Start the Bidding for Bolton’s Donors and Money

(AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton announced today that he will not seek the GOP nomination for president in 2016, effectively leaving the foreign policy hawk’s top super PAC donors to look elsewhere for someone to back.

Some have already found their candidate — or maybe more than one — though in many cases we don’t yet know whom they’ve anointed. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is the only White House aspirant whose campaign has reported donors at this point. (Mid-July, when the reports will come due, will likely be full of surprises.)

Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens seems to have found his man. Pickens gave $100,000 to Bolton’s super PAC in 2014 but said last week that he’s given $100,000 to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who hasn’t yet entered the race — officially.

Houston Texans football team owner Robert McNair, who gave $500,000 to Bolton’s super PAC last year, supports Ted Cruz. So does Renaissance Technologies CEO Robert Mercer, who topped all other donors to Bolton’s fund with a combined $1 million in donations.

Other big donors to Bolton’s super PAC haven’t yet made their allegiances publicly known: Mega GOP donor Paul Singer gave $25,000; Arkansas businessman Warren Stephens doled out $500,000; and Robert Agostinelli and Michael Langman of the private equity Rhône Group gave $200,000 each.

Any of them would be most welcome in the camps of the other Republicans who would like to set up shop in the Oval Office.

And then there’s however much money is already sitting in Bolton’s super PAC. As of December 31, 2014, it had spent almost all of the more than $5.8 million it amassed in that election cycle, including close to $3.1 million used for independent expenditures benefiting GOP candidates in last year’s congressional races. Bolton’s regular PAC took in nearly $2.3 million and gave $477,446 of it to 2014 GOP congressional candidates.

With an already crowded Republican primary field in 2016, members of the GOP donor class will no doubt have their eyes, in part, on where they can get the most bang for their campaign buck in a race that some are predicting could cost $5 billion — and that’s just the presidential part of the 2016 balloting.

Bolton hasn’t publicly indicated which candidate he will support in the GOP primary, if any. But let the contest begin in earnest for his prolific fundraising chops, list of uber-wealthy buddies and the cold hard cash sitting in his super PAC.