Meet the secret megadonor who's bankrolling MAGA's 'nerve center'
A retired software developer from Houston has bankrolled a conservative group that has become the “nerve center” of the MAGA movement and a election-denying congressional power player.
The Conservative Partnership Institute has become a landing spot for Donald Trump's allies and former staffers, including Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller and attorney Cleta Mitchell, and the recently established nonprofit has been buying up pricey row houses on Capitol Hill and consolidating control over the House Freedom Caucus thanks to a $25 million gift from relatively unknown donor Mike Rydin, reported The Daily Beast.
“Mike Rydin didn’t even give to a Trump super PAC, so it is a bit surprising that he gave $25 million to a group that employs an array of former Trump staffers, backed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and is dedicated to advancing Trump’s MAGA political movement,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance law specialist and deputy executive director of Documented.
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CPI was formed in 2017 after Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, the former GOP senator from South Carolina, was forced out in a power struggle, and he took many of that group's key staffers with him and recruited allies from the conservative movement, and his new group quickly became a power player thanks in large part to Rydin's donations.
“Jim DeMint is the most honest man in America,” Rydin told The Daily Beast. “He has America’s best interests at heart.”
Rydin isn't even among the top 100 political donors in the country and keeps a low profile, but The Daily Beast pieced together financial statements and other public records to identify him, and he confirmed the donations in a phone call Tuesday.
“It is striking that a person with such a low political profile would emerge as the single biggest donor to the nerve center for the MAGA movement,” Fischer said.
Rydin insists he knows nothing about the U.S. Capitol attack and CPI's ties to Meadows, Mitchell and others who were central figures in Trump's attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.
“Never read anything about Jan. 6 and don’t know anything about it,” said Rydin, who has a profile page with Turning Point USA, a conservative youth grtoup that bused attendees to the "Stop the Steal" rally. “I don’t know anything about it. Haven’t read anything about it, don’t know anything about it, and don’t want to.”
Rydin made his fortune producing software for the construction industry, growing annual revenue to $100 million before retiring in 2022, and his political donations sharply increased after his wife – whom he met through a dating service he started – died in July 2020.
“MAGA-aligned groups like CPI are cultivating a new crop of political megadonors to support their anti-democratic agenda,” Fischer said. “In an earlier era, right-wing donors often seemed to be financing an ideological agenda that benefited their corporate bottom line. The big money behind MAGA political infrastructure seems to be different, and a bit more amorphous."
Rydin told The Daily Beast he would continue supporting conservative causes but said he likely would not make any more major donations to CPI, and he denied being the source of the group's $15.5 million top contribution last year.
“That was quite a large donation,” he said.