Our Principles PAC was a super PAC established in January 2016 as part of the Never Trump movement. Its goal was to oppose Donald Trump's campaign for president. Our Principles PAC was led by Katie Packer, who was deputy campaign manager of Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign. [1] [2] The month of the Iowa caucuses, the group sent out mailers to voters in the state, attacking Trump. [3] In March, it released a video attacking Trump, featuring women reading some of his sexist statements about women. [4]
During the 2016 presidential election campaign, New York-based hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, whose corporation Elliott Management Corporation (EMC) specializes in distressed debt acquisitions, [5] : 301 was one of the group's donors. Singer supported Marco Rubio. [6]
In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. The legal term PAC was created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition. At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), according to the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state's election laws.
Sheldon Gary Adelson was an Israeli-American businessman, investor, political donor, and philanthropist. He was the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which owns the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited, which operated The Venetian Las Vegas and the Sands Expo and Convention Center before selling the properties in early 2022. He owned the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom, the Israeli weekly newspaper Makor Rishon, and the American daily newspaper the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Paul Elliott Singer is an American hedge fund manager, activist investor, and the founder, president and co-CEO of Elliott Management. As of June 2023, his net worth is estimated at US$5.5 billion.
Restore Our Future is a political action committee (PAC) created to support Mitt Romney in the 2012 U.S. Presidential election. A so-called Super PAC, Restore Our Future is permitted to raise and spend unlimited amounts of corporate, union, and individual campaign contributions under the terms of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.
James S. Davis is an American billionaire businessman, the owner and chairman of New Balance, and an early investor in Major League Lacrosse.
Amy Kremer is an American political activist known for her roles in the Tea Party movement and as a supporter of Donald Trump. She became involved in the Tea Party movement in 2009 and campaigned as part of the Tea Party Express until 2014. During the 2016 presidential election she was a co-founder of two political action committees supporting Trump's campaign, and following Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election she supported attempts to overturn the election result. In 2017 she unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election in Georgia's 6th congressional district as a Republican.
Presidential primaries and caucuses of the Republican Party took place within all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories between February 1 and June 7, 2016. These elections selected the 2,472 delegates that were sent to the Republican National Convention. Businessman and reality television star Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president of the United States.
Richard Ellis Uihlein and Elizabeth Uihlein are American billionaire businesspeople, founders of Uline and conservative donors. Richard is also an heir to the Schlitz brewing fortune.
The 2016 presidential campaign of Gary Johnson, the 29th Governor of New Mexico, was announced on January 6, 2016, for the nomination of the Libertarian Party for President of the United States. He officially won the nomination on May 29, 2016, at the Libertarian National Convention in Orlando, Florida, receiving 56% of the vote on the second ballot. Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld was endorsed by Johnson for the Libertarian vice-presidential nomination, which he also received on May 29, 2016.
The 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump was formally launched on June 16, 2015, at Trump Tower in New York City. Trump was the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election, having won the most state primaries, caucuses, and delegates at the 2016 Republican National Convention. He chose Mike Pence, the sitting governor of Indiana, as his vice presidential running mate. On November 8, 2016, Trump and Pence were elected president and vice president of the United States. Trump's populist positions in opposition to illegal immigration and various trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, earned him support especially among voters who were male, white, blue-collar, working class, and those without college degrees. Many voters in the Rust Belt, who gave Trump the electoral votes needed to win the presidency, switched from supporting Bernie Sanders to Trump after Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination.
On March 3, 2016, U.S. Republican politician Mitt Romney delivered a major speech for the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the Libby Gardner Hall in the University of Utah. In that speech, he denounced Donald Trump, who was then the front-runner in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries. He urged citizens to use tactical voting in the remaining primaries and caucuses to maximize the chance of denying Trump a delegate majority.
The Never Trump movement, also called the #nevertrump, Stop Trump, anti-Trump, or Dump Trump movement, is an ongoing moderate conservative movement that opposes Trumpism and 45th U.S. president Donald Trump. It began as an effort on the part of a group of Republicans and other prominent conservatives to prevent Republican front-runner Donald Trump from obtaining the Republican Party presidential nomination.
David Evan McMullin is an American political candidate and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. McMullin ran as an independent in the 2016 United States presidential election and in the 2022 United States Senate election in Utah.
Rebekah Mercer is an American heiress, Republican political donor, and director of the Mercer Family Foundation.
The Committee to Defeat the President was first established as the hybrid Stop Hillary PAC in 2013. The PAC changed its name to the Committee to Defend the President in 2017. Ted Harvey, a former Colorado state senator, chairs the committee.
Women for Trump is a political group in the United States who have supported the presidency of former U.S. president Donald Trump.
The Lincoln Project is a centrist American political action committee (PAC) founded in December 2019 by moderate conservatives and former Republican Party members who oppose Trumpism and 45th U.S. president Donald Trump. During the 2020 presidential election, it aimed to prevent the re-election of president Donald Trump, and to defeat incumbent Republican candidates running for re-election who had been loyalists to Trump. In April 2020, the committee endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. As of 2023, the committee is focused on preventing the non-consecutive re-election of Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Right Side PAC was a super PAC created by a group of Republicans with a mission of convincing anti-Donald Trump Republican voters to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election. It was a single-candidate PAC, with Biden being the only supported candidate.
Tim Miller is an American political consultant and writer. He was a communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, and subsequently became an outspoken critic of former U.S. president Donald Trump.
Sean M. Fieler is an American hedge fund manager known for his backing of religious and conservative causes, especially those aligned with his Catholic faith. He is chair of the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank.