Billionaire Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies, during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Nov. 18, 2019.
Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Tech billionaire and Republican megadonor Peter Thiel, an early backer of former President Donald Trump who later broke with him, has told associates he will not be planning to donate to any political candidates in 2024, in response to two people near the businessman.
Thiel is unhappy with the Republican Party’s deal with hot-button U.S. cultural issues, said one in every of the sources, a business associate, citing abortion and restrictions on which bathrooms transgender students can use in schools as two examples.
Thiel got here to this conclusion by late 2022, the sources said. He believes Republicans are making a mistake in specializing in cultural flashpoints and must be more concerned with spurring U.S. innovation — a significant issue for him — and competing with China, the business associate said.
Thiel’s plans for the Republican primary and general election haven’t been previously reported. Online news site Puck previously reported Thiel was more than likely either to support Trump or sit out the first. Thiel declined a Reuters request for an interview.
When Thiel spoke on the 2016 Republican National Convention, he had more hope that the party would think about economic issues, his business associate said.
“I’m proud to be gay,” Thiel said on stage. “But most of all I’m proud to be an American. I do not pretend to agree with every plank in our party’s platform, but fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline, and no person on this race is being honest about it except Donald Trump.”
4 political sources also told Reuters that Thiel is taking a step back from U.S. politics. Thiel, who diverged from his Silicon Valley peers along with his embrace of conservative causes, identifies as a supporter of libertarianism, a political philosophy that stresses the importance of individual freedoms.
Donors hestiate
The German-born entrepreneur has a fortune estimated at around $4.2 billion after co-founding PayPal and Palantir and investing early in Facebook. He has contributed around $50 million to state and federal political candidates and campaigns since 2000, and he was the tenth largest individual donor to either party within the 2022 midterm congressional elections, in response to the nonprofit OpenSecrets.
Thiel’s decision underlines how the Republican Party’s swing to the fitting on social issues is alienating some outstanding, business-minded donors.
Several top donors have said they’re hesitant to support Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is predicted to announce a run for the White House soon, after he signed a bill into law that bans most abortions after six weeks in Florida. None said they intended to take a seat out the complete 2024 election cycle as a consequence.
In 2012, Thiel backed libertarian lawmaker Ron Paul, and in 2016 he donated some $1.25 million to the campaign efforts of Trump, who’s the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination.
In 2020, Thiel didn’t financially back Trump’s re-election efforts, in response to OpenSecrets. Thiel liked a few of Trump’s policies while in office but disapproved of the chaos surrounding the previous reality TV star’s presidency, said one in every of the sources, who’s near Thiel personally.
Within the 2022 election cycle, nonetheless, Thiel emerged as a possible Republican kingmaker, contributing greater than $35 million to 16 federal-level Republican candidates, in response to OpenSecrets. Twelve of those candidates won.
To make sure, Thiel could yet change his mind on political contributions for the 2024 cycle, although each sources acquainted with his donation plans said they’d heard Thiel declare on multiple recent occasions that he had withdrawn from U.S. politics.
The source who knows Thiel personally said he had cautioned that he could still support candidates who’ve worked for him, as he did in 2022, when the majority of his $35 million in donations went to 2 former colleagues running for the Senate as Republicans: J.D. Vance, who won, and Blake Masters, who lost a race pundits considered winnable despite the fact that he received some $20 million from Thiel.
The business associate said he was not aware of any special proviso for former employees.
Thiel is married to businessman Matt Danzeisen, with whom he has two toddlers. Concerns about his family’s safety have weighed in Thiel’s decision to step back as well, the source who knows him personally told Reuters.
