Kerry Would Be Third-Richest U.S. President If Elected

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Both President George W. Bush and Sen.

John Kerry John Kerry

Whatever schoolboy lore says about Abe Lincoln Abe Lincoln 's log cabin or

Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Johnson

A few presidents were spectacularly wealthy, such as the nation's first president, George Washington George Washington , who we reckon would have made the Forbes 400 of his day on the strength of his Virginia plantation and his wife's fortune. Others, like Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Johnson and Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson , used government service as a springboard to personal fortune.

We estimate Teresa Heinz Kerry Teresa Heinz Kerry 's fortune at $750 million. Kerry's wife inherited it from her late husband, Sen. John Heinz III John Heinz III of the Heinz food family. There is no evidence, though, that John Kerry tapped family money during the campaign.

Bush, the second son of a president to attain the office, made our list of the richest presidents partly based on his claim to a family fortune, but mostly because of a windfall on his investment in the Texas Rangers baseball franchise.

The Richest U.S. Presidents

It is difficult to compare personal wealth across historical periods, but below is our best estimate of the relative net worths of the richest five U.S. presidents. The rankings are based on our own calculations and extensive interviews with presidential historians.

*President Washington was generally aligned with Federalist doctrine, though he was not formally a member of the Federalist Party or any political party. ** Candidate. NA: not applicable.

Rank	Name	Party	Term
1.	George Washington	None*	1789-1797
2.	John F. Kennedy	Democrat	1961-1963
	John F. Kerry**	Democrat	NA
3.	Andrew Jackson	Democrat	1829-1837
4.	Lyndon B. Johnson	Democrat	1963-1969
5.	Herbert Hoover	Republican	1929-1933

Kerry's in a situation somewhat similar to that of the original JFK. President Kennedy's father, Joseph Joseph Joseph , and his mother, Rose Rose Rose , were both still alive when JFK was in office and when he was assassinated, so John never inherited even a share of the Kennedy family fortune, which we estimated to be worth $850 million at its height in 1990.

But Joseph Kennedy was, under campaign finance laws at the time, free to spend basically as he wished on his son's electioneering efforts, which he certainly did.

Here John Kennedy and candidate Kerry part company. Current federal law prohibits Teresa Kerry from donating more than $2,000 to her husband's campaign. Indeed, last December, when Howard Dean Howard Dean was riding high, Kerry mortgaged his share of his family townhouse on Boston's Beacon Hill to raise money for his campaign.

In the course of this campaign, Kerry has received substantial money from thousands of individuals. More than 35,000 people have contributed the maximum $2,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (Nearly 61,000 have contributed the maximum $2,000 to Bush.) The companies whose executives have given the most to the Democratic nominee include Time Warner , Goldman Sachs and Microsoft , the center says.

But employees of Harvard University and the University of California have given far more than the bankers, media and software titans. For Bush, the most generous givers come from Morgan Stanley , Merrill Lynch and PricewaterhouseCoopers .

The only lawful way for Teresa Kerry to have funded her husband's campaign is by buying "issue ads"--advertisements that advance a cause or theme. She also could have contributed unlimited sums to independent groups running their own issue ads. But neither has apparently occurred, leaving the senator to rely on his campaign's own resources, which are close to equal to that of the Bush campaign (see: "Dollar Vote Too Close To Call").

His--or her--own money has not been a factor.