Topline
Timothy Mellon, heir to the billionaire Mellon family banking fortune, has become one of the Republican Party’s biggest financial backers throughout former President Donald Trump’s rise in politics, donating at least $75 million to a pro-Trump group after previously supporting a southern border wall-building effort—and bankrolling Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Sunset Park on Sunday, June 9, 2024, in Las ... [+]
Key Facts
Mellon donated $50 million—one of the largest political donations ever—to the main super PAC backing Trump’s candidacy, Make America Great Again, Inc., the day after Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury in May, according to Federal Election Commission filings made public Thursday.
Prior to Thursday’s filings, 81-year-old Mellon was already the biggest political donor of this election cycle, giving $25 million each to MAGA Inc. and the American Values super PAC backing Kennedy.
The Mellon family fortune dates back to the 19th century: He’s the great-grandson of banker Thomas Mellon (founder of Mellon Bank) and grandson of former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and members of his family were early investors in the company that later became Gulf Oil.
Timothy Mellon founded a computer programming company in the 1960s shortly after his graduation from Yale University in 1964, then took over regional freight railroads in New England starting in 1981, later merging his rail company with the bankrupt Pan American World Airways, and briefly operating a Pan Am-branded regional airline service under the merger.
Known as a reclusive figure even to his political beneficiaries, Mellon has largely avoided the public eye, spending most of his time living on his ranch in Wyoming, according to Bloomberg, which conducted a rare interview with the billionaire in 2020, after he donated $10 million to America First Action, a super PAC backing Trump’s re-election bid.
Trump has “done the things he promised to do, or tried to,” Mellon said at the time, specifically noting Trump’s work “in trade and righting the balance between our country and the rest of the world, especially China.”
Mellon made his first major political donation, $10 million, to a GOP super PAC in 2018, according to the New York Times, and in 2021, he gave $53 million to Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s private fundraising campaign to build a border wall; Mellon also gave $1.5 million in 2010 to help the state of Arizona defend a controversial law that required police to determine the immigration status of people suspected of living in the U.S. illegally, which critics said could lead to racial profiling, according to the Washington Post.
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Chief Critic
After his major donations to Trump and the GOP in 2020, the Washington Post discovered Mellon used racial stereotypes in his 2015 self-published autobiography. He described social safety net programs as “slavery redux,” wrote Black people became “even more belligerent” after welfare expansion in the 1960s and 1970s and opined that “for delivering their votes in the Federal Elections,” welfare recipients are “awarded with yet more and more freebies: food stamps, cellphones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on, and on.”
Forbes Valuation
We estimate the Mellon family is worth $14.1 billion, making them America’s 34th-wealthiest family as of this year.
Surprising Fact
Mellon once aligned with liberal causes. Shortly after his graduation from Yale, he established a foundation aimed at addressing racial disparities in education, the economy and the criminal justice system, and he voted for incumbent Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election, he wrote in his autobiography, according to the Washington Post. Mellon eventually dissolved the foundation, distributing its funds to conservative causes, after coming to the conclusion that he and his foundation partners “overlooked some fundamental attributes of human behavior that would have precluded success,” he reportedly wrote in his book.
Key Background
Trump has now surpassed President Joe Biden’s early cash advantage, out-fundraising the president in May for the second month in a row, bolstered by his conviction in Manhattan last month on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee reported raising $141 million in May, including $70 million it said it raised in the first 48 hours after his conviction, compared to $85 million raised by the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee. For the first time this cycle, Trump’s campaign ended May with more cash on hand ($116.5 million) than Biden ($91.6 million). The totals do not include money raised by super PACs supporting the candidates, such as MAGA Inc. or the pro-Biden Future Forward USA Action, which are technically separate from the campaigns and legally prohibited from coordinating with Trump or Biden. Mellon’s donations to MAGA Inc. make up nearly half the money it’s raised this election cycle, and account for the bulk of the $70 million it reported raising in May, according to the New York Times.
Tangent
Trump has amassed a coalition of billionaire donors since clinching the nomination in March. Energy Transfer pipeline company founder Kelcy Warren gave at least $800,000 to Trump’s campaign apparatus, the Trump 47 committee, in the first quarter of the year after donating to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ primary bid. Former chairman and CEO of Marvel Entertainment, Isaac Perlmutter and his wife, Laura, gave $10.1 million to a new pro-Trump super PAC, Right for America, in the first quarter. TD Ameritrade Chairman J. Joe Ricketts, former casino mogul Steve Wynn and Los Angeles real estate magnate Geoffrey Palmer also gave more than $800,000 to Trump 47. Other billionaires have expressed plans to soon make contributions, including Blackstone CEO and co-founder Steve Schwarzman, Casino mogul and longtime Trump backer Miriam Adelson and Uline shipping and packaging company’s Liz Uihlein and Dick Uihlein.
What To Watch For
Mellon is expected to publish a new book, “panam.captain,” described as a “business memoir” about “his journey from the legacy of the Mellon family to his success as an audacious entrepreneur” next month. Kennedy is quoted on the cover calling Mellon a “maverick entrepreneur.”
Further Reading
Single Biggest Trump Campaign Donation Revealed: Timothy Mellon Donates $50 Million To MAGA PAC (Forbes)
These Are The Billionaires Supporting Trump’s Campaign (Forbes)
