From coast to coast, marches and demonstrations are springing up to protest the Trump administration’s assault on immigrants, public healthcare, federal workers, and freedom of expression on May Day this year. While President Trump is at the center of these protests, the regional elites and corporate interests that have cozied up to the President, donating money to his campaign, inaugural committee and super PACs, are also coming under more scrutiny.
In Buffalo, New York, where LittleSis is headquartered, we have reported in the past on the local billionaires and corporate interests that backed Trump in his first term. In advance of this week’s day of actions, we have updated information on Buffalo elites’ donations to Trump and to the Trump-aligned area Congressman Nick Langworthy (R-23). Major local Trump donors include Jon Williams, the owner of a construction and environmental remediation firm, and the billionaire Jacobs family, who top Business First’s list of the most powerful people in Western New York and whose corporate headquarters is home to local ICE offices and cells for holding detained immigrants.
Buffalo-area Trump donors of note include:
- The billionaire Jacobs family, whose net worth Forbes estimates to be $5.4 billion, has given at least $217,700 to Trump through individual family members and corporations the family owns. These donations include a $100,000 donation from patriarch Jeremy Jacobs Sr. to the Trump Victory joint fundraising committee in 2016, and $65,000 in donations from members of the Jacobs family and family owned corporations to Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee. Notably, Jacobs’s family business Delaware North appears to be the only area donor to Trump’s 2025 inauguration, giving $50,000.
- Doug Jemal, a Washington, DC based real estate developer who has been voraciously accumulating properties in Buffalo and across Western New York, including the Seneca One tower and Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Buffalo. Jemal was pardoned by Trump in late 2020 for his 2006 fraud conviction in connection to a bribery scheme in Washington. Jemal gave $35,000 to the Trump Victory joint fundraising Committee in 2016 and $100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2020.
- Jon Williams, the owner of OSC Inc. and Viridi Parente, has donated at least $53,750 to Trump all together, including $1,000 to Trump’s 2016 campaign, $35,000 to the Trump Victory joint fundraising committee in 2019, and another $17,750 to Trump Victory in 2020.
- Carl Paladino, the chairman of local real estate firm Ellicott Development, is a major regional real estate developer, former Buffalo School Board member, and right-wing political activist. Paladino has given at least $39,000 to Trump since 2020, including a $15,000 donation to the Trump Victory joint fundraising committee in 2020, $12,400 to the Trump 47 joint fundraising committee in 2024, and $11,600 to the Trump Save America joint fundraising committee in 2024. Paladino was a New York State co-chair of Trump’s campaign in 2016.
Buffalo’s corporate elite also donates heavily to Rep. Nick Langwothy, an early local Trump supporter who represents New York’s 23rd Congressional District, encompassing Buffalo’s eastern and southern suburbs, reaching east across the state to the Finger Lakes region in central New York. Langworthy is a close Trump ally and an ardent Congressional backer of Trump’s austerity and anti-immigrant agenda. In the summer of 2024, Langworthy introduced a bill to revoke the student visas of protesters against the Israeli assault on Gaza, which he reintroduced in March 2025 as the Trump administration has attempted to achieve the same outcome Langworthy also voted to approve House budget resolutions targeting Medicaid for hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts, which would be devastating in his district where more than 100,000 people rely on public programs for health care.
Langworthy’s donor roll in the first quarter of 2025 is a showcase of powerful local corporations and executives. Notably, several healthcare CEOs – Don Boyd of Kaleida, Candace Johnson of Roswell Park, and Thomas Quatroche of ECMC – that had not previously been among Langworthy’s supporters, donated to him for the first time.
These CEOs join other notable Langworthy donors including:
- Delaware North PAC – Support for each general election in 2022 and 2024 and, for the first time in 2025, support for his primary. $10,400 total.
- National Fuel PAC – A maximum donation of $5,000 for every primary and general election since 2022, totalling $25,000.
- Real estate magnate Doug Jemal – $10,600 since 2023, including $2,000 in the first quarter of 2025.
For more detail on Buffalo’s billionaire Jacobs family and their ties to Trump, readers can re-visit our article from September 2017, published after a demonstration at the Delaware North headquarters against Trump’s first term attacks on immigrants.