Trump-inspired big donors plan their own campaigns

Gary Rabine has plowed cash into the pro-Donald Trump organization Turning Point USA, shelled out thousands of dollars to the former president’s reelection campaign and raised big bucks with Donald Trump Jr.

Now, Rabine is striking out on his own — and plotting a run for Illinois governor.

Like Trump, Rabine, the owner of a concrete and asphalt paving company, presents himself as a successful executive and political newcomer who can turbocharge an ailing economy. Like the former president, he rips what he describes as a damaging crackdown on policing and an over-the-top coronavirus shutdown that has closed schools and devastated his state. And like Trump, Rabine blasts “corrupt” politics that he says has made Illinois “the laughingstock of America.”

Rabine is one of more than a half-dozen wealthy Trump patrons who are preparing potential bids for statewide office, a glut that underscores how the Trump profile — a wealthy and hard-charging political outsider — is living on through candidates who are cut from similar cloth.

Rabine stressed that there were distinctions between him and Trump, but he also pointed to their shared focus on the economy as a critical parallel.

“I believe he does know how to create jobs and opportunity, and I know I do, too. That’s the most common thing, I think, and that’s why I embrace Trump as the leader of our country,” he said.

In Ohio, investment banker Mike Gibbons is weighing a run for the state’s newly open Senate seat or a primary challenge against Gov. Mike DeWine, one of several Republicans who Trump targeted in the aftermath of his election loss.

Gibbons, who waged an unsuccessful 2018 Senate campaign, doled out more than a half-million dollars to pro-Trump causes during the 2020 election. He single-handedly bankrolled an outside group, Ohio Strong Action, which bolstered Trump and other Republican candidates.

Gibbons senior adviser Andrew Boucher described the would-be candidate as an outside-the-system figure who “firmly believes that we need more businessmen involved in politics,” is “willing to be blunt when it’s time to be blunt,” and “doesn’t owe anyone any favors.”

Another Ohio-based Trump financial backer, state GOP chair Jane Timken, confirmed in a text message that she was considering a run for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman. Timken and her husband, former steel company executive Tim Timken, dished out more than $235,000 to the Trump 2020 campaign.

Some of the would-be contenders are so closely aligned with Trump that they have embraced his unfounded conspiracy theories that the election was rigged. Likely Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, a rancher who gave more than $1.1 million to pro-Trump outfits during the 2020 campaign, attended the Jan. 6 rally that was aimed at pressuring members of Congress to overturn the results of the election.

Herbster has said he did not attend the ensuing riot at the Capitol and has condemned the violence that occurred.

There is also former Trump administration ambassador Carla Sands, a major giver to the former president who is weighing a campaign for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat. A few days after the election, Sands took to Twitter to claim that her vote had not been counted, an assertion that was later proven inaccurate.

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a six-figure donor to Trump’s political operation, has been the most outspoken of the group. Lindell confirmed his interest in a prospective campaign against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — who he said was “probably up for the worst governor of the year award” — but said he was more focused on making the case that voting machines had been manipulated in the 2020 election.

“If machines were used tomorrow, and I was going to run tomorrow, or the election was in two months, I’d say, ‘Why bother?’ because these machines will steal it,” Lindell said.

The raft of Trump-like candidates has alarmed some Republicans, who contend the party needs to move away from the former president to win in 2022. Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, argued that Lindell would fare well among conservative activists but turn off the suburbanites who bolted from Trump in the last election.

“I think he would be incredibly problematic for Republicans running in this state,” said Brodkorb, who noted that Minnesota Republicans haven’t won a statewide race since 2006. “I think the fact that he’s become in essence almost like a mini-Trump in that capacity, there’s no reason to think that that brand just recycled through the electorate in Minnesota would work.”

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the last Republican to hold Minnesota's top office, said the GOP had to expand beyond Trump's base to win the state given the former president’s losses there in 2016 and 2020.

"We don't need to guess how a general election campaign will go here for any candidate viewed mostly as a Trump proxy," Pawlenty wrote in an email. "Trump lost here twice, and it wasn't even close the second time."

Some Trump patrons are thinking beyond 2022. Kelly Craft, who served as Trump’s United Nations ambassador, is considering a 2023 run against Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and some people close to her expect her to ultimately pull the trigger. Craft and her husband, coal mogul Joe Craft, gave more than $1.2 million to pro-Trump outfits in the last election.

It remains to be seen whether Trump repays his donors with support. So far, the only 2022 candidate the former president has endorsed is his former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is running for Arkansas governor. Trump advisers say he has not yet focused on the midterm elections, which are a little under two years away.

For all their stylistic similarities with Trump, the would-be candidates don't cut the exact same profile. Rabine, who is expected to launch his campaign next month, pointed out that unlike Trump he isn't a billionaire or a real estate developer.

But he has at least one thing in common with the president.

“I’m not a politician,” Rabine said. “That’s not what I aspire to be.”