The two men running for U.S. Senate in Ohio might be the exception. Sherrod Brown's net worth sits under $1 million. Jon Husted disclosed assets between $1.3 and $3 million. Neither is getting rich off the job. Nobody's writing songs about Sherrod Brown's investment portfolio. But understand the world around them — who's funding it, who's profiting from it, and who's pretending they're not — and you start to see who is fueling what is sure to be one of the most expensive Senate races in Ohio history.
Here's the political-financial ocean those two are swimming in.
Take Ro Khanna. He's the California congressman who built a career going after billionaires. Khanna co-sponsored a wealth tax with Bernie Sanders, called out Elon Musk by name, and talks about the "Epstein class." His net worth is estimated somewhere between $27 million and well north of $100 million, most of it from his father-in-law's auto parts fortune.
His kids hold stakes in private golf clubs and a $65 billion wealth management firm. His congressional salary is $174,000. The rest is old money, sitting in the exact kind of trusts and anonymous corporations he lectures about on left-leaning cable. His salary doesn't explain the 8,000-square-foot DC mansion with the four-story elevator, or the move to an even bigger place in McLean. His wife's family does.
Elizabeth Warren made nearly a million dollars last year — Senate salary, Harvard paycheck, book royalties ("A Fighting Chance" — read it?). Worth knowing before her next speech about corporate greed. Bernie Sanders is worth roughly $3 million, mostly from book sales ("Our Revolution" — read it?). Honest money for an honest socialist. But the movement he inspired is a different story.
A Democratic fundraiser who works political races and movements put it bluntly: "There is real organization. There's real money behind them." He named the Soros family. George Soros funneled roughly $60 million through Democratic-aligned outside spending groups in the 2024 cycle alone. The people's revolution has a very wealthy board of directors.
It isn't only the left.
Now the other side. The Trump administration negotiated a deal giving an American company access to one of the world's largest tungsten reserves in Kazakhstan. The U.S. committed up to $1.6 billion in federal financing. Within weeks, a firm partly owned by Don Jr. and Eric Trump took a 20 percent stake in the Kazakhstan project. At the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald — now run by Commerce Secretary Lutnick's sons Brandon and Kyle — helped raise $210 million for a lead investor in that same deal.
The fathers negotiated. The sons invested.
The same outlets that would call this a scandal on the other side have mostly shrugged.
A nepobaby sitting on nine figures lectures America about dynasties. Billionaires bank a socialist movement. An administration used a minerals deal to enrich the families of the men who cut it. This fall, every one of them will run an ad about corruption.
When hard-working Ohioans wonder where all the money comes from to fund those deep, dark 30-second ads about unearned wealth and influence, remember the math.
As the legendary Paul Harvey used to say: Now you know the rest of the story.
We launched The Pennant because traditional news outlets (some of them we worked for at one point in our careers) have mostly taken sides while pretending to perform journalism. We think that's fine — own your angle, just be honest about it. What we can't stomach is partisan information dressed up as neutral reporting. The numbers don't have a party. We're going to keep it that way.
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