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The money flows to down-ticket candidates as well. The top 100 donors have contributed $1.2 billion so far this campaign cycle, on track to surpass past records.

The people responsible for funding a sixth of the 2024 election could fit inside an Olive Garden restaurant.

Campaigns this election season have raised roughly $7.2 billion, with the top 100 donors pitching in $1.2 billion, according to campaign-finance tracker OpenSecrets. The contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump—and the hundreds of down-ballot races in Congress—is on track to be one of the most expensive campaigns ever. It is being increasingly bankrolled by a handful of billionaires and some hundred millionaires seeking to bend the U.S. and the regulations that govern it to their will.

It is too early to know what effect these megadonors will have on the policies of the next president, though big money contributions have influenced policymakers in the past. The crypto industry has amassed one of this cycle’s largest war chests. Soon after Trump’s campaign started aggressively pursuing crypto industry donations earlier this year, dozens of Democrats in the House broke with progressives to vote in favor of an industry-supported bill.

While both Harris and Trump love to tout support from small donors, it is fair to call the 2024 election a battle of the billionaires. Trump has gotten his old donor base back together and is raising millions from Wall Street billionaires like Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Renaissance Technologies’ Robert Mercer. Also in Trump’s camp are Elon Musk, crypto entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

Democrats have their own billionaire supporters, such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Wall Street contributors to Harris’ campaign or the party include Renaissance Technologies’ Jim Simons—who contributed $6.6 million to President Joe Biden’s political action committee before passing away in May—and Lone Pine Capital’s Stephen Mandel.

All told, the donors are set to fuel $10.7 billion in political ads, according to analysis firm AdImpact, up about 19% from the last presidential campaign cycle.

“We have this arms race among oligarchs, and both parties out of necessity have had to embrace this culture,” says Scott Greytak, director of advocacy for Transparency International U.S., an anticorruption group that supports increasing donor disclosure.

There is evidence that campaigns are increasingly reliant on the most wealthy. So far this year, big donations make up 16% of all contributions, up from 14.6% in 2022 and just 9.5% in 2020, according to OpenSecrets.

Research shows that billionaires’ policy views do have an impact on which policies get enacted. A 2014 study by UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University professor Benjamin Page found that economic elites and groups representing business interests “have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” while average citizens have no independent influence.

Since billionaires are among the most likely to give big contributions early in a campaign, they often determine who does or doesn’t make it out of the primaries, says California State University, Chico, political science professor Diana Dwyre.

“It’s money the political parties can count on year round,” Dwyre says. Because of their influence, “there are certain issues that just never make it to the political agenda,” she adds, citing radical environmental policies to fight climate change.

A landmark 2010 Supreme Court decision in favor of conservative advocacy group Citizens United is largely responsible for the onslaught of political contributions. Congress in 2002 had passed a law that prevented companies and other organizations from spending on political campaigns. The court held that restricting independent expenditures violated the First Amendment.

The net effect is that while billionaires and other donors face strict limits on direct contributions to candidates—$6,600 total between the primaries and general election—they don’t face any limits on contributions to so-called super PACs.

In 2024, that has led to some eye-popping contributions. Timothy Mellon, a scion of banking magnate Andrew Mellon, is this cycle’s top contributor, giving more than $150 million as of the most recently available data. That includes a $50 million donation to the Make America Great Again PAC the day after Trump’s conviction. Mellon didn’t respond to a request for comment through the publisher of his book.

Other billionaires have made their desires more explicit. Earlier this month, officials from the White House and the vice president’s office held a crypto-industry videocall, as some Democratic lawmakers hoped to “reset” crypto relations, which had soured after the Securities and Exchange Commission brought cases against companies for allegedly violating securities laws.

The call included crypto industry executives such as Ripple Labs Executive Chairman Chris Larsen, a billionaire whose company was among those sued by the SEC, as well as billionaire venture capitalists Ron Conway and Mark Cuban. On the call, Larsen told the White House officials that SEC chief Gary Gensler should be fired, according to a person familiar with the call. Ripple has given $45 million to the Fairshake PAC, one of the largest such committees this election cycle, which aims to elect crypto-friendly politicians.

A Ripple spokeswoman referred a request for comment to social-media posts from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse in which he said that if Democrats really wanted to shift on crypto “the single most important thing they can do is demand the resignation of Gary Gensler.”

“The Biden-Harris administration will continue meeting with a range of stakeholders and working with members of Congress on legislation to develop safeguards that are necessary to harness the potential benefits and opportunities of crypto-asset innovation,” an administration official said in a statement.

Concerns about cryptocurrency and artificial-intelligence regulation also led VCs Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz to say they would support Trump’s campaign. “The future of our business, the future of new technology in America, is literally at stake, so here we are,” Horowitz said on a podcast.

The call to fire a federal official echoed similar statements from LinkedIn’s Hoffman, who has given about $28 million in support of Democrats this cycle and is their largest single contributor, according to OpenSecrets.

In a CNN interview in July, Hoffman said that Harris should fire Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who has aggressively pursued antitrust cases against tech firms. In a lengthy X post a couple of days later, Hoffman said his support for Harris was “unequivocal” and that he had never spoken to Harris about Khan or the FTC. Hoffman’s chief of staff in an email said he had nothing to add.

“Billionaires are fundamentally reshaping the whole political environment,” says Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen. “They carry a whole lot of influence and seem to be asking for specific favors in return for their money.”

Trump’s promises to the billionaire class have been more or less out in the open. In May, the former president attended a roundtable with oil and gas executives where he said he planned to enact fossil-fuel-friendly policies like pulling support for initiatives that promote green energy, says Dan Eberhart, CEO of drilling-services company Canary, who attended the meeting.

“He’s very supportive of the industry, and the industry is very supportive of him,” says Eberhart, who said Trump’s backing of cheap energy is good for American consumers.

A Trump supporter on the other side of the green divide is Musk, who created his own Trump-aligned PAC. As of the most recently available data, Musk hadn’t yet made contributions himself, but he confirmed on X that the money is coming. “Republicans are mostly, but not entirely, on the side of merit & freedom,” Musk wrote in a post. He didn’t respond to Barron’s request for comment through his company’s press email.

Trump earlier this month put two of his largest donors in charge of his presidential transition team to prepare for his potential return to the White House. Linda McMahon, who co-founded a wrestling entertainment company and headed the Small Business Administration under Trump, and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick will be in charge of vetting potential appointees and drafting executive orders to implement Trump’s policies if he returns to power.

McMahon has given $11.5 million to conservative candidates and committees this cycle, while Lutnick has given $4 million, according to OpenSecrets. They didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“Donald Trump is soliciting donations from extremist oil barons and the richest men in the world while openly offering control of U.S. policy and specific changes to their benefit—at the expense of the American people,” said Harris campaign spokesperson Joe Costello, who added that the vice president, in contrast, “is powered by unmatched grassroots enthusiasm from thousands of small donors.”

The Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

At least some billionaires seem slightly uneasy with the influence they have accumulated. Hoffman in his X post said he would keep making donations as long as current rules stay in place but that it would be “healthier” if there were no super PACs and lower giving limits.

Cuban, who was on the crypto call, is an outspoken Trump opponent but doesn’t make campaign contributions himself. “I don’t donate because I want my ideas and discussions to stand on their own. Not to be based on how much I did or will give,” he told Barron’s in an email.