With a minimum net worth of $27 million, freshman lawmaker Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) is the fourth-richest Californian in Congress. That’s according to a new list compiled by Roll Call, which analyzed federal financial disclosure forms to determine that the total net worth of the Golden State’s 55-member delegation came to $439 million in 2016—a 14 percent drop from the year before—while Congress as a whole got richer.
In all, the Capitol Hill newspaper found in partnership with the Los Angeles Times, there are 20 millionaires in Congress from California with fortunes from real estate holdings, investment portfolios and their spouses. The state is home to both the richest and the poorest members of Congress, both of them SoCal Republicans: Darrell Issa tops the list with a net worth of $283.3 million while dairy farmer David Valadao comes dead last from a negative net worth of $17 million in business credit lines.
Khanna, an economist and intellectual property lawyer, reported that his wife Ritu Khanna—the multimillionaire daughter of Monte Ahuja, an executive of investment firm Mura Holdings and car parts company Transtar—holds 99 percent of his assets.
The first-term congressman, who proposed a $1 trillion tax credit and other policies to benefit the working class, spent none of his family’s money on his last race, according to Roll Call. His wealth includes more than 500 different investments and a few trusts. He also reported more than $500,000 in tech stocks and $50,000 in student loans.
Elsewhere in Silicon Valley and the Peninsula, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Menlo Park) lands 12th on the list for California, citing a $2 million net worth in 2016, while Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) a district away comes in 17th place with $1.6 million.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-San Francisco) is the second-richest member of the state delegation and the wealthiest woman in Congress with a reported worth of $61.5 million. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, another San Francisco Democrat, comes No. 5 on the ranking with stocks from Apple and Facebook and a net worth of $16 million, even after she and her husband reported losing $11 million in assets since the year prior.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Oakland), is No. 29 with a reported net worth of $391,100. Fellow Oakland Democrat Barbara Lee comes in at No. 45 in the state due to a $225,000 negative net worth from two mortgages.
Roll Call and the LA Times noted that the accuracy of the financial disclosure forms is a little iffy. Some are penned by hand and hard to decipher, and mistakes earn only warning letters from an ethics panel.
