Richest ever

It's not just Trump

A POLITICO special report on the richest ever presidential field, a campaign of and about the .1% 

By  POLITICO Staff

Carly Fiorina may be the new surprise flavor of the month in the GOP field, but there’s one aspect of her candidacy that’s neither surprising nor unusual in this 2016 field: she’s rich — in her case, very rich.

Forget about the top 1 percent. An analysis of federal elections data by POLITICO shows that five candidates, led by billionaire Donald Trump, are in the top 0.1 percent. Fourteen of the candidates — 12 Republicans and two Democrats — have an average net worth above $1 million. Ten of the candidates (eight Republicans and two Democrats, including the front-runner) exceed the $7.76 million that qualifies them as members of the celebrated 1 percenters club.

The former Hewlett-Packard CEO, who touts her humble rise from secretary in a small real estate office, is worth $58.9 million, according to a POLITICO analysis of candidates’ assets and liabilities, the first to embrace 20 candidates in both parties.

A significant portion of Fiorina's wealth stems from the more than $20 million golden parachute she received after being fired from Hewlett-Packard in 2005. Her assets include a $6.6 million waterfront home on five acres in Lorton, Virginia, and more than 1,100 stocks, bonds and investment funds. But like most of the other superwealthy candidates, she presents herself as both exceptional and ordinary.

"The wealthy, the well-connected. All those tax credits and deductions — I can take them. But, the secretary that I used to be, working in the nine-person real estate firm — those deductions don't help her and they don't help the 9 person real estate firm," she told CNN.

POLITICO’s analysis is based on financial disclosures, which were filed with the Federal Election Commission. (Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, has not filed his disclosure.) Bernie Sanders, the one socialist in the race, has a net worth of nearly half of a million dollars, though it’s all in his wife’s name. Even the four presidential hopefuls with negative net worth — Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker and Martin O’Malley — nevertheless boast assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Santorum has as much as $1.8 million in stocks and other investments. These are not “everyday Americans” for whom the economic recovery still might feel more statistical than real.

POLITICO calculated the average net worth of the candidates using data filed with the FEC. Candidates are required to report their income, assets and liabilities (as well as their spouses'), often in broad ranges. They do not have to report the value of their private homes (or mortgages on them), unless it is a property from which they derive rental income.

POLITICO tallied all the assets and liabilities and then subtracted from each other — minimum liabilities from minimum assets, maximum liabilties from maximum assets — yielding two numbers that were averaged to determine a final net worth figure. POLITICO has compared these net worth figures with national wealth data compiled by New York University economics professor Edward Wolff, who follows household wealth trends using data from the Federal Reserve. His most recent paper on the subject published in December revealed that the median household wealth in the U.S. is $115,000.

With the notable exceptions of Trump, Fiorina and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, all of whom are rising steadily in the polls, the pack is made up of professional politicians for whom access to the corridors of power in state capitals and Washington, D.C. has proven a reliable font of income.

Despite her panic at leaving the White House “dead broke,” Hillary Clinton has traded on her peerless political profile to become a millionaire many times over. In 2014, she gave 51 speeches. Each time she stepped to the microphone she earned an average of $235,000, more than eight times the median annual salary in the United States.

Jeb Bush, who has decried the revolving door culture of political influence peddling, replenished his diminished coffers after he left the Florida governor’s mansion by joining more than a dozen corporate boards. His net worth now stands at nearly $25 million, making him the fifth richest of the contenders, according to POLITICO.

Even the least financially savvy candidates have a standard of living that most of their constituents would envy. Rubio cashed out several retirement accounts to raise money for his presidential campaign (and to buy a $3,000 refrigerator), a move that cost him money in penalties for early withdrawal of funds. But the Florida senator also has made $800,000 from a book deal that enabled him to splurge on an $80,000 sport fishing boat.

The abundance of money market accounts, 401Ks, LLC partnerships, million-dollar book royalties and five-digit honoraria scattered throughout these forms would suggest that the days when a former haberdasher from Missouri like Harry Truman could get nominated are gone for good.

Still, the wealth of these candidates isn’t necessarily a turnoff to voters as long as they can talk about it effectively — without coming across as either dishonest or too elitist, several presidential historians and strategists told POLITICO.

In the 2012 election, Democrats were successful in portraying Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch millionaire in part because of the sluggish economic recovery and in part because the former Massachusetts governor allowed himself to be defined that way.

“It’s more about if the candidate is comfortable in his own skin,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist who served as an adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “Romney was not.”

Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s 2012 communications director, said net worth doesn’t matter to voters. “What matters is whether voters think a candidate cares about people like them. Republicans get judged harshly on that score, whereas wealthy Democrats like Ted Kennedy and Jay Rockefeller do not.”

Trump’s current front-runner status is the clearest counterargument to the critique usually leveled at rich candidates that they are unable to connect with average voters.

“Trump set the pace on a lot of issues — this is one that a lot of candidates are probably glad he did,” O’Connell said, adding that the millionaires in the field know they can now be open about their wealth. But with the exception of Trump, who boasts of his billions at every opportunity, the other candidates avoid acknowledging their affluence in favor of hearkening back to their humble roots.

To paraphrase Fitzgerald, fabulously rich presidential candidates are not like us, they just want to sound that way.