Back in September of this year, Lori Lightfoot’s blood-stained, progressive administration was humiliated on the national stage. What happened? Well, furious and worried over the crime situation in Chiraq, Ken Griffin, one of the richest men in America, decided to ditch the windy, violence-wracked city for Florida.
Ken Griffin is the CEO of a hedge fund called Citadel and, as a result of his financial acumen, Griffin has a net worth of a whopping $30 billion. Thanks to that fortune, he is, according to Bloomberg, ranked among the 50 richest men on the planet. And Lori Lightfoot lost him (and all the tax dollars his fortune meant) by letting violence run rampant in the city.
In fact, it was that violence that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and sent Griffin on his way. After a colleague of his was robbed at gunpoint when visiting a coffee shop and another was brutally attacked on the street, Griffin decided he had had enough of Chiraq and decided to ditch it for DeSantis’ Florida.
Speaking on that at the time, Griffen told the Wall Street Journal “If people aren’t safe here, they’re not going to live here. I’ve had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint. I’ve had a colleague stabbed on the way to work. Countless issues of burglary. I mean, that’s a really difficult backdrop with which to draw talent to your city from.”
And now he’s handed Lori Lightfoot a fresh humiliation: her leadership of Chicago was so bad that now Griffin is a GOP megadonor, supposedly contributing about $100 million to GOP causes this election cycle.
Brian Schwarz commented on the situation on Twitter, saying:
NEW: The GOP and Wall Street have a new $100 million megadonor this cycle-it’s billionaire CEO Ken Griffin.
Griffin, for the first time, is the third ranked top donor this cycle, with $50 million going toward Republican House and Senate candidates.
NEW: Over $50 million has gone to Republicans running in state elections this cycle.
His uptick in contributions have sounded the alarm for Democrats: @DemGovs organized oppo vs. Griffin.
Republican officials think he could be the next David Koch
NEW: Signs that courting of Ken Griffin by @LeaderMcConnell & other GOP leaders is paying off: Griffin gave big money in Q3 to the McConnell aligned Senate Leadership Fund and a separate pro-GOP House super PAC. Upcoming FEC filings will show how much.
The Koch analogy might be more apt than Schwarz intended. Though Griffin is contributing heavily to GOP election efforts, it remains to be seen how welcome he is with the more populist side of the GOP caucus, as his hedge fund, Citadel, was seen as one of the bad guys during the GameStop stock trading scandal in which some alleged that the “big guys” like Citadel were flexing their power in a way that was unfair to smaller speculators that would have made large profits at Citadel’s expense had trading of GameStop not been halted. Citadel had shorted the stock heavily, and populist traders were trying to bid up the price in a “short squeeze” that was promising to deliver massive returns for them and crushing losses for Citadel.
All that’s to say that, while it’s great Griffin is donating to Republicans and hilarious that Lori Lightfoot’s mismanagement of Chicago is what appears to have caused him to do so, it seems much more like Griffin is a Koch-like Republican rather than a MAGA man.
By: Gen Z Conservative
This story syndicated with permission from Gen Z Conservative