Hillary Clinton is set to attend a fundraiser Monday evening at the Maryland home of a Democratic donor who stands to make millions off the former secretary of state’s infrastructure plan.
Wayne Rogers, chief executive of Northeast Maglev LLC, is a longtime financial supporter of the Clintons’ political ambitions. Rogers has also profited immensely from his ties to the Democratic Party, which have helped him move toward his firm’s goal of building a $10 billion magnetic levitation train between Washington, D.C., and New York City.
In 2011, Clinton reportedly negotiated funding for Rogers’ magnetic levitation project from the Japan Bank of International Cooperation, tapping Japanese investors, given that country’s success in getting a similar bullet train system off the ground.
Clinton’s proposed $275 billion infrastructure plan includes provisions to spend big on passenger trains and railways, which could include Rogers’ ambitious magnetic levitation train. Indeed, the Obama administration last month committed $27.8 million to studying Northeast Maglev’s proposed project, Bloomberg Business reported.
Rogers has given $11,000 directly to the political campaigns of both Clintons since 1995, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has donated far more to the Democratic National Committee and other major Democratic groups.
Beyond political contributions, Rogers has donated between $50,000-$100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, donor records show.
Rogers’ political support of the Clintons began in 1994, when his company, Synergics Energy Development, was given a seat on a taxpayer-funded trade mission overseas under President Bill Clinton, the Baltimore Sun reported in 1997.
After Synergics won a $750 million contract in Pakistan with the help of Clinton administration officials, Rogers reportedly contributed more than $200,000 to Bill Clinton and other Democrats in the 1996 election.
“In an interview, Rogers acknowledged that the big contribution was a thank you to Clinton,” the Sun report found. “He said he would ‘probably not’ have given so much if the administration had not been so helpful.”
In 2000, Bill Clinton traveled to India and touted a $500 million deal Synergics had won to build hydroelectric power plants in the country.
More recently, Rogers’ energy firm was invited on a “historic trade mission” to Africa while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state.
Critics have long accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of peddling influence to the well-connected donors who support their causes. That charge could extend to Rogers’ transportation company, which would need backing from the U.S. government to overcome the major financial and logistical hurdles to building its signature project.
Northeast Maglev has no shortage of political connections, however. Its board is stacked with both Republicans and Democrats, from former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to former New York Gov. George Pataki, who is also running in the Republican primary for president.
