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How rich is John Kerry?
A number of U.S. presidents have been spectacularly wealthy, and it looks like candidate John Kerry would fit right into the club should he win the office. Here's how he ranks against the presidents who were truly loaded.
By Dan Ackman, Forbes
Whatever schoolboy lore says about Abe Lincoln's log cabin or Lyndon Johnson's "Aw shucks" Texas upraising, many, if not most, U.S. presidents were born well-to-do, and nearly all were quite well off by the time they sought the nation's highest office.
A few presidents were spectacularly wealthy, such as the nation's first president, George Washington, who we reckon would have made the Forbes 400 of his day on the strength of his Virginia plantation and his wife's fortune. Others, like Lyndon Johnson and Andrew Jackson, used government service as a springboard to personal fortune.
If the Democratic primaries play out as expected, this year the race for the White House will pit Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts against George W. Bush. Bush, the second son of a president to attain the office, made our list of the richest presidents partly based on his claim to a family fortune, but mostly because of a windfall on his investment in the Texas Rangers baseball franchise.
The richest U.S. presidents
It is difficult to compare personal wealth across historical periods, but below is our best estimate of the relative net worths of the richest five U.S. presidents. The rankings are based on our own calculations and extensive interviews with presidential historians.
| The richest presidents | | Rank | Name | Party | Term | | 1. | George Washington | Federalist | 1789-1797 | | 2. | John F. Kennedy | Democrat | 1961-1963 | | John F. Kerry* | Democrat | NA | | 3. | Andrew Jackson | Democrat | 1829-1837 | | 4. | Lyndon B. Johnson | Democrat | 1963-1969 | | 5. | Herbert Hoover | Republican | 1929-1933 |
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* Candidate. NA: not applicable.
Sen. Kerry, like the last JFK from Massachusetts to serve as commander in chief, is also extremely wealthy. We estimate his family fortune at $525 million, which would make him, if elected, the third-richest president ever. But the key word is "family." The Kerry money comes from his wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, who inherited it from her late husband, Sen. John Heinz III of the Heinz food family.
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This puts Kerry in a situation somewhat similar to President Kennedy's. President Kennedy's father, Joseph, and his mother, Rose, were both still alive when JFK was in office and when he was assassinated, so John never inherited even a share of the Kennedy family fortune, which we estimated to be worth $850 million at its height in 1990.
But Joseph Kennedy was, under campaign finance laws at the time, free to spend basically as he wished on his son's electioneering efforts, which he did.
Kerry's wife can't give as much
Here John Kennedy and candidate Kerry part company. Current federal law prohibits wife Theresa from donating more than $2,000 to her husband's campaign. Indeed, in December, when Howard Dean was riding high, Kerry mortgaged his share of his family townhouse on Boston's Beacon Hill to raise money for his campaign.
In the course of his career, Kerry's campaigns have received substantial funding from employees and affiliates of such companies as FleetBoston Financial (FBF, news, msgs), Time Warner (TWX, news, msgs), Citigroup (C, news, msgs) and Goldman Sachs (GS, news, msgs), according to the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based investigative group. Corporate lawyer firms like Boston-based Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo and New York-based Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom have also been big backers.
While there are limits on what Theresa Heinz Kerry might contribute to her husband's campaign, she may, depending on how current law is construed, be able to spend as much of her own money as she wishes on "issue ads" -- advertisements that advance a cause or theme. She might also contribute unlimited sums to other groups running their own issue ads.
Of course, if Sen. Kerry's campaign were to benefit from spousal spending, there would inevitably be allegations that he was exploiting a loophole. Others would say that the candidate was simply countering the incumbent president's huge lead in fundraising.
Either way, this was the kind of issue that the widow Martha Dandridge Custis, who married the legendarily forthright Washington -- cherry tree and all that -- never had to worry about.
Copyright 2004 Forbes.com. All rights reserved.
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