Nine Wealthy Donors Who Were Major Players in the Most Expensive Election on Record
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Michael Bloomberg speaks at a campaign event in January 2020. Photo: lev radin/shutterstock
The rising clout of big money is a defining trend of these times, and what’s true in philanthropy is also true in politics. The 2020 election is projected to have cost nearly $14 billion, including House and Senate races, with the presidential contest alone accounting for $6.6 billion in spending. That total blows away previous records and reflects an atmosphere of high stakes and extreme polarization that drove some of the biggest donors to give at levels even higher than normal.
Even as ordinary Americans donated in record numbers this year, members of the far upper class deployed their campaign cash in predictable and unprecedented ways. Through super PACs, big donors’ most important vehicle for direct political impact, donors can spend unlimited sums to influence elections so long as they don’t coordinate with, or contribute to, actual candidates and campaigns. As in other recent elections, super PAC donations accounted for the lion’s share of big donors’ traceable political giving this year.
At the same time, these figures also often engage in a variety of less transparent political funding, often through 501(c)(4) organizations. It should also be noted that, while not as popular among most mega-donors listed here, philanthropy played a substantial role in supporting social justice organizing work that surely factored into the election results.
While philanthropic giving and political giving exist in different legal realms, they are both tools the wealthiest among us use to influence society, and they are often used in tandem. Many of 2020’s heaviest-hitting political donors also boast extensive philanthropic track records, although some do focus on politics and spend little time in the 501(c)(3) realm. Here, in no particular order, are nine leading philanthropists whose political spending played a major role in the election this year, and a brief rundown of the charitable causes they also support.
Michael Bloomberg
A sophisticated and dedicated philanthropist, the former New York City mayor and financial media maven is a prominent funder in issues like climate change, public health and gun violence. He’s also been a committed political donor for years. Nevertheless, his record as such in 2020 is decidedly mixed. Bloomberg’s ill-fated primary campaign as a Democrat is said to have cost him in the ballpark of $1 billion, and he has little to show for it beyond a brief spell in the spotlight that faded in the spring, as Joe Biden sailed toward the nomination and COVID-19 took hold.
Mike Bloomberg kept a pretty low profile in the wake of that setback, but came in guns blazing late in the election with $100 million in anti-Trump spending in Florida. While Donald Trump did end up taking Florida, Bloomberg’s push may have forced the president’s campaign to redirect money there, perhaps making it easier for Biden to secure other key states.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan
Zuckerberg and Chan aren’t major super PAC contributors like many on this list, but they did impact the election in profound ways. This fall, independently from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, they gave away hundreds of millions to bolster state and local election infrastructure, a c3 funding move that’s deeply unconventional and prompted some backlash from conservatives. The couple’s cash commitment to help virus-proof the vote roughly equaled that of the federal government itself, which earmarked only $400 million for that purpose in the CARES Act.
Zuckerberg and Chan’s massive nonpartisan gift no doubt factors into the relative ease with which voting proceeded through Election Day, defying pessimists’ predictions of widespread chaos and violence. It was also an interesting and possibly precedent-setting move from donors whose innovative philanthropy belies the source of their wealth, Facebook, which is now infamous for failing to curb the spread of misinformation and extremism.
Sheldon Adelson
The casino mogul stands out for the sheer magnitude of his political giving, as well as its consistency. He has ranked among the top billionaire donors to super PACs and other outside spending organizations since circa 2012, when he thundered onto the political spending scene with nearly $100 million in conservative political donations. In 2016 and again in 2018, Adelson spent similar sums to boost Republicans, and topped it off with at least $180 million this year.
Like most of the top super PAC spenders—liberal and conservative alike—Adelson’s political spending predates the era of Donald Trump. But given the magnitude of his support for Republicans in recent years, Adelson has been a major factor in securing Trump’s wins and boosting Trump-era conservatives in Congress. Adelson and his wife Miriam conduct their philanthropy through several vehicles, including the Adelson Family Foundation, where support for Israel and other Jewish causes has been a major focus.
Tom Steyer
Steyer’s personal forays into presidential campaigning haven’t been very successful, but he’s still one of the most important political donors out there. Like Bloomberg, Adelson and others, Steyer is a familiar face in the annals of big-time super PAC support. But in Steyer’s case, much of that support goes to organizations he founded, like NextGen America (formerly NextGen Climate). The bulk of his 2020 political spending, which totaled over $66 million, went to his super PAC, NextGen Climate Action.
Steyer is also a giant in the world of c3 climate funding. In addition to NextGen America, Steyer and wife Kat Taylor fund environmental causes through the TomKat Foundation. They’ve given substantial sums toward sustainable agriculture and sustainable energy R&D, including $40 million to create the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford University and $25 million to establish Yale’s Energy Sciences Institute.
Richard Uihlein
ULine founder Richard Uihlein’s support for conservative PACs has climbed with each successive election cycle. His 2020 contributions totaled over $62 million and benefited a number of super PACs, including Club for Growth Action, Restoration PAC and the pro-Trump America First Action. Uihlein is a longtime right-leaning donor whose philanthropy reflects his politics. Through the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, he has directed tens of millions to conservative and libertarian nonprofits over the years, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Americans for Prosperity. He’s also a Philanthropy Roundtable backer.
Jim Simons
Renaissance Technologies’ co-founder has long been a major liberal donor. In 2020, Simons contributed upward of $22 million to several of the biggest super PACs backing Democrats, including the Senate and House Majority PACs and Priorities USA Action. He gave a comparable amount during the 2018 midterms, mostly to a similar set of super PACs. In terms of philanthropy, Simons is less political than some of the other names on this list. The substantial resources of the Simons Foundation, run by Jim and wife Marilyn Simons, support basic research in fields like the physical and life sciences, mathematics, medicine (autism in particular) and the application of computational methods to research inquiries.
Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna
In the 2016 election cycle, the billionaire couple spent over $24 million to elect Hillary Clinton and back Democrats. In addition to typical liberal super PACs like Priorities USA Action, some of their contributions four years ago went to organizations that resonate in 2020, like the political arm of Color of Change. This year, Moskovitz and Tuna spent roughly the same amount during the last few months before Election Day. Their main beneficiary is Future Forward USA, a Democratic super PAC bankrolled by a number of tech philanthropy luminaries, including Eric Schmidt and Patty Quillin. Moskovitz and Tuna are the primary funders of the Open Philanthropy Project, which applies an effective altruist approach to priorities like criminal justice reform, immigration policy reform and global health.
Kenneth Griffin
Hedge funder Kenneth Griffin ramped up his 2020 political giving this summer when he began lavishing millions on pro-Republican super PACs like the Congressional Leadership Fund and on state-focused groups in Georgia, Michigan and Iowa. That approach tracks with the way he supported conservative groups in prior cycles, but the grand total this year far exceeded Griffin’s previous political commitments at over $45 million. Though Griffin has mentioned in the past that he isn’t “ideologically married to a particular party or mindset,” his philanthropy and his political donations point to a concern with free expression and the free market. In particular, a $125 million gift to the University of Chicago—which he did not attend—at least partially reflected his assessment of that school’s free speech stance (and perhaps the famous laissez faire bent of its economics department). Griffin has said he plans to donate over $1 billion to higher education during his lifetime.
Stephen Schwarzman
Another financial winner, this time from private equity, Schwarzman has a giving profile that resembles Griffin’s in many ways. He’s another Republican political donor who committed a tidy sum—over $28 million—to outside spending groups this cycle. In addition to big gifts to the Senate Leadership Fund, Schwarzman supported the 1820 PAC to the tune of at least $2 million. The name is a reference to the year of Maine’s founding, and the super PAC’s goal this year was to re-elect Senator Susan Collins, an objective in which it was successful. Schwarzman’s philanthropy fits a more traditional mold, favoring big gifts to educational and cultural institutions. But as we’ve written, it’s been surprisingly controversial at times, and there’s more to come.
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One takeaway from all of this is that at the highest levels of political spending, Democrat and Republican donors alike deployed money in keeping with their past spending. They’ve just spent more of it. And many of the same players are involved cycle after cycle. High-profile interventions by the likes of Bloomberg and Zuckerberg notwithstanding, I’ve focused on major super PAC spenders because that’s the clearest stream of political giving to trace.
But some of the most crucial impact this year stemmed from the work of donors who supported ground-level organizing. That includes wealthy people who committed to democracy funding in bold new ways, or super-rich donors like MacKenzie Scott and Jack Dorsey, whose philanthropy has embraced social justice organizing this year. Going forward, those modes of giving may grow in popularity as donors seek paths to political influence that run closer to the ground than super PAC ad buys. And those paths might involve c3 philanthropy a lot more often than you’d expect.
