Fueled by an expanding class of billionaires, political spending on the 2022 midterm elections will shatter records at the state and federal levels. — New York Times
RON LAUDER (net worth $4.5b): Frankly, I’m disappointed. My mother, Estée, worked tirelessly to get herself out of Flushing, Queens, just like The Nanny’s Fran Drescher. But what was it all for if her heir couldn’t buy Lee Zeldin the governorship in New York? Do people not even watch attack ads anymore? It’s dispiriting.
PETER THIEL (net worth $4.2b): Don’t lose hope, Ron.
LAUDER: Oh please, Peter — you bought Ohio. Try turning New York red.
PHIL KNIGHT (net worth $37.7b ): Don’t even get me started. I spent $7 million to get a Republican governor elected in Oregon for the first time since the Reagan administration. And all I got was this lousy Nike T-shirt made in a sweatshop with slave labor.
STEVE KORNACKI: Oregon is still too close to call, with Multnomah, Clackamas, Deschutes, Umatilla, Clatsop, and Tillamook county results still coming in.
RICHARD UIHLEIN (net worth $3.6b): Come on, things aren’t so bad. I’m confident that a historically unpopular senator can still retain his seat in Wisconsin, thanks to me. A month ago, Mandela Barnes had a seven-point lead, but it was pretty easy to slander him because he was Black. Racist ads still work in America, guys.
ALL: Hear! Hear!
JEFF YASS: (net worth $30b): I don’t know. I sank $50 million into extremist Republican super PACs, and I was promised a red wave that would defund public schools and make us even more obscenely wealthy. This is a depressing day, for sure. I’m just going to lay low and watch some tradwife TikTok.
KORNACKI: Control of the Senate may come down to another Georgia runoff. Feels like 2020 all over again, with all eyes on DeKalb, Cobb, Fulton, Gwinett, and Cherokee counties.
KEN GRIFFIN (net worth $31.2b): Chin up, Jeff. You have to look at the big picture. I spent $68 million to help Republicans in this election cycle, and, while we weren’t able to buy a red wave, I also spent $54 million in 2020 to defeat a ballot initiative that would have increased my tax rate by $80 million. So you see? The system still works.
KORNACKI: We came into the night knowing that Republicans would have a handful of pretty obvious pickups. The only seats where Republicans are making gains right now are from the seats that were drawn to give them gains, like in Florida’s Holmes, Watson, Escambia, Santa Rosa, Osceola, and Okaloosa counties.
BERNIE MARCUS (net worth $6.2b), DAVID MACNEIL (net worth $1b), ROBERT BIGELOW (net worth $700b): Thank god for DeSantis and gerrymandering.
ELON MUSK: (net worth $201.3b): Hold my beer, dweebs. I spent $44 billion on Twitter and explicitly told everyone to vote Republican. Now I’m losing $4 million a day and can’t seem to win advertisers’ trust no matter how many Nazis I amplify. What am I going to do now?
THIEL (slaps Elon hard across the face): Pull yourself together, Elon. All is not lost. Citizens United still stands. Eccentric billionaires can still buy elections in this country, even if they’re Trump-supporting, crypto-worshipping, apocalypse-flirting, climate-change skeptics who believe in their own immortality like I do. Our outsized influence on society is still intact. It just sucks to think that vampires like Soros can also sink millions into elections.
GEORGE SOROS (net worth $6.7b ): I’m sitting right here, losers, and I literally support candidates who want to overturn Citizens United so that billionaires can’t buy elections anymore.
CHARLES KOCH (net worth $57.6b): Yeah, but there’s no chance of that ever happening because we also bought the Supreme Court. So now, election deniers, forced birthers, homophobes, white nationalists, anti-vaxxers, climate-change deniers, fascists, and even Trump can all win elections in this country thanks to our money. Long live American Oligarchy. Onto 2024!
ALL: Huzzah!