Forum Post: This Vulture-Fund Billionaire Is the GOP's Go-To Guy on Wall Street

Singer got his start as a megadonor in the 2004 campaign cycle, when he helped raise Wall Street cash for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that attacked John Kerry's war record in Vietnam. In 2007 he backed Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid, including loaning the former New York City mayor his plane. Singer also secretly funneled $175,000 into a California ballot measure to allocate the state's electoral votes on a proportional basis—a strategic ploy designed to move some of the blue state's votes to the GOP. Singer was instrumental in the selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, a fellow fan of laissez-faire capitalism, as Mitt Romney's 2012 running mate; Dan Senor, now a senior adviser at Elliott, was one of the campaign's top foreign policy staffers. (Senor served as the Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman during the early days of the occupation of Iraq, where he once said, "Well, off the record, Paris is burning. But on the record, security and stability are returning to Iraq.")

Recently, Singer has given sizable sums to the billionaire Koch brothers' dark-money projects as well as to the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that has helped tea partiers oust several mainstream Republicans. He's also donated generously to Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, and has tapped Susan Ralston, a former aide to Rove and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, for fundraising help. Elliott Management employees are major backers of virtually every top Republican in Washington, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, as well as 2016 presidential prospects like Ryan and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/paul-singer-elliott-republican-fundraiser