Reports Show Wealth as a Common Factor Among 2008 Contenders

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Reports Show Wealth as a Common Factor Among 2008 Contenders
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: May 17, 2007

WASHINGTON, May 16 — Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who just six years ago told a divorce court he had only $7,000 in assets under his control, has amassed a net worth of more than $30 million, much of it from paid speeches.

Former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who has spent the last three years crusading against poverty, also reported about $30 million in assets. His income included nearly half a million dollars for advising an elite investment fund and $40,000 for directing a poverty studies program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Edwards reported their assets in personal financial disclosure forms released Wednesday by the Federal Election Commission. Federal election laws require all the presidential candidates to file the forms. Together, they offer a glimpse of the general affluence of all the primary candidates and the truly extreme wealth of a few.

Neither Mr. Giuliani, a Republican, nor Mr. Edwards, a Democrat, is the richest of the White House hopefuls. That title belongs to Mitt Romney, a founder of the private equity firm Bain Capital, who has said he expects to report as much as $350 million in assets, including a trust for his heirs. Mr. Romney and Senator John McCain of Arizona, both Republicans, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, have all received extensions of the filing deadline for their forms.

Mr. Giuliani’s $30 million fortune is the most unexpected information to emerge from the disclosure forms so far....The latest disclosure form suggests that his biggest source of income was speeches, capitalizing on his celebrity after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. For the period covered by the form — roughly the calendar year 2006 — Mr. Giuliani reported making 124 speeches for as much as $200,000 each and earning a total of about $11.4 million....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/us/politics/17candidates.html

[Rydz777]

1. I believe McCain's money

comes from his wife. I read that her father was the beer baron of that part of the southwest.