Topline
It took roughly 100,000 people donating to political campaigns in the 2024 election cycle to equal the average billionaire’s political giving, a new analysis of campaign contributions showed Monday.
Key Facts
Political donations from billionaires and their family members made up 19% of all reported federal campaign contributions in 2024, the New York Times found.
Donations from 300 billionaires and their immediate family members to federal elections in 2024 totaled $3 billion, either directly or through political action committees.
Those billionaire families each gave an average of $10 million, which equates to the contributions of roughly 100,000 typical donors, the Times reported.
State and local races are also disproportionately impacted by billionaires on both sides of the aisle, the analysis found, with the ultrawealthy donors propping up candidates for Congress, mayoral hopefuls and even ballot measures.
In Illinois, where billionaire JB Pritzker topped over several other billionaire-backed candidates to become governor, 87% of the money given to gubernatorial campaigns in 2022 came from billionaires.
In Nebraska, the family of billionaire Joe Ricketts contributed 21% of all political donations in the state in 2024, and, in California, a group that advocates for charter schools has received 90% of its funding from billionaires including Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Walmart heir Jim Walton.
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Key Background
Billionaire money in politics has skyrocketed since 2010, when the Supreme Court decided its landmark Citizens United case that ruled campaign donations could not be limited. In the 2008 presidential election, billionaires made up 0.3% of political spending, the Times reported. By 2024, that percentage was up to 19%—a 6,000% increase. Billionaire President Donald Trump has elevated billionaires to high-level positions in the federal government or in unofficial but influential positions. After he took office, Trump tapped nearly a dozen billionaires for federal government positions, including creating a new government agency (the Department of Government Efficiency) for top donor Elon Musk to run. He also named WWE’s Linda McMahon, a top Trump donor, as Education Secretary, Howard Lutnick as Commerce Secretary and Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator. And it’s not just federal candidates who are being propped up by the ultrawealthy. The Times analysis Monday found that big-time billionaire donors are supporting Congressional candidates, local candidates and statewide initiatives with millions of dollars. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, gave more than $2 million to a super PAC supporting Democrat Mike Johnston for mayor of Denver. Billionaire Robert Bigelow helped get Joe Lombardo elected as governor of Nevada, and candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court were backed by Musk, Diane Hendricks, the Uihlein family, George Soros and Pritzker. Matt Brouillette, a political adviser to major donor and billionaire Jeff Yass, has told the Times his client wades into local issues because statewide offices are often stepping stones to ones with broader reach. “We’re playing the long game,” he said.
Crucial Quote
“It’s a form of prostitution, quite frankly,” Jon Tester, a Democrat who lost his seat in the Senate to billionaire-backed candidate Tim Sheehy, said of soliciting donations from the ultrawealthy. “It’s one of the worst parts of the job. But if you want to effect change and want to make things better for your kids and grandkids going forward, then this is the field that the Supreme Court has laid out that we have to play on.”
Tangent
As billionaires have become increasingly involved in politics, negative public sentiment about their influence has also risen. More than half of Americans (53%) believe billionaires threaten American democracy, data from the Harris Poll’s annual Americans and Billionaires Survey released in November showed, up seven points from when the same question was posed in 2024. Seven in 10 respondents said they want the ultra wealthy to play a smaller role in U.S. politics, and over a third of Americans believe the U.S. economy is an uneven playing field that prioritizes the ultra-wealthy.