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

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

Donors’ focus on Michigan Gov. Whitmer and California Gov. Newsom reflects deepening frustration among Democratic operatives and supporters with the stalemate over Biden’s future.

Donors remain anxious about the state of Biden and his polling since last week’s disastrous debate with Trump, 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 one donor and group close to the president. “I’m Joe’s biggest fan, he’s an admirable public servant, but he’s doomed. . . we have to start putting all our focus on what comes next.”

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

Democratic dignitaries, including top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have also held crisis talks with major donors to gauge their mood after the debate, donors and groups said.

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

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

Both governors reiterated their support for the president’s re-election campaign afterward — but their donors and groups are working behind closed doors to support them if they enter the race for the White House, people familiar with the matter said. .

Whitmer has posted 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 political action committee, not the Biden campaign.

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

Newsom has been a stand-in 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 political observers have described as a shadow campaign, participating in a televised debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year and traveling to several early primary and swing states.

Newsom on Thursday gave a speech praising Biden in the state of Michigan.

Whitmer appears to have more support among donors, with some saying she would have a better chance of beating Trump in swing states like Michigan, where she won the governor’s race by more than 10 points in in 2022. Recent opinion polls put 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 one 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 is not. . . California is also seen as an anti-business, far-left progressive state with challenging policies. It can hurt us.”

A spokesman for Newsom declined to comment. A spokesman 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 drop out of the race, and polls released Wednesday showed a sharp drop in support for him since the debate.

Abigail Disney, the media giant’s heiress, said she would freeze contributions to the Democratic Party until Biden is gone. Separately, billionaire crypto investor Mike Novogratz is leading the creation of the fund called Next Generation PAC to raise about $100 million to support whoever takes on the candidacy.

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, one of the party’s biggest donors, told the Financial Times that the president needed to “step aside to allow a strong Democratic leader to defeat 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 departure was to cut funding.

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

“You will see in the next two weeks if the money comes. . . 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 spark a Democratic “civil war,” saying Harris would be a less controversial choice.

Charles Myers, chairman of Signum Global Advisors and a major donor, warned of “deep divisions” among Democrats in each new race.

An “open” Democratic convention in Chicago in August — with a candidate decided by ballot — could also be hijacked by left-leaning Democrats like New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, some wealthy donors warned.

One said they feared a result similar to the one in the UK in 2015, when left-wing politician Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labor Party. He led Labor to two general election defeats.

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

As one person close to Biden put it: “Ultimately, it’s going to be a bad show for a while if and when he does resign.”

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