You are 8,500 times more likely to be a senator if your dad was a senator

Rand and Ron Paul
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

While many professions are easier to break into if your family is already involved in the industry, it turns out politics is uniquely family-friendly. In fact, if your father was a senator, you are 8,500 times more likely than the average person to become a senator yourself.

As The Washington Post notes, the advantages of family networks in politics are numerous: Though personal connections are valuable in any field, here they "can lead to big campaign donations and votes. It's a ticket to entry that most mere mortals struggle to obtain." So, want to run for office some day, kids? Ask your dad to launch his own campaign now.

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Bonnie Kristian

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.