The guys who basically owns Cambridge Analytica – Robert Mercer – is math genius and also a libertarian/conservative billionaire who is anti-AGW, anti-Agenda21, pro-gold, anti-Fed. He doesn't give interviews, he stays in the shadows. He's probably also the owner of Breitbart.com considering all the money he invested in it.
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So far, Mercer is the biggest single donor in the race. Working with his daughter Rebekah, he’s spent tens of millions more to advance a conservative agenda, investing in think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the media outlet Breitbart.com, and Cambridge Analytica, a data company that builds psychological profiles of voters. Groups he funds have attacked the science of global warming, published a book critical of Hillary Clinton, and bankrolled a documentary celebrating Ayn Rand.
Mercer, 69, has never spoken publicly about his political priorities and declined a request to be interviewed for this story. This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen people who have spent time with Mercer or worked on his political efforts, very few of whom were willing to speak on the record. He’s tight-lipped even with his friends. That’s made him an object of intense speculation. Some allies privately say they think he’s pro-life and opposed to gay marriage, and others say the opposite. Republican operatives gossip about what little scraps of information they can glean—his theatrical Christmas galas, his habit of whistling to himself during business meetings. Other powerful conservatives court him: Freedom Partners, the network overseen by the brothers Charles and David Koch, sometimes caters events with cookies from Ruby et Violette, a bakery owned by Rebekah and her two sisters.
Mercer is the co-chief executive officer of one of the country’s largest and most secretive hedge funds, Renaissance Technologies, but people who’ve spent time with him say he hasn’t shown any interest in advancing its agenda in Washington. They say he disdains the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which he sees as too cozy with Big Business and Wall Street. Unlike many of his peers in New York financial circles, he doesn’t shrink from the culture wars. He’s supported a campaign for the death penalty in Nebraska and funded ads in New York critical of the so-called ground-zero mosque. He and Rebekah have also directed money to an anti-abortion group and a Christian college, though people who know the father and daughter say they don’t talk about religion.
Jane Orient, an Arizona physician and activist who runs an annual conference that Robert Mercer attends, and funds.
A surprising amount of Mercer’s attention and money finds its way to some of the most unusual fringes of the right wing. He’s attended and funded an annual conference organized by Jane Orient, an Arizona physician and activist who recently suggested in an opinion article that elements in the U.S. government might have taken part in the San Bernardino massacre. Mercer money also found its way to an Idaho activist named Fred Kelly Grant, who travels the country encouraging legal challenges to environmental laws, which he says are part of a sinister plot by the United Nations to depopulate rural America.
“He’s a very independent thinker,” says Sean Fieler, a conservative donor in New Jersey who’s worked with Mercer on advocating a return to the gold standard. “He’s a guy with his own ideas, and very developed ideas, and I wouldn’t want to speak on his behalf.”
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Joining the Hanleys around a table in the Florida sun were Cruz and his wife, Heidi; his strategist, Jason Johnson; Neugebauer; and Robert and Rebekah Mercer. The topic was Cruz’s chances in the election. A pair of researchers hired by Mercer and Hanley presented some intriguing findings. The country was ready for a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington figure—they used the phrase “Trump-like,” Neugebauer says—meaning that an outsider candidate should have a good shot in 2016. The elder Mercer, as usual, sat silently in his suit and tie as the group spent seven hours discussing how a race might play out.
