(Bloomberg) -- Since Donald Trump won a second term as president, Wall Street has been rallying and Washington has been bracing for his return — but the real action is unfolding a thousand miles south of the White House.
Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club in the wealthy South Florida enclave of Palm Beach, has been transformed into a hub for planning his transition to the Oval Office. Well-wishers, job seekers and lobbyists have been jamming the marble-lined hallways while the president-elect has been holed up in his private quarters, speaking to foreign leaders and weighing picks for top roles in his administration, according to people familiar with the meetings.
The resort has functioned as Trump’s home and political headquarters ever since his first term as president ended four years ago. But his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris has raised the activity level to a fever pitch — and magnified the immense economic and political power that has amassed on this barrier-island town an hour north of Miami.
On election night, Elon Musk, a constant presence on the trail in the late stages of the campaign, was spotted drifting through Mar-a-Lago. The next day, the Tesla Inc. billionaire listened in on a call that Trump placed from the club to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“It’s a wonderful place, a place you can go and see colleagues, friends from the previous Trump administration, friends from the current campaign,” said Brian Ballard, a lobbyist and Mar-a-Lago member.
While Mar-a-Lago is the center of the Trump universe, the surrounding area has remained stubbornly blue. Palm Beach County, which is home to 1.5 million people, is one of only six Florida counties that Harris carried in the election.
Yet several affluent, influential Palm Beach homeowners quietly played a big part in helping Trump become the first president in more than a century to win two nonconsecutive terms — and have helped make the elite coastal haven into a MAGA mecca.
Activist investor Nelson Peltz threw open his Montsorrel mansion to exhort other billionaires to back Trump. Investor John Paulson hosted a party at his South Ocean Boulevard home that raised $50 million. Other Palm Beach mainstays, including casino tycoon Steve Wynn, Blackstone co-founder Steve Schwarzman, sugar magnate Pepe Fanjul and money manager Paul Singer, mustered support for Trump.
Now, those donors are about to find out the advantages of sharing a ZIP code with the president-elect. At stake are important details on Trump’s policies toward China, tariffs and taxes that could affect the fortunes of corporations and captains of industry, including the ones perched in Palm Beach.
Winter White House
Palm Beach has served as a backdrop for presidential politics in the past; John F. Kennedy made it his “winter White House.” But Trump, who has been a presence in the area for decades, has fundamentally transformed the town into a sun-splashed hub for political horse trading.
Mar-a-Lago is likely to be a hive of activity at least through Jan. 20, when Trump will be sworn in as the 47th US president in Washington — and to remain a Trump stronghold after he takes the oath.
The president-elect’s advisers and allies expect him to spend plenty of time in Florida, and political operators are expanding their presence there, seeking out office space within range of the club.
“I expect it to be, probably even more so than the first term, the center of the universe outside of DC,” said lobbyist Nick Iarossi, who is opening a Palm Beach office for his firm, Capital City Consulting.
Trump has helped Palm Beach’s rise in other ways. The cap he introduced to state and local tax deductions during his first term helped spur a large migration of wealth south, benefiting places with no state income taxes, including Florida.
The cap, along with much of Trump’s 2017 tax law, expires at the end of 2025.
Some of Trump’s Palm Beach neighbors had high-level roles in his first term. Schwarzman served as an emissary to China. Financier Wilbur Ross was Trump’s commerce secretary. Former Marvel Entertainment chairman Isaac Perlmutter was an unofficial adviser overhauling the Veterans Administration.
So far, Trump’s reported early picks for his second administration have also had a Florida flavor: Senator Marco Rubio is in line to be Secretary of State, while Congressman Mike Waltz is set to be national security adviser. A spokeswoman for the Trump transition team said appointments will be announced as they are made.
Along with wealthy Trump partisans, the Palm Beach area is home to Democratic megadonors and Republicans such as Ken Griffin, who passed on backing Trump but put his financial muscle behind GOP congressional candidates.
Local real estate agents are preparing for a new wave of transplants. Gary Pohrer, a broker with Douglas Elliman, said he has been scheduling more showings of big-ticket homes than average in Palm Beach since the election.
“There will be some people who will try to buy access to Trump through property in Palm Beach,” Pohrer said. “You’d have a good shot if you’re willing to pay up for membership at Mar-a-Lago.”
Such memberships are hard to come by. Trump’s club manager said in June that the cost of a new membership was being raised to $1 million, and only a few were left.
“It’s power. You’ve got a new class of people joining,” said Laurence Leamer, the author of the 2019 book Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace and a part-time Palm Beach resident. “What is the million dollars for membership if you can get a $2 billion deal from the White House?”
Changing Community
Public-relations executive Melissa Rein Lively said she has been hanging out at Mar-a-Lago for the past few days, after flying in from her home in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“I want somebody to treat the DC-Palm Beach circuit like TMZ,” said Lively. “Politics has replaced Hollywood.”
The frenzy has irked some Palm Beach mainstays, who fear things will now only get busier. A development boom was already choking roads and parking and upending the town’s stringent limits on construction.
Additionally, Palm Beach County had been spending $93,000 a day to protect Trump following two assassination attempts, with 24-hour roadblocks snarling traffic when he’s in town.
“There is going to be more security here than Fort Knox,” said Palm Beach County Mayor Maria Sachs. “The cost of protecting him is astronomical, and the traffic and road closures are a nuisance for residents.”
Sachs, a Democrat who was reelected to the County Commission last week, said Trump “brings his whole entourage with him, which is good for our tax base.” Yet some locals say Trump has brought something else, too: A sense that their coastal community has been forever altered.
“The whole nature of Palm Beach has just changed,” said Leamer. Now, it’s “a club of billionaires, and Trump is at the center of it all.”
--With assistance from Amanda Gordon.
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