The billionaire candidate boom  

Billionaires in both parties loom large over the political landscape, and more are jumping into the ring with high-profile runs for office during this year’s midterms.   

The 2024 election was the most expensive election in history, with nearly 20 percent of a whopping $15.9 billion total coming from billionaire donors. Tech mogul Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, spent at least $250 million on President Trump’s election, then became one of several billionaires tapped by Trump for top roles in his second administration.   

Now, several billionaires are making runs for major offices this year, including three new candidates for governor’s mansions across the country.  

“Billionaires used to want to stay in the background and exercise power more discreetly, but now they’re just running for office,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust.” “I think they figured out: Why go through an intermediary when I could win the office and make the decisions myself?”  

Trump himself offers an example of how the billionaire class has stepped further into the electoral spotlight. With a net worth currently estimated at around $6.2 billion, according to Forbes data, he was the first billionaire voted into the White House.   

And he stocked his second term’s inner circle with similarly wealthy names, tapping Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire who ran for president against Trump in 2024, to oversee sweeping cuts to the federal workforce.  

Ramaswamy, who won his primary in the race for Ohio governor on Tuesday, has taken heat over his wealth from rival Democrat Amy Acton, who’s blasted him as “truly out of touch billionaire.”  

He made his fortune as an entrepreneur, founding the biotech company Roivant in 2014 with aims to revive drugs stuck in development by other pharmaceutical companies. Ramaswamy stepped down from the company’s board of directors as he launched his White House bid, which rocketed him onto the political scene.   

The political newcomer poured millions into his presidential campaign, eventually dropping out to endorse Trump. He bowed out of co-leading the Department of Government Efficiency just hours after Trump took office, amid speculations that he’d run for elected office.   

He’s now running in a surprisingly competitive race for governor in red Ohio, vying to replace term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine (R). As polling shows him in a dead heat with Acton, Ramaswamy dumped $25 million of his own funds into his campaign in the first quarter of the year and raised over $30 million more between his campaign and a super PAC supporting him. Acton raised $5 million in the first quarter.  

“There certainly is a healthy distrust of and cynicism about money in politics, but —  it could be a counter to that, where somebody who’s uber wealthy says to folks, ‘Look, I don’t need any more money. I’ve got all I need. All I care about is representing the district or the state,'” said David Dulio, a political science professor and the director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Oakland University.     

Ramaswamy also came from a “very middle class family, very much in touch with the regular struggles of the middle class,” said Ohio GOP Chair Alex Triantafilou. “He’s just this incredible Ohio success story.” 

Over on the West Coast, another billionaire is considered one of the frontrunners to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) as leader of California. 

With an estimated $2.4 billion net worth, Democrat Tom Steyer has pitched himself as “the billionaire who wants to tax other billionaires,” seeking to reach voters skeptical of the ultra-wealthy class as pocketbook issues plague the midterms.   

A longtime environmental activist and philanthropist, Steyer built his wealth as a hedge fund investor, founding the San Francisco-based Farallon Capital. He also founded NextGen America in 2013, a progressive group focused on climate issues and young voter mobilization.   

In 2020, he ran for the White House in a crowded Democratic field and spent a stunning $24 million on the key early state of South Carolina alone, dwarfing his Democratic primary rivals — but ultimately dropped out after........

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