Rebekah Mercer is the co-owner of a Manhattan cookie boutique, daughter of hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and arguably among the most influential supporters of Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Equipped with the monumental war chest of her father, Mercer has turned her family into a conservative monolith that has the potential to influence the Republican Party agenda.
At an East Hampton, N.Y., fundraiser, Rebekah and members of her family met with Trump and told him to add Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway to the campaign, the Journal reports. A few days later, Trump did just that.
The suggestion to elevate two chief operatives at Breitbart may come as no surprise to those familiar with the family, as the Mercers have had their hands in Breitbart for some years. Robert Mercer invested some $10 million in the news organization in 2010, Bloomberg reports.
Rebekah Mercer has positioned the family by harnessing the anti-establishment sentiment that has seeded itself in large swaths of the American people. She’s using it as the fuel for her family’s rise within the GOP. The cookie shop owner is taking the reins of the Make America Number 1 PAC, a political action group that her family has donated millions to, to defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton Nov. 8, according to CNN.
While Mercer has no formal experience working on campaigns, she is nonetheless at the helm of a PAC that is positioned to be among the leading, if not the leader, of the anti-Clinton movement.
Communications director for the PAC, Hogan Gidley, says that Rebekah is the “driving force” behind the groups activities, and has recently, “taken a more active role in its day-to-day management,” the Journal reports.
Her frustration with the GOP establishment caused her to take action and begin large-scale fundraising and activism with the Republican Party, according to Politico. She took control of the Mercer Family Foundation in 2010, and under her leadership more than doubled donations to conservative groups from 2011 to 2014, according to family tax returns. Donations included the group that produced anti-Clinton literature to The Heritage Foundation, where Mercer sits on the board, according to findings by Politico.
Recent analysis shows that the Mercers have given a combined $73.5 million to political campaigns and conservative organizations since 2010.
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