Democratic donors push Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom as Joe Biden replacements

Top Democratic donors have made Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom their preferred candidates to replace Joe Biden in the White House race against Donald Trump, said several people familiar with the matter.

The donor focus on Michigan governor Whitmer and California governor Newsom reflects deepening frustration among Democratic operatives and backers with the impasse over Biden’s future.

Donors remain anxious about Biden’s condition and his polling since the disastrous debate with Trump last week, saying the president’s campaign is simply delaying an inevitable battle for succession with four months to go until November’s general election.

“Biden’s candidacy is doomed,” said a donor and bundler close to the president. “I’m Joe’s biggest fan, he’s an admirable public servant but he’s doomed . . . we need to start putting all our focus on what comes next.”

Vice-president Kamala Harris is also among candidates donors think could replace Biden, said several donors and bundlers, who have held talks among themselves as they prepare to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a new candidate.

Democratic party grandees, including top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, have also held crisis talks with large donors to gauge their mood following the debate, donors and bundlers said.

“You’re starting to see a lot of frustration among donors and the pressure is mounting to turn the page and start focusing on finding the right candidate to win against Trump,” said a New York-based bundler. “Everybody is talking to their contacts to make sure we are ready to back the right candidate as soon as Biden steps down.”

Whitmer and Newsom joined other governors who met Biden for emergency talks at the White House on Wednesday, less than a week after his stumbling debate performance sparked immediate calls for him to be replaced on the Democratic ticket.

Both governors reiterated their backing for the president’s re-election campaign afterwards — but their donors and bundlers are working behind closed doors to support them should they step into the White House race, people familiar with the matter said.

Whitmer has been posting her support for Biden on social media — and is a co-chair of his re-election campaign — while posting a link on X that directs donations to her own political action committee, not Biden’s campaign.

The Michigan governor also plans to attend the annual gathering of technology and media titans in Sun Valley, Idaho, next week, offering her an opportunity to meet key Democratic megadonors.

Newsom has been a prominent surrogate for Biden for months, including defending his debate performance in the media “spin room” after last week’s debate in Atlanta. But he has raised eyebrows by conducting what some politics watchers have described as a shadow campaign, participating in a televised debate with Florida governor Ron DeSantis last year and travelling to several early primary and swing states.

Newsom on Thursday delivered a speech praising Biden in battleground state Michigan.

Whitmer appears to have more support among donors, with several people saying she would have a stronger chance of beating Trump in swing states such as Michigan, where she won the governor’s race by more than 10 points in 2022. Recent opinion polling puts Trump ahead of Biden in the state by several points.

“Michigan is a much more important state than California when it comes to elections,” said a major donor. “If you look at the betting odds, Newsom is ahead but when you think about which states the Democratic party needs to win Michigan is critical and California isn’t . . . California is also viewed as a progressive anti-business, far-left progressive state with challenging policies. It could hurt us.”

A spokesperson for Newsom declined to comment. A spokesperson for Whitmer did not return a request for comment.

Donors’ efforts to find alternatives have come alongside calls from lawmakers in Biden’s party for him to withdraw from the race and polls published on Wednesday showed a stark drop in support for him since the debate.

Abigail Disney, the heiress of the media giant, said she would stop making contributions to the Democratic party until Biden steps aside. Separately, billionaire crypto investor Mike Novogratz is spearheading the creation of fund called Next Generation PAC to raise about $100mn to back whoever takes over the candidacy.

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, one of the party’s biggest donors, told the Financial Times the president needed to “step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump”.

Ari Emanuel, one of Hollywood’s most powerful agents and a major Democratic donor, told a conference in Colorado that the only way to speed up the president’s exit was by cutting funding.

“The lifeblood to a campaign is money, and maybe the only way . . . is if the money starts drying up,” said Emanuel, whose brother Rahm is Biden’s ambassador to Japan and a former chief of staff of president Barack Obama.

“You’ll see in the next couple weeks, if the money comes in . . . I talked to a bunch of big donors, and they’re moving all their money to Congress and the Senate.”

But some donors have warned that any move to replace Biden with one of the governors could ignite a Democratic “civil war”, saying Harris would be a less-contentious choice.

Charles Myers, chair of Signum Global Advisors and a big donor, warned of “deep divisions” among Democrats in any new race.

An “open” Democratic convention in Chicago in August — with a candidate decided by floor vote — could also be hijacked by leftwing Democrats, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, warned some wealthy donors.

One said they feared an outcome akin to that in the UK in 2015, when leftwing politician Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party. He led Labour to two general election defeats.

That would bring an “annihilation at the polls in November”, said the major donor and bundler. “We don’t want a Corbyn situation like in the UK years ago.”

As a person close to Biden put it: “Ultimately this is going to be a bit of a shitshow for a while if and when he steps down.”

Additional reporting by Christopher Grimes in Los Angeles and Oliver Roeder in New York

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