If you are having trouble viewing this email, click here.

July 27, 2023

Personality-driven business capsules you can only get here. Our weekly dispatch gets you ready for what people are thinking before they talk about it— the hitters you know and want to know across Wall Street, Washington, and Silicon Valley.

DeSantis' Hamptons fundraiser flops, RFK Jr. and Trump rake it in

Ron DeSantis scrapped two Hamptons fundraisers last weekend due to a lack of interest — while rival Donald Trump and upstart candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raked in massive piles of cash, sources told On The Money.

The tale of the three fundraisers shows DeSantis' hopes for snaring the Republican nomination are quickly fading as Trump dominates the GOP field and RFK Jr. gains momentum.

"This weekend broke DeSantis' campaign," one political fundraiser said.

"I don't know anyone who went," added longtime GOP fundraiser Caroline Wren. "George Santos could've pulled off a better fundraising swing in the Hamptons than Ron DeSantis did this past weekend."

As On The Money previously reported, DeSantis had cut in half — from $6,600 per person to $3,300 — the price to attend the July 20 fundraiser in Southampton.

But despite being discounted and heavily promoted — and with New York Republican groups sending email blasts the day before the event — attendance was underwhelming, a source with knowledge of the campaign told On The Money.

NYC parents spend millions on private jet travel to summer camp visiting day

If you think spending $15,000 on your kid's summer camp sounds crazy, you probably haven't considered shelling out $30,000 to fly in for parents' day.

Last weekend, there were approximately 35 day-long round trips made between private airports in the Hamptons and Westchester and corresponding landing strips in Maine that are situated near some of the poshest summer camps in the Northeast, according to FlightRadar24, a flight-tracking website.

The cost of chartering a round trip ranges from $30,000 on the low end to $45,000 on the high end, depending on the type of aircraft.

That means that a handful of elite New York parents – who in some cases reportedly have been bribing summer camp officials to get their child a coveted bunkbed – collectively spent somewhere between $1 million and $1.5 million just to visit their kids for a day.

That number doesn't include parents flying in from other tony locations like Boston or Miami – and doesn't account for the children who went to camp in upstate New York, Pennsylvania or other popular summer destinations.

White House sparks outrage for tapping ex-Google lobbyist as legislative director

The White House has picked a new emissary to Capitol Hill to push its legislative agenda — and Big Tech critics say it looks like bad news for antitrust crackdowns on Silicon Valley.

President Biden this week named Shuwanza Goff as its director of legislative affairs.

While press coverage noted she is the first black woman to hold the key role, most reports didn't note she recently worked at Cornerstone — Google's largest outside lobbying group.

Goff was never officially employed by Google, but the search giant spends $680,000 with Cornerstone annually, making Google the firm's biggest client, according to Open Secrets.

Running the Office of Legislative Affairs is a little-known role with outsize influence — the job is to communicate the president's priorities and push his agenda with members of Congress.

Josh Harris bought Commanders with firm tied to rival NFL owner

When buyout mogul Josh Harris announced his $6.05 billion purchase of the Washington Commanders last week, he failed to credit a key advisor on the deal who is also linked to another fellow NFL team owner, sources told The Post's Josh Kosman.

Andalusian Private Capital and Advisory, which worked with Harris on the purchase, counts among its founding investors David Tepper – the outspoken hedge-fund billionaire who also is owner of the Carolina Panthers, sources said.

Jeffrey Kaplan founded Andalusian in 2021 after serving as chief operating officer at Tepper's fund Appaloosa Management. He also helped Tepper in 2018 acquire the Panthers for $2.3 billion.

Know why they're on our radar? The names of the week to know.

Richard Dickson...Katie Koch... Philipp Rickenbacher... Tom Rubin... Timothy Donahue... Ruth Porat... Sean O'Brien... Evangelia Kostakis... Kayla Tausche...

Tips, scoops, contrarian views… email us here.