Romney Backer Is Biggest Occupy Wall Street Donor

Robert S. Halper is the largest single donor to the Occupy Wall Street movement, having donated $20,000 to the anti-corporate Adbusters magazine, which launched the protests. The weirdest thing about Halper is not that he’s a retired Wall Street trader who used to vice chair the New York Mercantile Exchange, or that he’s a 1-percenter. No, the weirdest thing about Halper is that in addition his Adbusters donation, he also donated the maximum allowed $2500 to the presidential campaign of corporate favorite Mitt Romney.

“We can only imagine what it's like to have enough money to write several-thousand-dollar checks to causes that effectively cancel each other out,” writes Max Read on Gawker. Halper explains his giving to the New York Times as “a little ADD—like me.” He is a longtime donor to Adbusters and friend of the editor in chief, and wrote the check despite “rolling his eyes” at the idea initially, he says. He soon found himself swept up in the excitement and now makes daily visits to Zuccotti Park, which he calls “the coolest place in New York.” “If there’s pain,” he concludes, “it should be shared.” (More Occupy Wall Street stories.)