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March 19th, 2024

Insight

Trump too poor to stage a third-party run

Megan McArdle

By Megan McArdle Bloomberg View

Published March 8, 2016

Donald Trump is not going to run as a third-party presidential candidate, even if he's denied the Republican nomination. There, I said it.

I'm not saying whether it would be a good idea for the GOP to deny him the nomination if he gets a plurality but not a majority of the delegates. But if it does, he won't run third-party: He can't afford it.

I direct you to his personal financial disclosure form, which said he had about $300 million in cash and marketable securities. That's a lot of money! Stunningly, however, it is not enough money to run a major presidential campaign, which now clocks in at around $1 billion.

If Trump runs as a third-party candidate, the money to do so is going to have to come mostly out of his own pocket. The Republican Party's traditional donors certainly aren't going to help him. And so far, he's shown no ability to raise the kind of staggering totals that, say, Bernie Sanders has managed to get from small donors. Trump's campaign has raised just $25 million, of which only about $8 million comes from sources other than Donald J. Trump. He's raised less in small contributions than Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio have.

Of course, maybe people just aren't bothering to send money because he says he's self-funding. Maybe in the general election, he could plead for funds and they'd open their wallets. Only … part of his appeal is that he's so very rich that he doesn't need donations. How long does that appeal last if it turns out he doesn't have that much money in the bank and needs donors just as much as other politicians do?

He could maybe mortgage some of his interests, borrowing a billion dollars to fund a campaign. But this seems … unlikely. For one thing, by the most generous non-Trump estimates of his net worth, that would mean mortgaging about a quarter of his assets for a near-certain loss. Or mortgaging less but spending down all his liquid assets.

And to be competitive in the general election, he would have to spend something close to that amount. His extremely lean campaign strategy won't work in the general. He's benefited immensely from free air time, and as of three months ago, it was estimated that about a quarter of his campaign spending actually went to companies he owns. In the general, he's going to have to spend a lot of money on things that Trump companies can't provide, such as campaign staff and television and radio air time. Once it's down to two or three candidates in a general election, the media is going to make sure the other folks get as much air time as he does.

Trump, some of his detractors say, is just crazy enough to do it anyway. But I'm skeptical. He's been bankrupt before, and at age 69, he doesn't have a lot of time for yet another comeback. And even if he was mad enough to try, are bankers insane enough to help him? As known expert Donald Trump once noted: "These lenders aren't babies. These are total killers. These are not the nice, sweet little people that you'd think." One suspects that they might, in the end, be the ones who kill any hope of a third-party campaign.


Previously:


03/07/16: We can all relate to Trump's policy tactics
02/25/16: Twitter can only lose when it polices abuse
02/09/16: Rubio faces the risk of going off script
02/08/16: Sanders and Clinton get substantive, and go wrong
02/03/16: 6 takeaways from an exciting night in Iowa
02/02/16: Trump fans should know he'll offend them next
01/04/16: Obama: Dreamer or irresponsible luftmensch?
12/21/15: Sheltered students go to college, avoid education
12/17/15: Trump disproves liberal and conservative myths
10/28/15: Preschool Helps Kids. Sometimes. Briefly.
10/26/15: If you like truth, don't watch the movie 'Truth'
10/21/15: Turns out timeless cliches and the Beatles understood the 2016 election season before the rest of us did
02/09/15: Reading the tea leaves for 2016 gets you nowhere
02/02/15: Hillary's late start won't stop punches

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Megan McArdle is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes on economics, business and public policy. She is the author of "The Up Side of Down." McArdle previously wrote for Newsweek-the Daily Beast, the Atlantic and the Economist.

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