Glenn Youngkin.
ASSOCIATED PRESSRepublican Glenn Youngkin defeated his Democratic opponent, former Governor Terry McAuliffe, in the Virginia governor’s race on Tuesday, giving the GOP its first statewide win since 2009 and elevating the former private equity executive to the executive mansion in Richmond. That victory came 400 days after his departure as co-CEO of private equity firm the Carlyle Group on September 30, 2020, when he quit to run for office.
Youngkin is now set to become one of the wealthiest governors in the United States. The richest is still J.B. Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor and an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, who has an estimated net worth of $3.6 billion. Forbes estimates Youngkin’s fortune at roughly $470 million—about $30 million wealthier than he was in September this year, despite shelling out another $3.5 million in loans to his campaign since then, largely as a result of Carlyle’s rising stock price. (Since January, Youngkin has loaned $20 million to his campaign and contributed $1 million to the pro-Youngkin Virginia Wins PAC, according to campaign finance filings.)
Those loans made up 35% of the $57.7 million Youngkin raised over the course of his campaign. He also drew some support from billionaires and their spouses, raising $830,000 from a range of conservative supporters including insurance mogul Patrick Ryan and his wife Shirley, who each gave $125,000 on the day before the election. They were also Youngkin’s largest billionaire donors, ahead of Linda McMahon, the former head of the Small Business Administration under Donald Trump and the wife of World Wrestling Entertainment’s billionaire chairman Vincent McMahon, who gave a total of $150,000.
Raised in Virginia Beach, Youngkin played basketball at the elite Norfolk Academy and at Rice University in Texas, where he graduated with an engineering degree. He then moved to Boston, where he worked at investment bank First Boston for two years and then got an MBA at Harvard. After a one-year stint at McKinsey, he decamped for Carlyle’s U.S. buyout team in Washington, D.C. in 1995. He worked there until 2000, when he was tapped to lead buyouts in the United Kingdom, before returning to D.C. in 2005 and eventually rising to the co-CEO post in 2018 alongside Kewsong Lee.
Most of Youngkin’s net worth is tied up in his nearly 2% stake in Carlyle, worth $370 million. According to public filings, Youngkin has received $88 million in dividends and sold nearly $50 million of stock since Carlyle’s IPO in 2012; after accounting for taxes and Youngkin’s $21 million outlay on his campaign, Forbes estimates he has at least $78 million in cash and other investments. His statement of economic interests filed with the state’s Department of Elections in June showed that he owns millions of dollars in a range of stocks—including Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft—as well as Virginia municipal bonds and a stake in the Professional Fighters League, a mixed martial arts competition.
Youngkin also owns at least $18 million worth of personal real estate, including a 13-acre home with an outdoor basketball court and a swimming pool in Great Falls, Virginia; a six-bedroom estate in the mountain resort town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming; a 92-acre ranch in the Texas Hill Country outside of San Antonio; and a 31.5-acre horse farm surrounding his home in Great Falls which reportedly received a 95% tax reduction in 2020 after the Youngkins successfully applied to have it designated as an "agricultural district.”
He and Suzanne have also donated $15 million worth of real estate in Virginia—including a building in McLean and a 358-acre farm in Middleburg—to their private charitable foundation, the Phos foundation, which in turn rents the properties for $1 a year to the Holy Trinity Church in McLean and the “Christian retreat ministry” Meadowkirk in Middleburg. Youngkin founded Holy Trinity Church and serves as a warden there, while Suzanne serves on Meadowkirk’s board of directors.
For more on how Glenn Youngkin built his fortune, read this story:
For more on Glenn Youngkin’s foundation, read this story:
For more on billionaire donors in the Virginia gubernatorial election, read this story:
