What he's doing is purchasing cultural permission to be rich. One of the biggest false "everybody knows that" memes is the idea that the so-called 1% are miserly conservatives. They actually tend more to the Left end of the spectrum, because hey they've got theirs so who cares if we lop off the lower rungs of the ladder?
By being conspicuously liberal, they inoculate themselves against the attacks normally leveled at wealthy industrialists. It's just a case of bribing the crocodile to eat you last, though.
