Just four days after being named the next White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles was waiting patiently for an espresso drink at a five-star hotel in Las Vegas.
Overnight, she had become one of the most powerful people in America. The value of a minute of her time could not be higher during the presidential transition: Republican strivers are hounding her for desirable gigs, and back at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald J. Trump has kept courting controversy with his picks.
Yet here she was thousands of miles away, flanked only by a security guard, alone in line at a Four Seasons coffee shop. She had just peeled off from lunch with other top Trump campaign officials, including her fellow campaign manager, Chris LaCivita; the pollster Tony Fabrizio; and the campaign’s fund-raising chief, Meredith O’Rourke. “We’re all just chilling,” one member of the startled Trump entourage joked aloud when alerted that they had been spotted by a nearby New York Times reporter as they walked through the hotel.
What demanded the dayslong presence of all these Trumpworld figures during some of the most important weeks of their careers? The fall gathering of a secretive group of wealthy tech executives and their allies who have ascended swiftly within the Republican Party’s donor class: the Rockbridge Network.
The group, which was co-founded five years ago by JD Vance, sprouted from an informal set of dinners into a powerful coalition of Republican donors who have given more than $100 million to Rockbridge projects since 2019, according to a person close to the group, helping lead Silicon Valley’s march to the right. For Rockbridge, Mr. Vance’s election as vice president was a crowning achievement — and a tantalizing opportunity to wield new national influence.
But Rockbridge has largely kept its activities stealthy, mindful of how groups of wealthy conservatives like the Koch Network have drawn attacks from both liberal detractors and Republican wannabes.
As caravans of black S.U.V.s shuttled in the billionaires from their private jets last week, members of the Rockbridge roster could be spotted around the hotel: Rebekah Mercer, the scion of one of the most prolific Republican donor families, greeted well-wishers in the lobby. Working the happy-hour scene at the hotel bar were two close friends of Elon Musk’s — Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, whose time with Mr. Musk at PayPal made them megawealthy themselves.
And it was hard to miss Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the 6-foot-5 cryptocurrency investors and former Harvard heavyweight rowers made famous in “The Social Network.”
Attendees, with white-and-red gift bags and lanyards, knew to be closelipped when approached by hotel interlopers or by the Times reporter, who was not invited to the closed-press festivities. But a copy of the agenda listed remarks by several tech billionaires, including the Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who spoke about his support for deregulating technology and the mixed reaction in Silicon Valley to his endorsement of Mr. Trump, according to attendees.
There were tech up-and-comers, too: Donald Trump Jr. announced at the welcome dinner that he was entering venture capital. And days before the president-elect chose Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary, Mr. Kennedy spoke extensively about his public-health work to a standing ovation. Ms. Wiles also led a session on “2024 Election Analysis,” where she gave a preview of Mr. Trump’s first days as president.
“It’s the domestic ‘Davos in the desert,’” said the Rockbridge backer Omeed Malik, referring to the annual business conference in Riyadh, and Donald Trump Jr.’s new business partner.
From small dinners to the Ritz-Carlton
Rockbridge began with more humility. Back in 2019, Mr. Vance, then best known as the author of “Hilbilly Elegy,” and a conservative media figure named Chris Buskirk began informally hosting a series of small dinners that would eventually become called Rockbridge. The group drew early support from the venture capitalist Peter Thiel and eventually caught the attention of Donald J. Trump, who spoke at a few meetings.
Once in the fall and once in the spring, Rockbridge began to gather at places like the Four Seasons in Palm Beach, Fla., or the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas for three days of political panels and business networking. Speakers included people like Tucker Carlson; the Thiel protégé Blake Masters; the casino mogul Steve Wynn; the investor David Sacks; and Woody Johnson, the billionaire owner of the New York Jets.
Not all attendees have politics at the top of their mind. Some are primarily interested in business, seeing Rockbridge as a conservative-tinged version of the elite Sun Valley conference.
Mr. Buskirk, a former contributing opinion writer to The Times who founded a pro-Trump publication called American Greatness in 2016, had limited experience working directly in politics. But he capitalized on his growing connections in the movement called the New Right, the conservative business world and Mr. Trump’s orbit to organize the party’s donors and build Rockbridge. He declined to comment for this article.
Rockbridge, according to literature distributed to donors this year, “builds lasting political infrastructure” and “strives to replace the current Republican ecosystem of think tanks, media organizations and activist groups that have contributed to the party’s decline.” The ambition is palpable, but some longtime attendees privately question whether the group has come close to delivering on those goals.
Mr. Vance’s victory in his 2022 race for Senate in Ohio, and then his rise to the presidential ticket this year, served as powerful validation for Rockbridge and Mr. Buskirk, who remains in Mr. Vance’s close orbit even today. Mr. Buskirk used Rockbridge resources to quickly start a super PAC this election cycle to bolster Mr. Trump’s ground game. And Rockbridge, once dismissed by some moderates as a B-lister in the pecking order of G.O.P. fund-raising, prompted even some establishment-minded Republicans to trek out to Las Vegas.
There is still skepticism about how much money Rockbridge truly steers. Donors to the group tend to be younger and from entrepreneurial backgrounds, and their assets are less liquid. Start-up T-shirts mixed with MAGA hats and cowboy boots throughout the Four Seasons lobby, and people traveled there from tech hubs like Silicon Valley, Austin or Miami.
Quietly funneling $100 million into politics
Hosting this fall’s gathering so soon after the election risked turning the summit into a wake. It was the opposite.
Even before the event officially began, Ms. Wiles was in Las Vegas, headlining an outdoor Saturday dinner at a steakhouse for about 30 Rockbridge donors and friends. Around the jubilant open bars and music-filled ballrooms, attendees openly traded notes on what Trump administration roles they might get and debated whether Mr. Musk was the world’s most powerful person.
“Generally everyone at Rockbridge was very happy that technologists and politicians are working together directly again and not openly hostile toward each other,” said John Coogan, the co-founder of Soylent who attended. “It’s no longer a question of whether technology will drive the future, but how we guide its impact. So it makes sense that tech billionaires and the political elite are partying together.”
Mr. Vance did not attend, a rare absence and a disappointment to some loyalists. But his victory made Rockbridge suddenly a hot ticket and spurred some last-minute sign-ups. After sometimes letting prospective members attend for just $5,000, Rockbridge raised the minimum cost to $25,000 (although some people said privately that they had been able to get in for less).
The cost of Rockbridge membership ranges from $100,000 to be a “limited partner” to $1,000,000 for a “principal partner,” according to a prospectus seen by The Times.
That money goes toward the eight vehicles that Rockbridge steers, including four dark-money 501(c)(4) organizations, two super PACs, a donor-advised 501(c)(3) fund for nonprofit activity and the Rockbridge Network umbrella organization, an L.L.C. Mr. Buskirk’s main super PAC, Turnout for America, has raised at least $25 million this year.
These eight Rockbridge groups have primarily run get-out-the-vote operations. One, called Faithful in Action, claims to have 160,000 members and organizes small churches with field teams twice a week. The group has no public presence.
Rockbridge groups have also produced documentaries that investigate prosecutors pursuing cases against Mr. Trump. Rockbridge, according to the prospectus, has since 2020 “underwritten” polling “that has been made available for free to allied media organizations.” And the group has helped pay for “local and national investigations” that are “published by aligned media outlets.”
A new breed of Republican donors
Mr. Vance’s new job is likely to make Rockbridge and its 150 members influential players in pushing the Trump agenda.
In part, that is because Mr. Trump has had a sometimes frosty relationship with traditional Republican donor groups, including the libertarian Koch Network and the more hawkish American Opportunity Alliance. Rockbridge, by contrast, was born in the Trump era and shares his edginess, if not the wealth of those rival networks.
“There’s a decision that big conservative donors have to make here,” said Oren Cass, an influential conservative economist in Mr. Vance’s orbit who is close with these major donors. “Up until the 2024 election, there was at least a colorable case to be made that maybe Trump isn’t going to succeed.”
That case is now no longer colorable, Mr. Cass said. “Who is stuck in the cargo hold of the old ship and going down with it — and who actually wants to be relevant to the future of conservatism?” he asked.
Mr. Buskirk told donors in Las Vegas that during the campaign, Rockbridge had about 3,000 people in the field working on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Now, after the Republican victory, Mr. Buskirk said, it was time for Rockbridge projects to grow even bigger.
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