicly call for his replacement.
“If you follow this line, you're going to look as morally bankrupt as the Republican Party, but not entirely,” she said. “Come on! You know when to say it.”
Kulik added that the donor coalition's reluctance to criticize Biden may be because it doesn't want to alienate donors “who feel very strongly about just maintaining the status quo.”
But, she said, “I don't think the walls are that strong,” adding, “If a few voices speak up, the whole thing can come crashing down. And in my opinion, that needs to happen.”
Donor support is one of the measures being closely watched to gauge whether Biden can weather the growing doubts that have arisen from his weak performance in the debate. Other factors include the attitude of Democratic lawmakers — some of whom began questioning Tuesday whether endorsing Biden was in the party's best interest — and post-debate polls.
The backing of big donors is important for Biden — both Trump and Biden have used digital fundraising to their advantage during difficult times, such as Biden's disastrous debate defeat and Trump's conviction — but seven-figure donors are crucial to funding negative advertising, for example, through super PACs.
The Biden campaign, along with some of the donors themselves, are nervous about suggestions that major donors could be orchestrating a switch of sides.
“It's frightening that the donor community could do something like that,” said Craig Kaplan, a New York lawyer and Democratic donor. “Money already plays too big a role in politics.”
The controversy has particularly divided normally fairly harmonious Democratic donor groups, including Way to Win, a donor group founded at the height of resistance during the Trump administration, whose leaders have been pushing Harris as Biden's preferred successor.
In internal email correspondence reviewed by The Times, the group's founder, Jen Fernandez Ancona, emphasized to allies the chances of Harris's electoral success, saying, “If Harris is at the top of the list and is the right fit to be the vice presidential candidate, we absolutely believe she can be successful.”
Tory Gabito, another Way to Win founder, said in an interview that the organization has not officially moved to ask Harris to nominate.
If Biden drops out and Harris comes out on top, she would inherit a campaign cash reserve that stood at $212 million as of early last month. If another candidate comes out on top, things could get more complicated. “Think about it,” says Steve Silverstein, a major Democratic donor. “You have to think three moves ahead in this game.”
Democratic donors have been engaged in fierce debate over possible replacements for Harris, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and some donors have reached out to Newsom to encourage him to run, according to a person familiar with the effort.
In Silicon Valley, billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman's efforts to rally Silicon Valley donors to Biden have stirred controversy among his colleagues. In emails this week, Hoffman's advisers criticized Way to Win and Democracy Alliance.
One big donor and fellow Hoffman colleague called it “shocking” that Hoffman would send the email downplaying the debate's impact. And some other donors who received the email felt he was overly downplaying the risks of keeping Biden in the running, according to two people close to other big donors. Tech entrepreneurs who have privately downplayed the chances of a Biden win, according to the people. Investor Ron Conway and StubHub CEO Eric Baker are among those who have said they are close to the big donors.
On Wall Street, where corporate executives tend not to get emotional about cutting losses, six prominent Democratic donors said Biden's chances of winning had plummeted after the debate, sometimes using expletives to describe the situation.
Some business executives and Democratic political activists have called JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon in recent days to gauge his interest in succeeding Biden, according to people familiar with the matter. (Dimon has repeatedly said he will not run.)
Cryptocurrency investor Michael Novogratz, who supported Biden in 2020 but is now concerned about his age, welcomed the moment. “I've been advocating for alternatives,” he said in a text to The New York Times. “The poor performance in the debates opened the door for the first time.”
Klarman, a hedge fund manager and strong Biden supporter ahead of the debate, had recently told friends and fellow donors that Biden's performance there meant they should seriously consider alternative plans, according to a person who spoke with him.
“The most important thing President Biden, and all of us who have supported him thus far, can do is to prioritize defeating Donald Trump in this election,” Klarman said in a statement. “I trust that President Biden, who has been a truly great president, will continue to keep this at the center of every decision about the path forward.”
Some donors and their political advisers said in interviews that Democrats would be better off focusing on groups that can help the party regardless of who runs for the top spot.
Steve Phillips, a longtime Democratic donor in San Francisco, said he had been “inundated with frantic calls, emails and text messages from fellow Democratic donors desperately looking for ways to remove Biden from the running for president,” and that he had advised his colleagues to “just hang in there, get through this and focus on mobilizing voters.” He added that “that's a much better use of our time than worrying about whether Gretchen Whitmer is going to be the nominee.”
Donors seeking to replace Biden should be careful what they wish for, warned John Morgan, an attorney who has raised nearly $1 million for the Biden campaign and is planning to fundraise for Biden over the summer.
“We are concerned that a fight over a new nominee would cause further infighting and do more harm than good to the overall program,” Morgan said in a statement. “The decision is not one of us to make; it is the president's.”
Still, outside groups supporting the president and their donors have begun plotting how to pivot without Biden. Billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, one of the party's largest single donors, was asked on social media on Tuesday what the party should do about Biden.
“Oh, that's easy, they just do that,” Moskovitz joked, then paused. He didn't write anything else.