“Here Are the Top Billionaires Trying to Keep Montana’s Senate Seat Blue,” Forbes reports. “Jon Tester, running for his fourth term in deep-red Montana, has plenty of billionaire backers—but his single biggest funder can’t be traced.”
So much for Republicans being the “party of the rich” and Democrats being the “party of the common man.” The article lists Tester’s top 10 known donors to the Senate Majority PAC, with the Number One slot held by George Soros, whose “Amount contributed to pro-Tester groups: $10 million.”
Soros, of course, among other leftist “causes,” is a big supporter of Democrat politicians and “legal” efforts to infringe on the Second Amendment and mandate citizen disarmament. Per the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s “Examining the Soros Connection to AG’s Supporting Mexico’s Gun Manufacturer Lawsuit”:
“Open Society Foundation has donated to gun control groups that espouse outright gun bans. Soros lobbyists poured $9 million into getting Congress to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), the chief obstacle to Mexico’s harassing lawsuit. Soros’s Open Society Foundation was instrumental in crafting the Biden administration’s gun control policies.”
The next nine names on the list of SMP donors bankrolling Tester’s and other campaigns are hardly any better:
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Stephen Mandel, Jr. and Susan Mandel: The billionaire hedge fund manager hosted a “big ticket fundraiser for Joe Biden where, per prohibitionist, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, the president “became animated talking about the daily toll of gunfire [and] saluted Gov. Ned Lamont for proposing and winning overwhelming passage of Connecticut’s first update to the Sandy Hook gun [sic] law this month. Among other things, it bans the open carry of firearms and strengthens a ban on AR-15s and other so-called assault weapons.”
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Jim Simons: Worse than a Fudd, the now deceased hedge fund manager (again!), supported gun-grabbing Democrats while at the same time profiting when, per GuruFocus Research, “Renaissance Technologies, led by Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio), made a notable addition to its investment portfolio by acquiring 2,669,209 shares of Smith & Wesson Brands Inc (NASDAQ: SWBI), a leading firearm manufacturer.”
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Jeff Skoll: The Canadian born engineer was the first president of eBay and produced the propaganda film American Gun, “a powerful series of interwoven storylines that bring to light how the proliferation of guns in America dramatically affect and shape the everyday lives of its citizens.”
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Henry Laufer and Marsha Laufer: In addition to being prominent (along with Soros, Skoll, and the Mandels) among what Haaretz called “Jewish Megadonors Helping Fund Biden’s Reelection Campaign,” wife Marsha has been a substantial donor to the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund.
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George Marcus: “Billionaire real estate broker George Marcus also donated $250,000 to Proposition 63,” Forbes reported in 2016. “Proposition 63 requires Californians to get a permit in order to purchase ammunition and requires dealers to check the permit before selling ammunition.”
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Vinod Kohsla: “There’s a new global ranking of gun deaths,” the Indian-American venture capitalist and Sun Microsystems cofounder tweeted in 2018, linking to a PBS News Hour piece essentially blaming legal U.S. gun ownership for global “gun-related deaths.” As a relevant aside, the program recently showed how “credible and objective” it was (not) when it included loud cheering on audio but suppressed the small size of the crowd on video at Tim Walz’s Pennsylvania “rally” to exploit “rural Americans.”
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Reed Hastings: Per Google’s AI Overview, the co-founder and executive chairman of Netflix “has been involved with gun violence prevention initiatives and donating to organizations that address gun violence, armed hate, and racial discrimination: Rhode Island In 2022, Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin donated $10 million to bolster Rhode Island’s efforts to address gun violence, armed hate, and racial discrimination. Louisville Hastings was involved in a gun violence prevention initiative in Louisville that took place at community centers and parks.”
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Amos Hostetter, Jr. and Barbara Hostetter: While no direct connection to guns was found, the one-time cable TV magnate co-founded the Barr Foundation, where he and his wife “address structural racism, inequality, and power imbalances” as trustees along with The Boston Foundation’s M. Lee Pelton, who “In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook mass shooting … gathered over 250 college and university presidents to sign a letter asking President Obama to assist in establishing common-sense gun legislation.”
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Amy Goldman-Fowler: The billionaire heiress, as trustee and president of the Amy P Goldman Foundation, has provided substantial grants to numerous Democrat/leftwing anti-gun organizations, including the Center for American Progress, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.
“It’s also harder to track all of Tester’s biggest supporters, the Forbes report continues. “The super PAC that has spent the most in support of his candidacy, some $5.7 million as of the end of June, is called Last Best Place PAC. LBP in turn is entirely funded by Majority Forward… a ‘dark money’ group—meaning that because of its tax classification, it has more restrictions on its spending but also does not have to disclose its donors.”
What we do know, from Influence Watch, is it is “a Democratic Party-aligned advocacy group that campaigns against Republicans and conservative causes.”
And it’s not just Montana. They mean to rule everywhere, in Everytown.
Gun owners in my own home state, Ohio, just received an urgent warning from Buckeye Firearms Association urging a No vote on Issue 1, ostensibly about ending gerrymandering:
“This short video reveals the dark-money activists from outside Ohio, some from other countries, who want to seize power and rig Ohio elections to elect partisan leftists even in conservative parts of the state.”
It’s a masterwork of gaslighting if you think about it, with hypocrisy so outrageous even those who see through it can be dumbfounded by the sheer gall of it. Some of us remember when the “bipartisan” McCain/Feingold “campaign finance reform” bill threatened to shut down small donor NRA members from banding together for political speech, and yet we see billionaires effortlessly navigate the maze to feed millions to the leftists. We hear Democrats like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris talking about the rich paying “their fair share” (with them being the sole arbiters of what’s fair) and see the ones we think they’re talking about hire the accounting teams to effortlessly navigate that maze as well. They’ll rake it in regardless of who’s “in charge,” above it all, which no doubt explains why they don’t share the concerns of your average Trump supporter. Or so they believe.
Just in case what they’re aiding and abetting gets so scary it threatens their precious hindquarters, some are hedging their bets with escape plans and “Apocalyptic luxury bunkers.” Because, which explains their demand for gun control for you and armed security for themselves, they fear a collectivist monster they helped create might turn its eyes on them. “Universal basic income” just means they’ll be better positioned to act on their envy and demands for “equity.”
But in the meantime, just to prove he’s every bit the good ol’ boy Tim Walz is pretending to be, Jon Tester’s outdistancing his image from the billionaire elites who want him as their Montana puppet by shooting cows in a photo op made possible with, among other things, Soros money.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
