Until recently, it seemed to me the most prominent Trumper in Connecticut was Linda McMahon of professional wrestling fame, the twice-failed U.S. senatorial candidate and ex-member of former President Donald Trump’s cabinet.

After all, just this summer, as McMahon’s husband and co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, Vince McMahon, continued to implode in an alleged sex-trafficking scandal, Linda emerged as a chair of transition for a new Trump presidency, if it happens.

That’s Connecticut-bred Trump clout for you.

But, it turns out, Trumpism runs a lot deeper around here in eastern Connecticut, at least the part-time home to one of the biggest Trump donors of all.

Timothy Mellon, grandson of industrialist Andrew Mellon and an heir to the many billions in the surviving Mellon family fortune, has a grand property in Lyme, where his considerable holdings make him one of the major taxpayers in town.

And it turns out one of the quirky aspects to the Mellon story in Lyme was his building there of a full replica of a Norwegian Burgundy Stave Church, an extraordinary, private architectural extravaganza.

Mellon, described as a recluse, also owns considerable land and a home in Wyoming.

It was a description of waterfront property he owned in Narragansett, R.I., that first caught my attention in the New York Times this summer. Mellon, the Times wrote, was considered a prime suspect when a runestone, featured in a History Channel documentary as a possible ancient artifact, disappeared from the tidal waters below Mellon’s property in Narragansett around 2012.

Mellon, who had complained about amateur scientists obtrusively visiting the site, claimed it was on his property.

Mellon eventually returned the stone after a non-prosecution agreement was filed by the state, according to the Times.

The article about Mellon in the Times this summer was just one of a number appearing recently in national publications, after he emerged as one of Trump’s most significant donors.

According to a long Mellon story that appeared just last week in Vanity Fair, his contributions in the 2020 election cycle totaled $70 million, including $20 million to Donald Trump.

Since the start of 2022, he has poured more than $125 million into Make America Great Again, the Trump-affiliated super PAC, the magazine reported.

“Tim Mellon is the most consequential mega-donor of this contentious election, and the least known,” James Reginato wrote in Vanity Fair.

Curiously, Mellon, as a young graduate of Yale, lived for a while in Guilford, and his early charitable giving was to left-leaning charitable causes.

His political contributions grew progressively conservative.

He referred to government social safety net programs as “slavery redux” in a 2016 self-published memoir.

“Black people, in spite of heroic efforts by the ”Establishment” to right the wrongs of the past, became even more belligerent and unwilling to pitch in to improve their own situations,” Mellon wrote.

And that comes from someone who grew up on a private estate on thousands of acres in Virginia, with rare art collections and dozens of staff members, commuting by private plane to a boarding school in Massachusetts.

Mellon has drifted a little in and out of the news around here.

A 2005 story in the Middletown Press reported he was made to pay $67,500 in fines and damages for cutting trees down on land he didn’t own, near his Goodspeed Airport in East Haddam.

In addition to his interest in planes and aviation, he invested heavily in railroads over the years.

The Day reported in 2014 that Mellon had to pay $1.3 million to settle a lawsuit by a Plainfield motorcyclist seriously injured when struck by a backhoe operated by the billionaire. According to the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mellon was driving the backhoe from Lyme to a repair shop in Rhode Island when the accident occurred in Plainfield.

It was a mention of a lawsuit against a Connecticut car dealer in the New York Times this summer that led me to find Mellon’s Lyme connection.

It turns out he is currently suing Reynolds Garage & Marine in Lyme over what he says was a botched replacement of the engine in his 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee as well as a legal complication in his $5,000 purchase of a 1984 VW Rabbit.

I left messages at the dealer to see if anyone wanted to comment but never heard back from anyone. I also left a message for Mellon’s Connecticut lawyer, who also didn’t return the call.

So there you have it, two of the more significant Donald Trump advocates in Connecticut include a woman who made her vast fortune promoting fake violence and a guy who inherited his fortune but believes, as he wrote, that “citizens dependent on government largess” are “slaves of a new Master, Uncle Sam.”

It’s not a part of Connecticut I’m especially proud of. Imagine the influence they would have in a new Trump administration, one committed to mass deportations and the pardoning of cop-attacking Jan. 6 rioters.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com