This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s partnership with NOTUS, a nonpartisan news organization that covers government and politics with the fresh eyes of early career journalists and the expertise of veteran reporters.
The Senate is a millionaires club.
At least 73 of the 100 sitting U.S. senators have a median net worth of more than a million dollars, according to a NOTUS analysis of lawmakers’ most recent financial disclosures.
That may not surprise most Americans, who believe that people run for office to make a lot of money. But it’s hardly representative of the United States, where millionaires make up around 7% of the population, according to UBS’ 2025 Global Wealth Report.
“The Senate is packed with multimillionaires, and the fact is some of them have lost touch with the real world challenges faced by Americans all over the country,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, told NOTUS in a statement. “It is part of the reason that we have a tax system that favors people who make money off of money and penalizes those who earn a paycheck through hard work. We need to change that.”
Van Hollen is one of at least 11 senators whose median net worth is less than the median household net worth of their respective states, according to a NOTUS analysis of senators’ financial disclosures and U.S. Census Bureau data. Van Hollen has a median net worth of $7,500; the median Maryland household has a net worth of $152,400. (Census Bureau data does not include median household net worth for seven states: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.)
Every year, members of Congress must report the values of their assets and liabilities in broad ranges, like $15,001 to 50,000. The ranges get bigger and bigger the larger the assets or liabilities get. The biggest value range they can report is open ended — $50 million, or more.
To calculate lawmakers’ median net worth, NOTUS analyzed lawmakers’ financial reports to determine their minimum net worth — the sum of the minimum value of all their assets minus the sum of the maximum value of all their liabilities — and their maximum net worth — maximum asset value minus minimum liabilities. NOTUS then calculated the median between the minimum and maximum net worths.
There are assets lawmakers don’t have to report, like their primary residences, vehicles, personal property and pensions. They do, however, have to report mortgages on those residences as liabilities, which also frequently includes student-loan and credit-card debt. (For the sake of comparison, NOTUS used Census Bureau data that excludes equity — the value of a house minus the outstanding mortgage balance — in a household’s primary residence.)
The upshot: Millionaires are overrepresented in the Senate by comparison to the American public. The median net worth in the Senate is nearly $4.4 million — more than 70 times the Census-reported median U.S. household net worth, which similarly excludes equity in primary residences. (To arrive at a median net worth of the Senate as a whole, NOTUS calculated the median of all senators’ median net worths.)
The vast wealth gap between senators and their constituents raises questions around what informs Senate policymaking — and what kind of finances Americans need to have in order to successfully run for the Senate in the first place.
“When you have predominantly multimillionaires who are making policy decisions for over 300 million Americans, those policy debates and discussions are distorted by the fact that the decision-makers are extremely wealthy individuals,” Aaron Scherb, a longtime ethics and democracy advocate, told NOTUS.
Sen. Jim Justice, a Republican representing West Virginia, has by far the highest median net worth — on paper, at least. He has a median net worth of nearly $1.3 billion; in contrast, the median household net worth in West Virginia is $18,000.
Since Justice was elected to the Senate in November 2024, his son and daughter have managed various aspects of his coal, agriculture and hospitality empire. Justice — and often his canine pal, Babydog — commute daily to Washington in a private jet.
More than half of Justice’s fortune comes from his coal-mining empire, according to his most recent financial disclosure, which also disclosed tens of millions of dollars in agriculture ventures and real estate, including The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
But over the years, Justice’s businesses have been hit with numerous legal challenges related to water pollution, “environmental harm” and unpaid taxes and debts, which has raised questions about the senator’s actual net worth.
Instances of extraordinary wealth are common among senators.
Many senators, like Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida, came into public office wealthy.
Scott made his fortune as a health-care executive in the 1990s. In 2024, his median net worth was $578.9 million. His assets include a personal residence — which members of Congress are not required to disclose — valued from $25 million to $50 million, as well as multiple planes.
In his latest financial disclosure, Scott said he owns “airplanes” worth $25 million to $50 million and a “light-sport airplane” worth $100,001 to $250,000.
In a statement to NOTUS, Scott walked through how he went from growing up in public housing, joining the U.S. Navy and going to college on the GI Bill to becoming a multimillionaire. He cited his career in business, from buying a doughnut shop to running “the world’s largest healthcare company.” Under his leadership, the for-profit hospital chain Columbia/HCA Healthcare was the subject of a federal investigation for Medicare fraud, and was ultimately fined $1.7 billion — which was the largest health-care fraud fine of its time.
Scott, whose wealth stems from his time at the health-care company, has previously referred to the investigation as “political persecution.”
“I started working when I was 7 and haven’t stopped since,” Scott told NOTUS in a statement. “I have built, turned around, and run many businesses, and I am so proud to live in a country where I could live my dream.”
Scott said he did not take a salary during his time as governor of Florida and that he donates his Senate salary to charity — and that he is “blessed and working every day so all families in our country can live their version of the American Dream.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat representing Massachusetts who has long supported taxing ultra-millionaires, is a millionaire herself. Warren does not own individual stocks, but her and her husband’s median net worth increased from almost $8.7 million in 2013, her first year in the Senate, to nearly $11.1 million in 2024. She disclosed royalty agreements for nine books, including four since she became a senator, one of the few forms of outside employment members of Congress can take on.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, whose median net worth is around $159 million, married into wealth — his wife and her family own part of the Empire State Building.
Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts and his family own the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Ricketts himself has a median net worth of nearly $190 million.
And before becoming a senator, Bill Hagerty — whose median net worth is around $45.1 million — led efforts to bring a Major League Soccer team to Nashville, Tennessee. Four of his children are now investors in the Nashville Soccer Club through “Nashville Soccer Holdings, LLC,” with each asset valued from $1 million to $5 million, according to his latest financial disclosure.
The list goes on.
NOTUS contacted the above lawmakers to comment on their net worth — and to respond to comments suggesting that the amount of wealth in the Senate could distort the policymaking process.
Republican senators, on average, have higher median net worths than their Democratic colleagues or the senators who caucus with them: independent Sens. Bernie Sanders and Angus King.
The median net worth for members of the Senate Democratic Caucus is more than $2.9 million, while for Senate Republicans, it’s nearly $5.7 million.
Of the 47 senators who caucus with Democrats, NOTUS found that 32 have a median net worth of more than a million dollars. Forty-one of the 53 Republican senators have a median net worth north of a million dollars.
There is not a strong correlation between wealth and age in the Senate, although the average estimated wealth of the six senators in the Silent Generation far exceeds that of other generations.
The median estimated net worth of Silent Generation senators is nearly $13.8 million. The median senator age is 66 years old, which falls into the baby boomer generation, which has a median estimated net worth of nearly $5.9 million in the Senate. The median estimated net worth declines sharply among Gen X senators to around $746,000, then rebounds to nearly $2.9 million for millennial senators.
The enormous cost of running a Senate campaign is one explanation for the concentration of millionaires in the upper chamber.
During the 2024 election cycle, senators raised an average of $8.2 million and spent nearly $8.4 million, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks money in politics.
“You need a mountain of sugar, and you can either do it with a shovel and build a mountain to run a competitive Senate race, or you can hand these politicians a teaspoon and say, ‘Start building your mountain so you can be competitive.’ And that requires so much time, so much energy and so much effort,” Sam Geduldig, a managing partner at the Republican firm CGCN, told NOTUS.
The influx of money in politics “opened the door for the parties to have to recruit people that can build their own pile of sugar and run a race and win, and that’s why you have so many wealthy individuals in the U.S. Senate,” Geduldig added, calling it “cost prohibitive for a middle-class human being to get involved in politics and run.”
It takes time and energy to raise millions of dollars to run for office, and candidates often have to give up jobs — and health insurance — to run an all-consuming campaign. After low- and middle-income candidates testified about the financial strain of running for office, the Federal Election Commission last year made it much easier for candidates to use campaign funds to pay themselves a salary.
In one of the most expensive races of 2024, Ohio Republican challenger Bernie Moreno’s campaign spent nearly $26.7 million to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, including $4.5 million of his own money. Brown’s campaign spent nearly $101.4 million, without candidate self-financing — and that’s not even counting the tens of millions of dollars outside groups spent to influence the race, including the more than $40 million a cryptocurrency-industry-backed super PAC spent supporting Moreno.
Moreno, who ultimately won the 2024 election, has a median net worth of nearly $131.9 million. The median household net worth in Ohio is $54,000.
“Unless you’re a businessperson or a doctor or a lawyer or just connected to wealth, running for Senate is just not something that most people can even fathom thinking about because it takes tens of millions of dollars to run for and win a Senate seat, so it’s just leaving out huge swaths of hardworking Americans,” Scherb, the ethics and democracy advocate, said.