As billionaires such as Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg, and George Soros invest millions of dollars in the 2026 U.S. midterms, this round of elections is heading towards being the most expensive in history.

However, for some candidates, the rising cost of campaigning may not pose a significant financial obstacle. According to a analysis by The New York Times of candidates who have submitted their financial disclosure forms, at least half of the main contenders for U.S. Senate seats have a family net worth of at least $1 million.

At least 7 candidates have a net worth of over $10 million, and the net worth of two senators seeking re-election—Democratic Senator Mark Warner from Virginia and Republican Senator Pete Rikits from Nebraska—has risen to nine figures, both at around $200 million.

Their wealth stands in stark contrast to the financial realities of many Americans. Many Americans are struggling to cope with rising prices for food, gasoline, and other necessities, not to mention the increasingly unattainable "American Dream" of buying a house or accumulating long-term wealth.

Federal Reserve data shows that in 2025, the median net worth of American households was $215,900. This means that a candidate with a net worth of $1 million has more than four times the wealth of an average American household.

For comparison, the annual salary of a U.S. senator in office is $174,000, while the median net worth of the current group of senators is approximately $4 million.

The two richest people in Congress: a telecom venture capitalist and an heir to a brokerage firm

In this round of elections, the two wealthiest members of Congress are both on the list of candidates: Warner and Ricketts, both with an estimated net worth of about $200 million.

Most of Warner's wealth comes from Columbia Capital, a venture capital company focused on the cellular communications market that he founded; he is also a co-founder of FleetCall. FleetCall later became Nextel, and Nextel was acquired by Sprint for $35 billion in 2005.

According to a profile in The Washington Post in 1996, Warner "used political connections to pave his way in business and took advantage of perhaps one of the largest government gifts in modern history: billions of dollars in cellular phone licenses issued in the 1980s."

In 2002, Warner was elected Governor of Virginia, and later in 2009, he became a Senator.

Ricketts became the governor of Nebraska in 2015 and joined the Senate in 2023. He comes from a wealthy business family. He is the son of Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm Ameritrade, which has now been merged into Charles Schwab. Forbes estimates that the total net worth of the Ricketts family is $8.7 billion.

Ricketts' independent challenger, Dan Osborne, presents a distinctly different financial situation. Osborne declared that last year, his income from working as a mechanic at an HVAC company just exceeded $108,000.

Having money doesn't necessarily guarantee victory in an election.

Although wealth and politics are increasingly intertwined, having sufficient funds to support a campaign does not mean that candidates can buy public office with money.

An analysis by the Brookings Institution covering four election cycles from 2018 to 2024 found that a total of 183 candidates running for president or congressional seats invested over one million dollars in their campaigns; ultimately, only 33 people won the elections, accounting for 18%. Among them, 7 winners were current members of Congress.

Authors from the Brookings Institution write: “The fact is that most wealthy individuals who invest their personal funds in campaigns lose, and some of them lose quite badly.”

Taking David Trone as an example, the co-founder of these high-end wine and spirits retailers Total Wine & More, a billionaire, invested nearly 63 million dollars of his personal wealth in the 2024 Maryland Democratic Senate primary elections. However, he ultimately lost to the incumbent senator, Angela Alsobrooks, by more than 10 percentage points.

Former New York Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg invested over $1 billion in the 2020 presidential campaign, but ultimately withdrew from the race due to unfavorable polling results.