50 Billionaire Clans Have Poured $600 Million Into ‘Family Business’ of Buying Candidates

The total will almost certainly top $1 trillion by the time the voting ends.

By William Rice

It can be heart-warming to see families pooling their resources to achieve a common goal. But when it’s billionaire families trying to hijack our democracy through their campaign contributions, it’s unsettling. A new ATF report reveals that as of early May 50 billionaire clans had already injected over $600 million into our political system—and it’s still nearly six months till Election Day. The total will almost certainly top $1 trillion by the time the voting ends.

Equally as disturbing as the level of billionaire campaign spending is its overwhelming purpose.  Over two-thirds of the donations (69%) have so far supported Republican candidates and conservative causes. Since cutting taxes on the rich is central to the GOP and conservative agenda, it’s clear these billionaire-family contributions are investments in keeping their family fortunes intact. 

After all, President Biden and Democrats in Congress want to see billionaire families pay a fairer share—while Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans are promising the rich even more tax cuts. So it’s no wonder that billionaire families like the Kochs, Mellons and Waltons should be almost exclusively supporting GOP candidates. 

This latest report is part of a series on billionaire political spending from ATF that dates back over three years. But it’s the first to look beyond the campaign contributions of individual tycoons to encompass the “election investments” of whole billionaire clans. As massive fortunes are a family affair, looking at the political donations of entire billionaire broods gives a more accurate picture of how the super-rich are trying to shape our democracy to their liking.  

Some might wonder how billionaire families can flex their financial muscles quite so expansively: aren’t there legal limits to campaign contributions? There are caps on how much you can give to candidates, political parties and political action committees (PACs) that work openly with campaigns. But thanks to the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, there is no maximum contribution to independent expenditure committees, also known as super PACs. 

Super PACs can pull in unlimited amounts of campaign cash from every contributor and are therefore the billionaire families’ political vehicle of choice. The tradeoff is supposed to be that these groups are not allowed to coordinate their activities with candidates—but that rule is frequently and easily gotten around. 

As big a splash as $600 million can make in a campaign cycle, its impact on the bank accounts of the billionaire-family donors is surprisingly insignificant. Collectively the 50 clans are worth over $1 trillion, so that $600 million in political giving is roughly the same to them as what chipping in $100 to a favored campaign would be for a typical American family. 

Of course, the $600 million is probably only part of the story. Billionaire families have another channel for their political money that not only accepts unlimited amounts but that, unlike the super PAC system, doesn’t even require public disclosure. So-called “dark money” groups—famous national lobbies like the NRA and Planned Parenthood and many others you’ve never heard of—can endorse and work for candidates but are not required to share the names of their donors. The only condition is that such politicking not be the organization’s “primary purpose”. But since no one can define exactly what that means, the rules are loose to say the least. 

Compounding the problem of dark money groups is that they can use their secretly-sourced cash to contribute unlimited amounts to super PACs. It’s likely a lot of billionaire-family money is finding its way into the 2024 campaign through this cloaked and circuitous route. 

The heavy influence of billionaire-family money in our democratic process represents a double failure of public policy. Our campaign-finance system should be reformed to create real limits on political spending and full disclosure of campaign giving so that billionaire families can’t anonymously smother the concerns of ordinary voters with their piles of cash.  And those piles should be considerably reduced through more effective taxation of billionaire wealth, the income from that wealth, and the transfer of that wealth down the generations. 

Until we institute those changes, we can expect to see the billionaire-family business of buying elections continuing to thrive.