In the Hamptons, Wealthy Biden Donors Fear a “Dark” Future Under Trump

If the number of candidate-branded plastic cups sold at the Monogram Shop in East Hampton is an accurate predictor of the election results this fall, in a Biden-versus-Trump November race, President Biden gets clobbered.

Every presidential election cycle since 2004, the small shop on Newtown Lane has sold monogrammed plastic cups with each of the candidates’ names on them, keeping count of sales and posting the daily tally. With the exception of the Clinton-Trump showdown it’s always been a perfect indicator of the outcome of the race (including Bush-Kerry).

“It fell apart in 2016 with everyone else,” says Valerie Smith, the shop’s owner.

In January of this year, Smith decided to do away with the cup count. “It’s such a toxic environment,” she says. “This could lead to something unpleasant.”

Instead, she took a neutral, quiet approach to political messaging and printed “Let Us Pray 2024” on plastic cups that, she says, spoke to everyone. And they sold “briskly.”

But those who frequented the shop wanted the temperature-taking candidate cups back, and told Smith as much. Early last month, she caved and made Biden-Harris 2024 and Trump 2024 cups. The sales results surprised her, but not nearly as much as who was buying them.

“From the moment we started, the sales were three to one [for Trump],” Smith says.

“What has been fascinating, with maybe four exceptions, [is that] every single one of these cups has been bought by a woman. And what does the polling every time tell us? That Trump is in trouble with suburban women. Well, let me tell you—they’re walking in here all day long.”

As of June 30, approximately three weeks into selling them, 689 Trump cups and 376 Biden cups had been sold (and some 100 of those Biden cups, Smith notes, were bought in bulk ahead of the star-studded post-debate local Biden fundraiser last Saturday at Barry and Lizanne Rosenstein’s oceanfront house on Further Lane). Also billed on the invite were Hamptonites like Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, and Michael J. Fox.

Now, with many calling for Biden to leave the race following his performance in the first presidential debate, the great cup indicator has been completely thrown for a loop. So have many Democrats, who, along with their checkbooks, spend their summers in the Hamptons.

Like Palm Beach in the winter and New York City in the spring, the Hamptons is on the donor circuit, and most politicians roll through between the end of June and mid-August, hat in hand, tapping the same wealthy donors in each place.

The debate last week gave many of them pause.

At parties over lobster salad and rosé, and on Main Beach in East Hampton over live music Tuesday, while gleeful local Trump supporters were texting “Bi-Done” to anyone and everyone, conversations among shell-shocked Democrats feeling stuck in purgatory swayed between “Biden should step aside” and “let him run” to “I’m not sure what he should do.”

But behind closed doors, where the real money is pumped into the campaigns, one prominent fundraiser who asked not to be named says the mood is one of “genuine concern.”

“Donors are like, ‘Wait a minute, something’s been going on and I’m only just being made aware of it,’” he says.

“We’ve been getting the message that [Biden] is a strong leader and that he’s in charge. Joe’s the guy. Then what we saw in the debate is ‘Wow, this guy can’t be running the country.’”

“So who is?” He and other supporters want to know. “That’s the real question,” he says. “People were stunned at how incoherent he was.”

The people paying real money to help get Biden elected are “a powerful crowd,” he says. They’re in finance, hedge funds, private equity, and real estate.

Like most of these intimate fundraisers, including the Rosenstein one, donations come with varying levels of access. On Saturday, the lowest-price ticket ($3,300) got you in the door. The perks increased with the dollar amount. Tens of thousands of dollars got you a photo with the candidate, and those who donated a healthy six figures bought themselves access—a private audience with the president.

“Access to whom?” this particular fundraiser, who has a house in Quogue but was not at the Rosenstein event, asked. He questioned repeatedly what any donor is paying for now, reiterating that nobody seems to know who exactly is making the decisions. “Who is the guy behind the guy?”

One attendee at Saturday’s uncommonly alcohol-free fundraiser, who asked not to be named, said the 100 or so guests were told if they came past 1:30 p.m. they wouldn’t get in, but then they had to wait a couple of hours for Biden to arrive.

“Usually it’s an hour,” she says. “They couldn’t get their shit together.” The Sag Harbor resident says for people who have previously met presidents and been to these things many times before, it was a lot to ask, especially on a summer afternoon.

Still, the crowd, which included Howard Stern and Anthony Scaramucci, had a lot to talk about while they waited. “There was deep concern about Biden’s lackluster performance.”

Sag Harbor resident Cindy Scholz usually stays away from politics. But fearful of what more could happen with abortion rights, she wrote a check for Saturday’s fundraiser hoping it would help stop Trump. She says she is worried Trump returning to office would be “taking a step backward for humans.”

While some people said they’d heard the fundraiser’s mood was flat, Scholz says despite the debate performance, the event still felt upbeat, and even optimistic. That these were people coming together not so much worried about taxes or interest rates, but about human rights. “They wanted the world to be a better place,” she says.

She added that both Jill Biden and host Lizanne Rosenstein “knocked it out of the park” with their speeches, addressing Biden’s legacy and dedication to the country.

In his eight-minute speech, the president spoke a little about that as well. Reading off of a prompter, Biden told the crowd that he’d done a lot for the country, and acknowledged that at 81, he doesn’t walk or talk as quickly as he once did. He spent time discussing what makes him different from his opponent.

The Sag Harbor resident in attendance said it wasn’t comforting enough. While she’s still never voting for Trump, she thinks the right thing for Biden to do is step aside, and since “Kamala isn’t the right person, you have an open convention.”

Scholz’s takeaway from the event was “Wow, given the sacrifices Biden has made for this country, this is the person, and the family, that is going to do the right thing for the country, whatever that is.”

Before Trump was elected in 2016, Woody Johnson held a fundraiser for the then GOP candidate on a summer Saturday, blocking access to the coveted East Hampton Village beaches, upsetting residents who would miss a Saturday of sunbathing.

Highway Behind the Pond at Dunemere, one resident says, was completely shut off by police. “We get 10 summer weekends to go to the beach. He took one,” she says.

President Biden blocked approximately the same area on Saturday, and gridlocked the entirety of Main Street coming and going Saturday afternoon, but this time, that same resident wasn’t grumbling. “Trump was running then and he’s a jerk,” she says, and he was a candidate, not a president. In fact, she wants everyone to stop talking about Biden stepping down and let him run. “Why aren’t we asking Trump to step down?” she says. She says she will still vote for Biden over Trump no matter what, and like many Democrats on the East End, never, ever Trump, a sentiment most acknowledge is likely not the case in battleground states across the country.

Though the overall mood after the debate was “shock and the jig is up,” as the aforementioned prominent Democratic fundraiser says, while the fallout from the debate takes its course, he’s still giving money to the Democrats’ campaign committees. He says the anti-abortion agenda is too “dark” to do anything else.

“I’ve resigned myself to thinking Biden is going to lose. So how do you protect what is important in a Trump administration? It’s the House and the Senate.” He says that’s where this summer’s big donors will spend. “It’s not [their] first rodeo.”