In 2010, Arthur Robinson, a research chemist, decided to run for Congress in southern Oregon. Robinson, now 73, was not your average candidate. In a lab on a sheep ranch in the Siskiyou Mountains, he’s spent the last couple of years collecting thousands of vials of human urine. Funded by private donors, he claims his work holds the key to extending the human life span and wresting control of medicine from what he calls the “medical-industrial-government complex.” He has some unusual ideas. According to his monthly newsletter, nuclear radiation can be good for you and climate science is a hoax. In his spare time, he buys unwanted pipe organs from churches and reassembles them on his property.
Robinson was new to politics and had little money of his own. The Democratic incumbent, Peter DeFazio, had held office for more than 20 years and easily outspent him. But six weeks before the election, a barrage of ads hit the airwaves, portraying DeFazio as a puppet of the Democratic leadership. Robinson lost, but the $600,000 in ads helped him turn in the best performance by a Republican in the district in decades.
When the ads first appeared, Robinson says he had no idea who’d paid for them. Eventually the Washington operatives who bought them revealed they were working for Robert Mercer, a computer programmer and hedge fund manager in New York. Robinson knew Mercer slightly, as a donor to his research projects and a subscriber to his newsletter. Once, he’d even visited Mercer at his extravagant mansion on Long Island Sound. He says they’ve never discussed politics.
Mercer is one of the most enigmatic and powerful forces in U.S. politics. Beginning around the time of Robinson’s race, Mercer has put at least $32 million behind conservative candidates for office, including $11 million for a group supporting Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. So far, Mercer is the biggest single donor in the race. Working with his daughter Rebekah, he’s spent tens of millions more to advance a conservative agenda, investing in think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the media outlet Breitbart.com, and Cambridge Analytica, a data company that builds psychological profiles of voters. Groups he funds have attacked the science of global warming, published a book critical of Hillary Clinton, and bankrolled a documentary celebrating Ayn Rand.
Mercer, 69, has never spoken publicly about his political priorities and declined a request to be interviewed for this story. This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen people who have spent time with Mercer or worked on his political efforts, very few of whom were willing to speak on the record. He’s tight-lipped even with his friends. That’s made him an object of intense speculation. Some allies privately say they think he’s pro-life and opposed to gay marriage, and others say the opposite. Republican operatives gossip about what little scraps of information they can glean—his theatrical Christmas galas, his habit of whistling to himself during business meetings. Other powerful conservatives court him: Freedom Partners, the network overseen by the brothers Charles and David Koch, sometimes caters events with cookies from Ruby et Violette, a bakery owned by Rebekah and her two sisters.
Mercer is the co-chief executive officer of one of the country’s largest and most secretive hedge funds, Renaissance Technologies, but people who’ve spent time with him say he hasn’t shown any interest in advancing its agenda in Washington. They say he disdains the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which he sees as too cozy with Big Business and Wall Street. Unlike many of his peers in New York financial circles, he doesn’t shrink from the culture wars. He’s supported a campaign for the death penalty in Nebraska and funded ads in New York critical of the so-called ground-zero mosque. He and Rebekah have also directed money to an anti-abortion group and a Christian college, though people who know the father and daughter say they don’t talk about religion.
A surprising amount of Mercer’s attention and money finds its way to some of the most unusual fringes of the right wing. He’s attended and funded an annual conference organized byJane Orient, an Arizona physician and activist who recently suggested in an opinion article that elements in the U.S. government might have taken part in the San Bernardino massacre. Mercer money also found its way to an Idaho activist named Fred Kelly Grant, who travels the country encouraging legal challenges to environmental laws, which he says are part of a sinister plot by the United Nations to depopulate rural America.
“He’s a very independent thinker,” says Sean Fieler, a conservative donor in New Jersey who’s worked with Mercer on advocating a return to the gold standard. “He’s a guy with his own ideas, and very developed ideas, and I wouldn’t want to speak on his behalf.”
Four people who’ve discussed the matter with him say Mercer is preoccupied with the country’s monetary and banking systems, which he sees as hopelessly compromised by government meddling. He was the main financial backer of the Jackson Hole Summit, a conference that took place in Wyoming last August to advocate for the gold standard, two of these people said. His name wasn’t anywhere on the agenda. According to video shot at the event, he sat with Rebekah toward the back of the audience, an unobtrusive, silver-haired gentleman with dark brows, wire- rimmed glasses, a navy suit, and a red tie. At dinner that night, he sat at a table while other guests chattered around him, softly whistling to himself.
Mercer’s rapid emergence as a political force was helped along by the U.S. Supreme Court, which held in Citizens United v. FEC in January 2010 that independent political spending is protected by the First Amendment. The ruling opened the door for unlimited election spending by individuals and corporations, most of which ended up being funneled through the groups that have become known as super PACs. Eight months after Citizens United, Mercer funded one of the country’s first super-PACs to support Robinson’s bid in Oregon.