Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley leads former President Donald Trump, although not in terms of polls but in donations from federal lobbyists.
According to financial disclosures analyzed by Bloomberg, Haley had the backing of 65 federal lobbyists, who either gave to her campaign or PACs in 2023. The total amounted to over $106,000.
In comparison, just eight federal lobbyists donated to Trump’s campaign or supporting PACs in an amount totaling nearly $42,000, per the disclosures.
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That aside, Haley also has garnered significant support from foreign lobbyists, despite publicly calling to end the practice of foreign lobbying. According to ABC News, a top fundraiser for Haley, Oswaldo Palomo, is a registered foreign agent, acting as the managing director of Chartwell Strategy Group.
He gave at least to $6,600 to pro-Haley’ efforts as of May of last year.
Per the outlet:
According to FARA registration records, Palomo represents a number of foreign entities, including the government of Georgia in Eastern Europe, which he had worked for at least since 2018, and the Social Democratic Party of Romania, one of his more recent clients. Each of those clients pays him between $35,000 and $40,000 each month, and he has reported making contacts with hundreds of U.S. lawmakers in the course of his lobbying, FARA filings show.
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Like Palomo, David Horton Wilkins, who was U.S. ambassador to Canada under President George W. Bush and is now a registered foreign agent, donated $6,600 to Haley’s joint fundraising committee, according to disclosure filings. Previously a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, the longtime Haley ally led her transition team when she was first elected the governor of South Carolina in 2010.
Donald Trump Jr. — a top surrogate for this father — had continued to say throughout the primary that the establishment class wants a candidate they can control or at least heavily influence — something he said they know will not happen with his father.
“The Republican establishment, which does not represent the Republican or at least the conservative base in America anymore, they want an alternative [to] Trump because they want that control,” Trump Jr. said during a December appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.
He continued:
They want to be able to do nothing. They want to not be able to deliver; they want to be soft on China, because there’s a couple of the billionaire donors are saying, “Oh, you know, we can be tough on China and in name only, but it’s going to cost us half a cent on our widget if we actually make something in America or support American manufacturing, so we can’t actually do that.”
“And so you see it, it’s controlled by the donor base,” he said as he explained the phenomenon of the establishment moving from Gov. Ron DeSantis to Haley.
“The same people that used to support DeSantis because they thought he was the guy to take out Trump so that they can have their dancing monkey in the White House – someone who needs them, who needs their dollars – they flipped over to Nikki Haley, and they’re trying to make that the last hope so that they can have that kind of control,” he said. “It’s really sad, because that’s what this is about.”
