GOP presidential candidate Ryan Binkley, CEO of Generational Group and lead pastor of Create Church.
Little-known Republican presidential candidate Ryan Binkley has dumped $1.8 million of his own money into his campaign, which has raised $2 million overall, according to a spokesperson.
Binkley, who is polling at less than 1%, lives in Texas, where he serves as CEO of the mergers-and-acquisitions firm Generational Group. A spokesperson claims he is worth $75 million, though he has not yet filed a financial disclosure report detailing his income, assets and liabilities. Binkley cofounded Create Church, a non-denominational Christian church in the Dallas suburb of Richardson.
“Running for president is an expensive proposition,” says Michael Beckel, research director at Issue One, a bipartisan political reform organization. “If a candidate has the ability to self-fund, spending your own money is a convenient way to make a splash and introduce yourself to voters.”
There is a very recent example of this working. Donald Trump dumped $66 million into his 2016 campaign before he started relying exclusively on other people for funding. But the strategy fails more often than it succeeds. Just ask Mike Bloomberg, who blew $1.1 billion of his own money in 2020. Or Tom Steyer ($342 million) or Jim Delaney ($11 million). Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican running this cycle, has already put more than $10 million into his bid. Trump, Bloomberg, Steyer, Delaney and Ramaswamy are all far richer than Binkley.
The Texas businessman is focusing his campaign on bipartisanship and reducing the U.S. debt. He currently has 1,846 individual donors, according to his spokesperson—far short of the 40,000 needed to join the stage at the first Republican primary debate on Aug. 23.