When Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel spoke at the Republican National Convention, he made a policy-laden case for Donald Trump.
“Instead of going to Mars, we have invaded the Middle East. We don’t need to see Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails: Her incompetence is in plain sight,” Thiel said. “She pushed for a war in Libya, and today, it’s a training ground for ISIS. On this most important issue, Donald Trump is right. It’s time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country.”
Thiel was said to grow disillusioned with Trump during last year’s reelection campaign. But he is still boosting populist Republican candidates, including a pair of Senate contenders.
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Blake Masters, the chief operating officer of both Thiel Capital and the Thiel Foundation, is running for Senate in Arizona against incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly for the seat John McCain held until his death in 2018.
“Our leaders have shipped millions of jobs to China, and the internet, which was supposed to give us an awesome future, is instead being used to shut us up,” Masters said. “The truth is, we can’t take America for granted. And, if we want to keep it, we’ve got to fight for it — because we are up against a media that lies to us; schools that teach our kids to hate our country and corporations that have gotten so big, they think they’re bigger than America.”
Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance is running in Ohio, eyeing the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman. A pro-Vance super PAC received a $10 million donation from Thiel. A super PAC backing Masters may get comparable support.
Vance, whose influential book told the story of economic devastation and cultural despair in some white working-class communities, was for Trumpism before he was for Trump.
“I sort of got Trump’s issues from the beginning,” the 2016 Evan McMullin voter told Time earlier this month. “I just thought that this guy was not serious and was not going to be able to really make progress on the issues I cared about.”
Vance added that Trump is “the leader of this movement” and “if I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about, I need to just suck it up and support him.”
The question is whether Trump’s base will show the same amount of support to these candidates. Masters and Vance are offering a somewhat higher-brow pitch based on substantive policies. Trump also had an attitude, fame, and a carefully crafted image in business before seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
“Populism is bigger than Trump,” said a Republican media consultant. “But Trump is pretty big.”
When former Attorney General Jeff Sessions ran to reclaim his Alabama Senate seat on a platform of Trumpian skepticism of foreign wars, sprawling international trade deals, and uncontrolled immigration, Trump endorsed against him. Trump picked Tommy Tuberville for the same reasons he ultimately pushed Sessions out at the Justice Department: recusal in the Trump-Russia investigation.
Tuberville won the primary by a 20-percentage-point margin and coasted in the general election. Six years prior, Sessions was unopposed in the November election and won 97.3% of the vote. His experience shows that populist policies could potentially be less important than tapping into Trump’s grievances, ranging from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to the 2020 presidential election.
In Kansas, Trumpian populist Kris Kobach has lost races for the governorship and the Senate despite financial backing from Thiel. Kobach, who did win statewide elections for secretary of state, is less charismatic than Trump.
Vance has of late taken a more combative tone on Twitter, moving closer to Trump in style as well as substance. When academic and commentator Marc Lamont Hill urged his followers to “do the work” in a “racist, sexist, and homophobic world,” Vance replied, “Better yet: go to church and stop being a tool.”
Others have used the Thiel connection to cast aspersions on the populist bona fides of his preferred candidates. Masters and Vance, a venture capitalist, are successful, Ivy-League-educated businessmen in their own right.
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There are multiple Republican candidates who plan to vie for Trump’s support in both states. In Ohio, former state Treasurer Josh Mandel is running. Investment banker Mike Gibbons has loaned his campaign for the GOP nomination $5.7 million.
In Arizona, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich and wealthy businessman Jim Lamon are among the other Republicans running for Senate. The chamber is deadlocked 50-50 and is under Democratic control solely because of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote.
