Billionaire Ron Lauder Has Given More Than $70 Million In Political Donations—Including To Trump

Key Facts

Forbes Valuation

Forbes values Lauder’s net worth at $4.9 billion as of Thursday afternoon, and pegs the broader net worth of the Lauder family at some $21.5 billion.

Why Is Ron Lauder Stopping His Giving?

It’s unclear. Sources told the Times his children had urged him to stop his extravagant spending amid concerns about Estee Lauder’s finances, as the company’s stock has declined by 73.5% over the past five years, shrinking his wealth. Other sources disputed that explanation, however, suggesting Lauder is instead pulling back on his giving as the octogenarian works to secure his legacy and prioritize more notable philanthropic projects. The reports on Lauder’s political giving ending comes after the billionaire previously announced he would retire from the Estee Lauder board and as president of the World Jewish Congress. Most notably, the philanthropist is also relinquishing custody over the Neue Galerie, a New York City museum housing Austrian and German art, announcing in May the museum he founded will merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2028.

Ron Lauder’s Donations To Trump Causes: $5.2 Million

Lauder, whom the Times reports has been friends with Trump since college, gave $100,000 to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, federal records show, before announcing in 2022 he would not bankroll the president’s third campaign after Trump met with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago. The Jewish billionaire opened up his checkbook following Trump’s election to a second term, however, donating $5 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC in March 2025 after saying in a statement the World Jewish Congress celebrated his return to the White House “with enthusiasm and great optimism.” That $5 million check marks Lauder’s biggest one-time donation he’s made at the federal level, campaign finance records show, and his representatives did not comment on the motivation behind it. Lauder never formally joined the Trump administration but reportedly had the president’s ear during his first term, advising him on Israel and reportedly spurring Trump’s failed bid to buy Greenland. The Times reported in 2022 it was Lauder who first suggested the move to Trump during the president’s first term, even offering to help him negotiate with Denmark. While the reasons behind Lauder’s push aren’t entirely clear, the billionaire has since reportedly invested in deals in the Arctic territory and penned an op-ed in the New York Post last year backing Trump reviving his Greenland plan. Greenland has “immense untapped potential and irreplaceable geopolitical significance,” Lauder wrote. “Beneath its ice and rock lies a treasure trove of rare earth elements essential for AI, advanced weaponry and modern technology.” It’s unclear if Lauder is still communicating with Trump in his second term, and his representatives did not respond to a request for comment on that, but The New York Times reported in January the billionaire was part of a group of investors awarded a lucrative minerals deal in Ukraine, along with a group partially owned by the federal government.

Ron Lauder’s Total Federal Donations: $21.8 Million

Including his donations to Trump, Federal Elections Commission records show Lauder has given $21.75 million in federal campaign donations since 1979, the earliest year for which data is available. The billionaire’s federal giving largely consisted of smaller donations of $10,000 or less before the Supreme Court paved the way for bigger checks with its 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which greenlit the creation of super PACs that can accept unlimited donations from wealthy donors. Since then, Lauder has repeatedly written out five to seven-figure checks to primarily GOP candidates and political committees, including lawmakers in his home state of New York. A notable outlier is former New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat, whose campaign Lauder gave the maximum $5,400 donation to in 2017, also separately giving $10,000 that year to Menendez’s legal trust.

Lauder’s Super PAC: $4.7 Million

Besides his check to MAGA Inc., Lauder’s biggest federal donations within that $21.75 million have been to the super PAC National Horizon, with FEC records showing his donations make up $4.7 million of the $6.7 million the PAC has raised in total since 2012. The PAC describes itself as one of the “best weapon[s] to defeat the Left” and has used its funds to boost a variety of GOP congressional candidates and oppose their Democratic rivals. FEC records show the PAC has supported candidates like Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and former New York Senate candidate Wendy Long, while spending money to oppose Democrats like former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and former Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mt. One notable expenditure by the PAC was spending $220,600 to oppose now-Vice President JD Vance in April 2022, when he was running in the GOP primary for Ohio’s Senate race. Lauder later personally gave the maximum $2,900 donation to Vance’s Senate campaign in the general election.

Ron Lauder’s New York Political Spending: More Than $48 Million

Lauder’s biggest political influence has been felt in his home of New York City, where the billionaire first drew notoriety in 1989 for self-funding his campaign in the GOP mayoral primary. Lauder ultimately lost the race to future mayor Rudy Giuliani, but not before he spent some $13.6 million to self-fund, according to the city’s Campaign Finance Board—an amount that would be equivalent to more than $36 million today with inflation, which marked a record until centibillionaire Michael Bloomberg spent $69 million self-funding his own mayoral run in 2001. Since then, Lauder has spent millions supporting other New York candidates, including most recently spending some $11 million propping up GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin when he unsuccessfully challenged Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022. He then donated $1 million to a super PAC supporting former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s in last year’s New York City mayoral race before he lost to Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani. Lauder and his wife were among Cuomo’s biggest supporters, according to a report from nonpartisan watchdog Citizens Union, which found the Lauders were among the top five biggest donors to the Cuomo campaign, behind fellow billionaires Bloomberg, Joe Gebbia and Bill Ackman and hedge fund investor Ricky Sandler. Though his recent political bets haven’t led to electoral wins, the Times described Lauder in 2022 as a “gale-force disrupter” in New York politics, whose gambit on Zeldin helped narrow the race between him and Hochul, who ultimately won with only 52.9% of the vote. The $48 million figure was tallied using public campaign finance reports, Lauder’s known spending on his mayoral race and reports of his participation in referendum campaigns—but is certainly an undercount, as New York’s campaign finance listings begin in 1999, years after Lauder entered New York politics.

Ron Lauder Influencing New York Issues: More Than $7 Million

As part of the millions he’s spent in New York, Lauder has also used his wealth to influence numerous political issues in the state and city, most notably bankrolling a 1993 referendum that successfully implemented term limits for elected officials in New York City. The Times reported in 1996 he spent $2.3 million on that effort, and the New York Post reports he then spent an additional $2 million to keep term limits in place in 1996. Lauder became synonymous with the political issue, and Bloomberg later ran for a third mayoral term only after the cosmetics heir gave his blessing. Lauder then spent a reported $3 million opposing ballot measures in 2021 that would have made the redistricting process harder for Republicans, the Times reports, and spent an undisclosed amount of money funding legal challenges against congressional maps in New York that favored Democrats following the 2020 Census. He also spent more than a million dollars opposing an effort to eliminate the standardized test for New York City’s most elite public schools, the Times reported in 2019.

Other State Spending: More Than $2 Million

While his political giving has been primarily centered in New York, state election records show Lauder has also made contributions in some other states, such as giving a combined $1.1 million to Texas’ Republican State Leadership Committee in 2022. He also donated $210,000 to Empower Parents PAC in Florida, a committee for protecting parental rights in education that’s also been used to help Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom Lauder supported for governor. Federal IRS disclosures also show he gave $1.1 million to the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2022, which promotes the election of GOP state officials.

Chief Critic

While Lauder’s political giving has earned him influence in politics, it’s also drawn criticism, with Estee Lauder employees launching a petition in 2020 to remove him from the company’s board over his support for Trump. Others have criticized Lauder for using his wealth to influence the democratic process. “He’s a walking example of the villainy of the Citizens United decision,” Michael Gianaris, a Democratic state Senate leader in New York, told the Times in 2022 about Lauder. “The ability of someone of unlimited wealth to pervert democracy by spending untold millions to skew elections is the entire reason why campaign finance reform is so important.”

Further Reading

Ronald Lauder, a Billionaire G.O.P. Backer, Closes His Wallet (New York Times)

Cosmetics Billionaire’s $500 Million Art Collection Up For Auction Today—With Works By Van Gogh, Klimt, Mattise (Forbes)

Billionaire Ron Lauder May Back Tim Scott For President As DeSantis Falters, Report Says (Forbes)