Sixteen years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted many of the limits on how much Americans could contribute to political campaigns. Since then, candidates and their allies have actively chased wealthy donors, with fewer constraints.
These donors have significantly more money to spend than they once did. The richest Americans saw their net worth soar 120 percent between 2017 and 2025, a New York Times analysis showed. The top 1 percent now control $55.8 trillion in assets — more than the gross domestic product of the United States and China combined.
Increasingly, they are using it to elect politicians who will advance their views of what America ought to be.
“Money begins not to matter at that level of wealth,” said Marc Baum, a hedge fund manager who is comfortably part of the nation’s top 1 percent. “There is no limit on things you can buy, so you start trying to buy outcomes.”
The New York Times analyzed federal, state and local campaign finance data to see how wealthy donors have been weighing into political campaigns not only in federal elections, but in contests for City Councils, state legislatures and State Supreme Courts.
Here is a snapshot of what the analysis showed.
300 billionaires and their families made 19 percent of reported federal contributions in 2024.
The Times analysis found that 300 billionaires and their immediate family members provided more than $3 billion of funding in federal elections last year, either directly or through political action committees.
So few donors providing so much money is a relatively new phenomenon in federal elections. Before the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that lifted many remaining campaign finance restrictions, the share of billionaire spending in federal elections was quite small.
The causes run the gamut: lowering taxes, expanding private charter schools, restricting abortion rights, opposing limits on evictions and advancing artificial intelligence in government.
Republicans saw a stark advantage that year.
In past elections, as ultrawealthy donors became more active, both major parties reaped rewards, as did some third parties. But there was a big divergence in 2024, with less money flowing directly to Democrats and a lot more donated to Republicans.
Billionaires and their immediate families donated more than $2 billion to Republicans and aligned committees, five times as much as this group gave to their counterparts among the Democrats.
Billionaires in the tech industry were some of the biggest contributors, in large part because many aligned with President Trump’s tax and deregulation policies.
Wealthy donors have also been active in state elections.
One of the country’s biggest donors is Jeff Yass, the co-founder of the trading firm Susquehanna International Group. Mr. Yass contributed more than $100 million to federal campaigns in 2024. The money went to a variety of conservative political action committees that sought to elect Republican members of Congress.
Mr. Yass remains one of the biggest individual donors in this year’s midterms, giving nearly $55 million to federal campaigns so far. But his influence is perhaps most apparent at the state level.
In Pennsylvania, where Mr. Yass resides, he provided through a series of committees nearly 90 percent of the funding for the Republican candidate for state attorney general in 2024, Dave Sunday.
Mr. Sunday won with 51 percent of the vote. He now oversees the office that has been investigating TikTok, the social media app in which Mr. Yass was a major investor through its former Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
Even board of education elections drew wealthy donors’ attention.
Alternatives to traditional public schools have been of particular interest for many billionaires for decades, including creating private or charter schools or funding efforts to redirect public dollars to them.
Over the past two election cycles, two billionaires have provided more than $9 million to fund the California Charter Schools Association, which in turn has contributed to a range of legislative and school board races, including one in 2024 for the Sacramento County Board of Education.
The association provided close to $100,000 to the campaign of Vanessa Caigoy, one of its own employees, who along with the other candidate backed by the charter group won seats on the county board.
Katie Benner contributed reporting.
Steven Rich is a data reporter at The Times, using data analysis to investigate major issues and contextualize current events.
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