A House Divided

The Mellon dynasty has long been known for its old money refinement and discretion. But when TIM MELLON became Donald Trump's biggest donor many members of the family were mystified-and not afraid to talk about it

- JAMES REGINATO

Though ’70s kitsch could hardly be further from the great banking and industrial fortune, the relative was referring to Paul Mellon and his blended family.

But instead of Alice the housekeeper, more than a hundred staff members were on duty at Oak Spring, a 4,500-acre estate where the walls were adorned with masterpieces by Van Gogh, Degas, and Manet. Houseguests included the likes of John and Jackie Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and Charles and Diana.

Paul’s wife Mary had died in 1946, leaving him with their nine-year-old daughter, Catherine, and four-year-old son, Timothy. Two years later, when he married Rachel Lambert Lloyd, she moved into Oak Spring with her two children, Eliza and Stacy III, from her marriage to Stacy Barcroft Lloyd Jr.

Bunny, as Rachel was called, became known as a paragon of refinement, understatement, and discretion. “Nothing should be noticed,” she famously declared.

It was an old money credo that her stepson Tim, now 82, seemed to live by. Little ever appeared in the press about him except for a wedding announcement in 1963 and occasional articles revolving around his interests in trains and planes. Unlike other elites with access to the levers of power, he barely engaged in politics, making only roughly $350,000 in political donations between 1996 and 2017, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Then in 2018 he sent $10 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC that runs ads on behalf of House GOP candidates. In the 2020 cycle his contributions to conservative candidates and causes totaled $70 million (including $20 million to Donald Trump). And since the start of 2022, he has poured in more than $125 million to Make America Great Again, the Trump-affiliated super PAC, and $25 million to American Values 2024, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s super PAC.

Tim Mellon is the most consequential mega-donor of this contentious election, and the least known.