Alternative asset managers – whether working for hedge funds or private equity – long ago replaced Wall Street bankers as the top earners in finance.
Now they are supplanting bankers in deploying their own money to ease a path to political office in the US.
David McCormick, chief executive of hedge fund Bridgewater, is expected to mount a bid to win election as one of the two senators for Pennsylvania next year.
If he wins first the primary for the Republican nomination then the general election in November 2022, McCormick will join Glenn Youngkin, former chief executive of Carlyle, as an alternative asset manager who has made the transition to high political office in the US.
Youngkin defeated veteran Democratic political operative and incumbent governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe in November, in an encouraging sign for other financiers looking to make a shift into politics.
This is a route taken more often in the past by bankers than asset managers. Former Goldman Sachs head Jon Corzine became a senator for New Jersey in 2000 (a year after he was forced out of Goldman by his fellow partners), helped by spending over $62 million of his own money, in what was at the time the most expensive senate race in US history.
Corzine
