Hedge-Fund Tycoons Ditch Obama for GOP

Daniel Loeb used to be one of Barack Obama’s biggest supporters, but these days he’s raising huge piles of money for Republicans. Why? Well the president appears to have hurt his feelings, the Wall Street Journal observes. “I am sure, if we are really nice and stay quiet, everything will be alright,” the hedge fund manager wrote in an email that’s been widely circulated among financiers. “I mean, he really loves us and when he beats us, he doesn’t mean it.”

Loeb is not alone. Hedge funds managers and employees gave more to Republicans in the last election cycle for the first time since 1996. That included defections from some major Obama donors, put off either by his rhetoric or Democrats’ attempts to raise taxes on the rich. “Hedge funds bankrolled the Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections,” says one Wall Street lobbyist, “and the very people they helped put in power turned around and screwed them.” And they're responding en masse: Of the some 6,600 donations the DNC received last month, more came from either veterinarians or librarians than from hedge-fund people, notes the Journal. (More Barack Obama stories.)