Linda McMahon likes to dabble in politics the way WWE’s the Undertaker likes to pile-drive into competitors. Over the past decade, the professional wrestling magnate turned head of Trump’s Small Business Administration has made over $68 million in political donations. McMahon is the largest individual political donor in New York (besting Trump himself who donated over $18 million) and in the country, according to new research from Zippia.
Zippia took a deep dive into data from the Federal Election Committee, looking at 32,000,000 political donation records for individuals from 2007 onwards–around 32,000,000 political donation records. The results are a fascinating portrait of American politics and the money that drives it.
For instance, in Washington State–home of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, two of the richest people on the planet–the top political donor was one Steven Webster who gave a mere $706,000, putting Washington at 24th in the ranking. The second biggest political donor in the nation is Jeff Trone, a Maryland wine importer who gave $16 million, a distant second to McMahon’s donations. However the bulk of that money was spent on Trone’s own unsuccessful self-funded bid for a congressional seat. Charles Koch, of Koch brothers fame, was on the list, as the largest political donor in Kansas. And if anyone wants to be a big fish in a small pond, head to South Dakota where the largest political donor is “pink slime” creator Eldon Roth, who donated $76,800 of his beef product profits to political campaigns.
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