With A Week To Go, 150 Families Have Outpaced By $700 Million What 600 Individual Billionaires Spent in 2020

With a week to go before Election Day, just 150 billionaire families have already smashed the billionaire campaign-spending record, contributing $1.9 billion in support of presidential and congressional candidates, a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) released today found. That’s $700 million, or almost 60%, more than the $1.2 billion spent by over 600 individual billionaires during the entire 2020 campaign, the most recent with a presidential contest. Typical flurries of last-minute fundraising will undoubtedly drive this year’s final total even higher, probably well over $2 billion. 

“Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director. “We need to rein in the political power of billionaire families by better taxing them and by effectively limiting their campaign donations. Until we do both, we can only expect the influence of the super-rich over our politics and government to escalate.”

The single biggest target of billionaire campaign spending has been the historically tight presidential race. Nearly $600 million was spent in support of the two major presidential candidates, either through their respective fundraising committees or super PACs spending on their behalf (see below). The great bulk of that money backed former president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump, who benefited from over $450 million of billionaire donations–more than three times as much as Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, who was the beneficiary of $143 million of billionaire contributions. That’s a 75%-25% split in Trump’s favor. 

During his time in office, Trump cut taxes for the wealthy and the big corporations that they mostly own, and has promised more of the same in a second term. As a member of the Biden-Harris administration, the vice president helped enact higher taxes on corporations and restored funding to the IRS to better catch rich tax cheats. Harris has vowed to raise taxes on the wealthy if elected to the presidency, including the creation of a special tax on billionaires and other hyper-wealthy people.

Source: Americans for Tax Fairness

Of the total $1.9 billion spent by America’s richest families on all federal campaigns, $1.36 billion (72%) went to support Republicans while Democrats were buoyed by about $413 million (22%). (The remaining 6% backed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid and other causes). Like their standard bearers, Republican congressional candidates generally back lowering taxes on the rich and corporations, while Democrats seek to raise them. 

The man heading up the richest billionaire family of all, Elon Musk, has spent $133 million. The largest share, $75 million, was used to single-handedly launch America PAC, which supports Trump. Musk has since given $44 million more to this super PAC. Musk has tried to go further in using his money to manipulate democracy, by creating a million-dollar-a-day lottery leading up to Election Day for voters in key swing states who are registered and sign a petition supporting speech and gun rights. The Justice Department has warned Musk that his scheme may violate a federal law against paying for votes.

Source: Americans for Tax Fairness

This unprecedented spending spree by billionaire families to influence the outcome of American elections is just a minor expense for them personally.  The 150 families we examine in this study collectively hold $2.67 trillion of wealth, making their $1.9 billion of political contributions equivalent to just 0.07% of their wealth. The median American household is worth about $200,000, making an equivalent political donation for them just $140. This means that a handful of billionaires have the financial political influence of more than 13.5 million ordinary families. 

Billionaire political giving is highly concentrated. The ten biggest billionaire-family contributors alone donated over $953 million, almost half the total. Eight of those ten backed (exclusively or nearly so) Republican candidates, while the remaining two only supported Democrats.

Source: Americans for Tax Fairness

This ATF report is the follow-up to one issued last month reporting billionaire-family political spending as of late August, with a focus on congressional campaigns. ATF has been tracking the campaign contributions of billionaires for the past four years, as part of a larger project detailing the growing wealth and power of the ultimate rich. This year ATF began looking past the political spending of individual billionaires to the collective efforts of billionaire families.

While contributions to candidates, parties and traditional political action committees (PACs) are limited by law, billionaires and other wealthy donors can spend unlimited amounts through so-called super PACs. These committees are supposed to act independently of the campaigns they support, but in practice they are essentially extensions of those campaigns. 

Despite its size, this billionaire political-spending total reported here is almost certainly an undercount because there are ways of financially supporting campaigns that are anonymous or at least hard to trace back to the original donor.  These methods include donations to so-called “dark money” groups that spend the money on outside efforts or in turn donate it to campaign committees; and contributions to super PACs that contribute to each other in long chains. 

METHODOLOGY: Contribution data is sourced from the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) as of October 28, 2024. We examined all contributions (and refunds) of $5,000 or more since January 1, 2023, and found 12,721 contributions that met our criteria. Individual billionaires and billionaire family members were primarily identified through Forbes Real Time Tracker as well as major media publications and other public records. Families were included even if—as in the case of the Mellons and Millstones—no single individual member is worth a billion dollars but the whole family is.

We included donations from corporations or nonprofits if they were under the direct control of a billionaire family. For instance, contributions by Koch Industries were included since the family owns a controlling 84% of the company. Contributions by the Bloomberg Family Foundation were considered spending by the Bloomberg family since they provided 99.3% of all donations to their foundation. However political donations from corporations like Apple and Amazon–though founded by billionaires who still own huge stakes in them–were not included in our analysis because no single billionaire family has direct majority control over them. 

The entire amount of billionaire donations to joint fundraising committees in which the presidential candidate is a participant (and presumably principal draw) were counted as supporting the candidate. Even though some of the money raised goes to state parties and other entities that participate in the committee, it is difficult to know exactly how those funds are used–but we know a major focus is the race for president.