In North Carolina, a television ad blasts Republican Ted Budd, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, for his role in a failed agricultural business. “He gets paid while North Carolina farmers get screwed,” declares the commercial. Voters in Texas, meanwhile, are treated to frequent airings of an advertisement that says Democratic House candidate Michelle Vallejo is “dangerous for South Texas” because of her “anarchist” views.
Major philanthropists like George Soros, Kenneth Griffin, and Miriam Adelson have a hand in these ad campaigns and more. Dozens of major charitable donors are cutting personal checks to bankroll political groups at the heart of the action in the final days of the midterms. Already scrutinized for the clout they wield through their megagifts to nonprofits, most of these leading philanthropists are availing themselves of multimillion-dollar contributions made legal by 2010’s controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Of the biggest 100 political donors so far in this election cycle, 32 are major philanthropists — individuals and couples who have signed the Giving Pledge or appeared on either the Forbes list of most generous billionaires or the Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle’s annual ranking of the Americans who give the most to charity in a year. Collectively, these donors have made political contributions in the 2021-22 election cycle totaling at least a half billion dollars, according to an analysis by Open Secrets, a campaign-finance watchdog.
This tally, based on federal records through September 30, reflects only some of the political giving of major philanthropists. Significant dollars are likely to flow in the last weeks of the campaigns. These philanthropists also give to state election campaigns and ballot initiatives, contributions that do not appear in the federal records reviewed by Open Secrets and the Chronicle.
Additionally, wealthy individuals contribute untold millions to “dark money” political groups not required to name their donors publicly. “What we’re seeing is the tip of the iceberg,” says Michael Beckel, research director of Issue One, a nonprofit that aims to reduce spending in politics. “There’s a lot of undisclosed money in politics, and we don’t know if it’s coming from these individuals or others who want to remain out of the limelight.”
Philanthropists at the Top
Financier Soros, founder of the Open Society Foundations, one of the country’s largest grant makers, is the nation’s top political donor to date, having contributed more than $128 million to liberal political causes and Democratic candidates, according to Open Secrets. Most notably, Soros donated $125 million in January to Democracy PAC II, a political action committee known as a “super PAC,” which can receive and spend unlimited amounts. He described the contribution as a “long-term investment” to support political work in future elections as well as 2022.
The 5 Philanthropists Giving the Most to Politics
- George Soros: $128 million
- Kenneth Griffin: $66 million
- Sam Bankman-Fried: $39 million
- Larry Ellison: $31 million
- Patrick and Shirley Ryan: $26 million
See a full list below.
Altogether, 15 major charitable donors are among the biggest 25 political contributors in the 2022 cycle. In the top 10 with Soros are four others: hedge-fund manager Griffin ($66 million donated so far), cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried ($39 million), private-equity titan Stephen Schwarzman ($33 million), Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison ($31 million), and business executive Patrick Ryan and his wife, Shirley ($26 million).
Giving by individuals can pale in contrast to the dollars that corporations and unions invest in politics. And the philanthropists’ political donations can seem insignificant compared with their charitable largess. Venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife, Ann, announced a $1.1 billion gift to Stanford University this summer and yet have donated only about $5 million so far to political candidates and causes in this election cycle.
Still, philanthropists’ free spending makes them political heavyweights. Democrats and Republicans increasingly rely on wealthy individuals, says Beckel of Issue One. “There has been an explosion of big-dollar contributions from some of the wealthiest Americans,” he says. “A lot of donors are asked to pony up as much money as they can.”
As 2022 campaigns race to the finish, donor cash will support get-out-the-vote operations, voter education and registration, and direct mail. But much of it will pay for ad blitzes on television, radio, the internet, and social media. Eleven liberal-leaning major philanthropists gave nearly $33 million to the group that produced and aired the Budd advertisement — the Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Those include Soros ($13 million through his two political action committees) and hedge-fund titan Jim Simons and his wife, Marilyn ($10 million), according to federal election records.
Another 11 conservative-minded charitable donors contributed more than $64 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House Republican leadership group that rolled out the Vallejo advertisement. Those include Griffin (almost $19 million) and Adelson ($10 million), widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
‘Tool to Influence Policy’
Activists on the left and right welcome such political giving and say it helps advance meaningful change — exactly what many philanthropists hope their charity can achieve. “Over the past 10 or 15 years, philanthropists of all types, regardless of their political perspective, have become interested in changing systems that have created the problems that they want to address,” says Melissa Berman, president of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. “Many, many more people see money as a tool to influence policy.”
In some instances, philanthropists’ political contributions appear to align with the goals of their charity. The liberal Soros gives to candidates and groups that share Open Society’s values, says Michael Vachon, a spokesman for the billionaire. Open Society’s deputy chair, Soros’s son Alex, shares control of the two Soros super PACs: Democracy PAC and Democracy II PAC. The organizations have given $1 million each to Care in Action, which supports women candidates of color, and Planned Parenthood Votes, a super PAC. Soros personally has donated $1 million to the political action committee for Color of Change, a civil-rights advocacy organization.
Similarly, Zia Ahmed, a representative for Ken Griffin, said in an email that the billionaire’s political giving shares the same goals and principles as his philanthropy — “preserving America as a nation of opportunity and freedom.” Ahmed added that in Illinois, Griffin is one of “a handful of committed political supporters who give a voice to a number of Republican candidates while public sector unions and political cronies underwrite the Democratic Party.”
Still, most of the 32 philanthropists in the Chronicle analysis backed ventures whose only goal is to seat candidates in Congress from one party.
At least $160 million of their political donations went to the four main super PACs vying to control either the House or the Senate — and often using mudslinging ads or other controversial tactics to do so. Particularly questionable this election cycle were efforts by the Democratic groups that supported Trump-backed candidates in the Republican primaries, believing Democrats would fare better against them in the general election. “It reeks of hypocrisy to elevate figures who deny the election while also making the case that they are a grievous threat to American democracy,” the Washington Post editorial board wrote about these efforts.
Even if donors selectively fund campaigns tied to their charitable work, the sheer size of their political giving raises concerns that already powerful philanthropists are buying influence in the arena that is democracy’s bedrock. “It’s a lot of power — both political power and philanthropic influence — in a handful of people,” says Chuck Collins, who studies inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies.
In some instances, a single billionaire is providing the lion’s share, if not all, of the funding for a super PAC. Ellison’s $30 million in donations to South Carolina GOP Senator Tim Scott’s super PAC makes up the bulk of its contributions and its spending on ads supporting Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, Georgia’s Herschel Walker, and other GOP candidates. Connie Ballmer has provided $5 million of the $11 million raised by an Everytown for Gun Safety political action committee running ads against Walker and Johnson and Republican candidates in other battleground states.
The political system is beginning to feel like an “intra-billionaire squabble,” Collins adds. Average Americans become “just spectators watching the gladiators duke it out, funded by their patrons.”
Given the volatility and stakes of politics today, philanthropists on both sides of the aisle may see electing their candidates of choice as crucial to preserving democracy. But the reverse may be true, says Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, a good-government nonprofit. “Most of these resources are funding 30-second ads telling one side of the country why the other side is an existential threat,” Troiano says. “It’s deepening polarization.
Also, as philanthropists wade into take-no-prisoner political brawls, they can fund sharply partisan and personal messages at odds with philanthropy’s promote-the-social-good ethos. The family foundation of Craig Duchossois — who has given at least $2.7 million to the group that produced the Vallejo “anarchist” attack ad — says it “strives to empower individuals to enhance their quality of life.” (The foundation declined to comment.)
Ads funded by the philanthropists also can seem counterproductive to elements of their charitable giving. One of the four priorities for investor Seth Klarman’s family foundation is “the preservation of democratic norms” and “a healthy democracy,” according to its website. Yet Klarman has donated $1.5 million to the Republican Accountability PAC, which is airing ads in Georgia promoting the allegations that anti-abortion GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker paid for a girlfriend’s abortion. A spokesperson for Klarman declined to comment.
Microsoft mogul Steve Ballmer and his wife, Connie, offer an example of how political giving and philanthropy can work together — and conflict. The two have given $12 million since 2020 to Everytown for Gun Safety’s super PAC in keeping with their longstanding philanthropy and political work for gun-violence prevention. This fall, Everytown’s ads against Republican candidates were highly partisan and often personal: A commercial against Walker in Georgia denounced the candidate’s positions on gun safety and abortion as an “extreme agenda.”
Yet Steve Ballmer champions nonpartisanship in his philanthropy. He created and funds the nonprofit USAFacts, which develops and promotes presentations of government information. “I am partisan for facts themselves,” Ballmer said when the group launched in 2017. (A representative for the Ballmer Group, the couple’s philanthropy, declined to comment, saying their political giving is a personal matter.)
Unleashing Big Money
Changes in campaign law over the past decade have given the wealthy more clout in elections.
Giving to candidates remains limited; individual donors can contribute no more than $5,800 — $2,900 each for the primary and general elections. Similar restrictions cap contributions to committees run by political parties.
But the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling enabled corporations and other groups working independently of candidates to raise and spend unlimited funds. In 2014, the court in its McCutcheon v. FEC ruling also struck down laws that limited aggregate spending by individuals.
A few major philanthropists are giving to politics not through multimillion-dollar contributions but through relatively small donations to scores of candidates and committees. Melinda French Gates, whose political contributions total less than a half-million dollars and who is not among the top 100 political donors, has not made a five-figure donation during this cycle, according to federal records. MacKenzie Scott appears to eschew giving to Washington politics altogether; she doesn’t appear in the federal campaign contributions database.
At least some charitable donors direct money outside partisan politics to fix what they see as a broken system. John and Laura Arnold, who also are not among the 100 biggest political donors, back state ballot initiatives and other efforts to establish nonpartisan ranked-choice primaries as well as independent commissions to oversee legislative redistricting and avoid gerrymandering by state lawmakers.
The Arnolds are among several heavyweight philanthropists bankrolling a Nevada ranked-choice voting ballot initiative this fall. The group includes at least two major charitable donors who also rank among the top 100 political contributors: Griffin and Kathryn Murdoch, the daughter-in-law of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch and the Arnolds also support Unite America, which promotes what it calls “political philanthropy” — giving not to ensure who wins elections but to strengthen the process. “This is the highest leverage philanthropic dollar that one can invest: ensuring the health of our democracy,” says Troiano, the group’s executive director. “That means engagement in politics but not necessarily in partisan politics.”
