The richest 2016 candidates are both women
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Presidential candidates — and politicians in general — tend to be rich. (It's almost like money and power are somehow correlated?)
This election cycle, Republican Carly Fiorina and Democrat Hillary Clinton top the list of contenders in terms of personal wealth. Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is worth $59 million, while the Clintons earned $30 million in the last year and a half alone. The majority of the Clintons' income came from extremely high speaking fees, which have been a source of criticism for the Clinton campaign.
At the other end of the spectrum is Republican Scott Walker, who despite his reputation as a fiscal conservative, is estimated to have a net worth of negative $72,000. Some of Walker's obligations are fairly standard — like mortgage and college tuition payments — but he is also carrying tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
