16 October 2007
Rich Candidates Abound as Presidential Campaign Costs Rise
U.S. election law aims at limiting advantage that wealth provides
Washington -- Chances are strong that the next U.S. president will be a millionaire. All three Democratic front-runners and all four of the top Republican contenders fall into that category.
They range from the wealthiest, Republican Mitt Romney -- with a fortune estimated at between $190 million and $250 million -- to Democrat Barack Obama, who only recently achieved millionaire status when advances on two books he wrote in 2005 pushed his reported worth to at least $1.1 million.
The wealth of Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, and Republicans John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani and Fred Thompson, fall somewhere within that range.
Access to funding has assumed tremendous importance in this era of almost nonstop election campaigns and huge advertising expenses. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent in the current presidential campaign cycle.
Data released October 12 by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows that, with the election more than a year off, the 18 Republican and Democratic presidential candidates already have raised nearly $300 million and spent almost half of it.
“You don’t have to be a millionaire to run for president, but it certainly helps,” says Larry Sabato, political analyst and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “We’re not talking about the garden-variety millionaire, with one or a few millions, either,” Sabato told USINFO. “Many of the candidates are enormously wealthy.”
Sabato sees both direct and indirect advantages from their financial status. “Some, like Romney, spend lavishly on their own campaigns, while others, such as Clinton, won’t put a penny in. But their status has enabled them to get to know thousands of other famous, rich elites, and their campaigns benefit from those associations,” he says.
While the prevalence of the rich appears to have increased, their presence in the race for president is hardly a new phenomenon.
Citing the Roosevelts, the Kennedys and the Rockefellers, Sabato observes that “the wealthy have often had big advantages” in running for the office.
He sees this situation producing a possible distortion in their perspective -- and hence in the political system. “While being rich doesn’t mean you can’t understand the problems of the poor, it certainly means you have rarely if ever personally experienced hardships,” he says, particularly when the wealth is inherited. “Therefore, empathy with the poor is harder to achieve.”
Congress has sought to offset, at least partly, the advantage that wealth gives certain candidates. The so-called “Millionaires’ Amendment” to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 allows candidates running against a self-financed opponent to receive larger individual contributions and greater party support. The provision applies to congressional campaigns.
Among those it has benefited: Obama, in his successful 2004 Senate race, which positioned him as a serious presidential candidate this time around. Securities trader Blair Hull spent some $29 million of his own money in the Democratic primary race for the seat, raising the amount that Obama could collect from individual primary donors from $2,000 to $12,000. “I think it kept us in the ballgame,” Obama campaign manager Jim Cauley was quoted as saying at the time, noting that it added some $2 million to the amount available to Obama’s campaign.
Millionaire status has become less exclusive in a country where prosperity is high and inflation has swelled the numbers. A 2006 report by TNS Financial Services, a market research and polling firm, found the number of households with a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding principal residence, had risen to 8.9 million -- roughly 3 percent of the population.
Still, as CNN reported in May, the candidates “are seeking to lead a country where the median net worth is about $93,000 and the median yearly income is about $46,000.”
“They are an elite class,” CNN said, quoting Sheila Krumholtz, director of the private, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
When President Bush successfully ran for re-election in 2004, he reported a net worth between $8.1 million and $21.5 million. Even that paled in comparison to the holdings of his Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts -- between $165.7 million and $235.3 million. Kerry’s total included the separate wealth of his wife, Theresa Heinz.
The Associated Press reported October 6 that Romney already has lent $17.5 million to his own campaign, and stands ready to spend more.
The former Massachusetts governor’s total to date is far less than that provided by other wealthy candidates in the recent past: businessman Ross Perot put $63 million into his failed third-party candidacy in 1992; publisher Steve Forbes contributed about $38 million in each of his unsuccessful runs for the Republican nomination in 1996 and 2000.
Former candidate Forbes now serves as national co-chair for the Republican primary campaign of former New York City Mayor Giuliani.
Giuliani has reported a net worth of $18.1 million to $70.4 million, under FEC rules that allow candidates to present various categories of assets within broad ranges.
Other multimillionaires in the field: former North Carolina Senator Edwards, whose campaign put his holdings at $29.5 million; Senator Clinton of New York, whose 2005 financial disclosure report showed net worth between $10.1 million and $50.2 million -- including the holdings of her husband, former President Bill Clinton; Senator McCain of Arizona, $20.6 million to $32.0 million, including his wife’s assets; and Thompson, a former Tennessee senator turned actor, $2.6 million to $8.3 million.
Bringing up the rear among presidential hopefuls is Democratic Senator Joseph Biden. His 1995 filing showed debts between $113,000 and $131,981, ranking him 99th in a 100-member Senate that included no fewer than 40 millionaires.
