Meg Whitman could lead more rich Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton

There's another boldface name among Republicans who are breaking ranks and saying they not only will not vote for Donald Trump, but are going to go with Hillary Clinton instead. That's eBay founder Meg Whitman, the second top-level defection in the party after Hank Paulson. Her public split with the GOP may open the gates for more big names to follow.

The tech magnate, herself a onetime candidate for high office — she ran for California governor in 2010 — told the New York Times on Tuesday that she will aggressively support the Democratic nominee. "I will vote for Hillary, I will talk to my Republican friends about helping her, and I will donate to her campaign and try to raise money for her." Whitman is now ceo of tech giant Hewlett Packard.

Disdain for Trump among elite and wealthy Republicans is nothing new, but explicitly promising to support and vote for Hillary Clinton is a different story.

"To me it's a canary in a coal mine — does she make it easier for someone else to take that step?" said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak of the Potomac Strategy Group. "Electorally, I don't think it matters, but I'll be more interested to see if sitting senators or sitting governors take that step."

Right now it's just Whitman and Hank Paulson, who was Treasury secretary under the Bush administration. He wrote an op-ed endorsing Clinton in June (the same weekend that conservative opinion-maker George F. Will announced he was leaving the Republican Party).

"The GOP, in putting Trump at the top of the ticket, is endorsing a brand of populism rooted in ignorance, prejudice, fear and isolationism," Paulson wrote. He argued that America needs a president who would cut social welfare programs and embrace free trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership.

"I'll be voting for Hillary Clinton," he concluded.

Whitman's support, like Paulson's, is mainly symbolic. She's promised to financially support Clinton in the ballpark of six figures, but that's petty cash these days, especially considering the fact that Whitman dropped $120 million into her own failed run for the governor's office. And like Mackowiak, political scientist Steve Brams doubts people like Whitman and Paulson will have much influence over the average voter.

"I don't think endorsements help very much with ordinary people, but I think they themselves will be disgusted with [Trump's] recent remarks and turn away even if Clinton is not ideal," said Brams, a professor of politics at New York University. "So I think things look pretty good for her."

As for a Whitman effect, it's unlikely that too many sitting congressmen will thumb their nose at their own nominee.

"You're probably not gonna see people in the Senate take this step because the risk to their own reelection is too significant," Mackowiak said. "But could a sitting governor do it?"

Whitman's defection came shortly after President Obama advised the GOP to ditch its nominee, and only a few hours after Trump, leader of the Republican Party, refused to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain in their bids for reelection.

Things only got worse when Trump's own running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, broke with the nominee and publicly endorsed the pair.

"This is getting to be a disaster," Mackowiak said.