Barney Jopson in Washington and Gregory Meyer in Miami Beach
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| Donald Trump |
The spectre of Mr Trump’s caustic bluster and Mr Cruz’s unbending conservatism has left some Republican-leaning business people discussing a previously unthinkable prospect: voting for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner.
Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Jim Newsome, a derivatives lobbyist who chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President George W Bush, said until recently he was laughing about the Trump campaign.
“I’m not laughing any more . . . I’m slightly worried about it,” he told a conference following last week’s Iowa caucuses, where the property mogul saw victory snatched from his grasp by Mr Cruz, the Texas senator.
“If it comes down to Hillary and Trump or Cruz, Hillary’s got my vote. While I don’t agree with Hillary on a lot of issues, I know what I’m getting if we elect Hillary versus a Trump or a Cruz,” said Mr Newsome.
Joshua Lewis, founder of Salmon River Capital, a New York private equity group, said: “I think it’s a devil’s choice. I categorise myself as an independent. There are Republicans I could vote for. But neither one of those two under any circumstance.”
An executive at one of America’s biggest companies said of Mr Trump and Mr Cruz: “They are getting invested in issues that are not of interest to business — or actively anti-business.”
Despite Mr Trump’s credentials as a billionaire entrepreneur, he has dismayed business people with his attacks on women, Mexicans and Muslims and his tendency to offer more vague promises of greatness than concrete policies.
“Trump has been so bereft of any detail that it’s very hard to know what you are going to get,” said the executive.
Mr Trump has suggested mass deportations that would risk paralysing the US economy, declared a new Pacific Rim trade deal backed by business a “disaster” and vowed to make Apple manufacture all its devices in the US, an idea experts say is implausible.
He however has the backing of Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor, who has said Mr Trump is the right man to shake up Washington. Mr Trump also secured a high-profile $1m donation from Ike Perlmutter, chief executive of Marvel Entertainment.
Mr Cruz, a slick speaker with sharp intellect, has a reputation for arrogance and is regarded by many as too rightwing to win the general election.
He gained notoriety in 2013 when he helped to shut down the government in a protest over President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms, an episode that many executives saw as a triumph of ideology over good sense.
“Even if I were a libertarian — which I’m not — I don’t think Cruz is capable of governing,” said Mr Lewis. “He’s better at burning the house down than building it.”
On the campaign trail Mr Cruz calls for monetary policy to be linked to the gold price, an idea mainstream economists disparage. He has vowed to abolish five government departments, a position that goes beyond what even rule-weary corporations want.
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