Showered key GOP senators with donations

Trump’s U.N. pick showered key GOP senators with donations

At least half of the GOP members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have received donations from Kelly Craft or her husband.

By LAUREN GARDNER

If Ambassador Kelly Craft ends up before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the ritual grilling of presidential nominees, she’ll be looking back at some of her favorite Republican senators.

Craft, whom President Donald Trump has said he’ll nominate to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, gave $5,400 to Marco Rubio’s primary and general election campaigns for his 2016 Senate race. She also donated the maximum allowed — $2,700 — to Sen. Todd Young’s and Sen. Ron Johnson’s respective general election campaigns that year.

And that was all after she and her husband, coal magnate Joe Craft, had thrown their influential support behind Rubio’s presidential effort, only to become prolific fundraisers for now-President Donald Trump when the Florida Republican dropped out of the race.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee boasts five former presidential contenders and a handful of members on the Republican side of the dais who recently won competitive races. At least half of the GOP members of the panel, which would have to vet the current U.S. ambassador to Canada again should Trump officially nominate her, have received donations from Kelly or Joe Craft since the 2012 cycle, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by POLITICO. The review was limited to candidates' campaign committees and leadership PACs.

While it’s not unusual for high-end donors to become ambassadors — President Barack Obama’s two ambassadors to Canada were major fundraisers for him — the direct link between the committee members voting on Craft’s nomination to one of the most important national security posts in government and her political donations is striking. Craft is one of the wealthiest and most well-connected political patrons in Kentucky; Joe Craft has given millions to Republican causes over the years.

Craft — whose father was a Democratic Party chairman for a Kentucky county — and her husband are well-known for their fundraising talents and their financial generosity to GOP candidates in past election cycles. They were Kentucky finance chairs of then-candidate Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, holding fundraisers in Lexington and Louisville.

Kelly Craft's GOP ties reach back to the George W. Bush administration, when she was a major fundraiser for Bush's 2004 reelection. Craft, who then went by Kelly Knight, was appointed in 2007 to be an alternate representative to the U.N. General Assembly. Her involvement in Republican politics grew from there, and she took on an influential role in backing Romney's 2012 bid, said Scott Jennings, a former Bush administration official who is now a GOP adviser based in Kentucky.

If "there's a big campaign, a) you want Kelly running your stuff in Kentucky and b) in terms of national players, they are some of the biggest," Jennings said.

“She’s just somebody who knows how to meet people and make friends and bring people together, and I think that skill has been a hallmark of her career," he added.

The couple has donated to the Republican campaign arms of the House and Senate, as well as to political action committees with higher contribution limits and to campaigns for other members of the Senate Republican Conference. But the disclosures show how the Crafts concentrated their donations on influential Republicans, oftentimes fighting tough races, who would later send Kelly Craft to Ottawa as the Trump administration’s representative to one of the country’s top trading partners.

To be sure, the Foreign Relations Committee features some new faces in the 116th Congress who didn’t weigh in on Craft's previous confirmation as ambassador. Sens. Lindsey Graham, Romney and Ted Cruz, all past presidential candidates, replaced the now-retired Sens. Bob Corker, the former chairman, and Jeff Flake. Rubio and Rand Paul round out the list of 2016 contenders who sit on the committee.

The ambassador and Joe Craft each donated $5,000 — the maximum that cycle for primary and general elections combined — to Romney’s presidential campaign in 2011 and 2012. They also each gave to a joint fundraising committee or to PACs backing Romney in that election cycle.

Joe Craft also contributed $2,700 to Romney’s 2018 Senate bid. By October 2017, Kelly Craft was posted in Ottawa. While she is permitted under the Hatch Act to make political donations as a Senate-confirmed appointee, according to the Office of Special Counsel, she is not allowed to fundraise for candidates.

The Crafts were also big Rubio boosters, both during his presidential run in 2016 and his Senate race later that year. POLITICO did not find any documentation of contributions by the Crafts to Rubio’s presidential run, although they organized an exclusive event with the candidate and publicly committed their support in a crowded field. However, they each maxed out at $5,400 contributions toward his Senate campaign.

The Alliance Coal LLC PAC, which is affiliated with Joe Craft's coal company, didn't contribute to any 2016 presidential candidates, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. But the PAC, and Alliance Resource Partners employees and family members, have donated money that's been funneled to Foreign Relations members including Sens. John Barrasso, Rob Portman and others.

POLITICO also did not locate any disclosures of contributions to Paul's 2016 Senate campaign. The Crafts declined to back his presidential bid but had vowed to "strongly support" his re-election run.

A spokesperson for Kelly Craft declined to comment on her past support for Republican candidates.

The Crafts each gave the maximum to Johnson of Wisconsin and to Young of Indiana for their general election Senate contests during the 2016 cycle. Both men faced challenges from former Democratic senators — Russ Feingold and Evan Bayh — with cachet in their respective states.

The Crafts focused their dollars on reelecting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the 2014 cycle. McConnell sets the agenda in the chamber and will be integral to shepherding Craft’s nomination through, provided it’s formalized by the White House.

Kelly Craft maxed out her contributions to McConnell’s campaign for his primary and general elections, and both she and Joe Craft — they weren't yet married — gave thousands to PACs and other committees geared toward boosting the Kentucky Republican.

They also each donated $2,600 toward committee member Sen. Cory Gardner’s 2014 general election race in Colorado against former Democratic Sen. Mark Udall; Gardner eked out a 2.5 percentage-point victory.

While 2018 was a midterm cycle, which can mean an overall dip in campaign donations, Joe Craft’s donations had dwindled to a fraction of his previous largesse. Besides the Romney donation, Joe Craft also contributed $5,400 to Barrasso’s campaign and $5,000 to his leadership PAC, Common Values PAC.

The Wyoming Republican won reelection in 2018 with 67 percent of the vote.