Joe O’Dea’s Top Super PAC Megadonor is a Racist who Funded Border Wall & Trump’s Re-Election
“Mellon’s $4 million is the largest single contribution in support of O’Dea’s candidacy to date.”
Colorado Newsline reports that GOP megadonor Timothy Mellon has made “the largest single contribution in support of O’Dea’s candidacy to date.” The $4 million donation to GOP Senate candidate Joe O’Dea’s super PAC “is the second-largest donation Mellon has ever made in support of a single candidate.”
Despite O’Dea’s dishonest attempt to label himself as a moderate, all signs are pointing to O’Dea being a rubber stamp for the MAGA agenda. O’Dea said he would vote for Trump in 2024 and believes he bears no blame for the January 6th insurrection. He also doubled down on calling the Mar-a-Lago investigation a political stunt – and now his top financial supporter is a racist megadonor who funded Trump’s re-election and the border wall.
Mellon wrote a racist autobiography and said “Black people, in spite of heroic efforts by the ‘Establishment’ to right the wrongs of the past, became even more belligerent and unwilling to pitch in to improve their own situations.” According to Newsline, O’Dea told an interviewer last week he doesn’t “see color,” and his “exhortations to ‘get (workers) off the couch’ — align with much of the makers-and-takers rhetoric in Mellon’s book.”
But as Election Day approaches, he’s getting a big boost from a megadonor closer to home: the Wyoming-based heir to a 19th-century banking fortune who wrote in a self-published autobiography that Black people are “belligerent” and “unwilling to pitch in to improve their own situations.”
Timothy Mellon, the grandson of banking tycoon Andrew Mellon, donated $4 million to American Policy Fund, a super PAC that has spent heavily throughout the year on ads supporting O’Dea and attacking his opponents, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
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Mellon’s $4 million is the largest single contribution in support of O’Dea’s candidacy to date. It exceeds both the $2.6 million that the Denver construction CEO has donated or loaned to his own campaign since announcing his run last year, and the $1.25 million that the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said that it had donated to American Policy Fund on Monday.
The 80-year-old Mellon has been a prolific donor to conservative causes, donating more than $90 million to Republican political campaigns since 2018, FEC records show. Last year, he donated more than $53 million in stock to a fund set up by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to finance the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
O’Dea’s campaign did not respond to questions about O’Dea’s relationship with Mellon or whether he shares Mellon’s view of Black Americans.
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Last month’s $4 million contribution to American Policy Fund is the second-largest donation Mellon has ever made in support of a single candidate, topped only by the $30 million he donated to a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020, according to FEC records.
In a statement, Colorado Democratic Party spokesperson Nico Delgado said Mellon’s contribution proves O’Dea would be “a rubber stamp for the MAGA agenda.”
“Joe O’Dea would vote for Trump in 2024, he thinks Trump bears no blame for January 6th, and now he’s being backed by a racist Trump megadonor who is responsible for funding Trump’s medieval border wall,” Delgado said.
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O’Dea has pitched himself to voters as a moderate, especially on social issues, and told an interviewer last week that “I don’t see color.” But his views on work and social spending — including exhortations to “get (workers) off the couch” — align with much of the makers-and-takers rhetoric in Mellon’s book.
Read more in Colorado Newsline.