He’s the composer behind the iconic, award-winning “Halo” soundtrack. His success in scoring and designing video games made him a personal fortune in the tens of millions. And now, at 70, Marty O’Donnell is spending his retirement and savings running for Congress — again.

After a fourth-place finish in the Republican primary for Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District in 2024, O’Donnell is now dipping even further into his pocketbook. So far, he’s sunk $3 million into his campaign for the same seat, $2 million more than he invested in the last contest.

“The Democrats are going to throw a big pile of money at this race,” O’Donnell said. “I’m not going to let a Democrat defeat me because they outspent me. That’s just not going to happen.”

Every election cycle, dozens of wealthy individuals decide to sink seven or eight figures into their campaigns for federal office. On paper, that cash infusion should allow for a candidate’s dream campaign: more staffers, mailers and ads, all without the hassle of fundraising or kowtowing to donors.

In the end, they rarely get elected. Last cycle, 65 people loaned $1 million or more to their federal campaigns. Only 10 of them were elected to office.

That dismal track record hasn’t prevented a fresh crop of 1 percenters from trying their luck.

Multimillionaire Don Tracy, who is running for a Senate seat in Illinois, said self-funding is necessary as a Republican running against a well-funded opponent supported by the Democratic “machine.” Billionaire Gov. JB Pritzker put $10 million toward the super PAC supporting the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton.

“It is a bit of a David versus Goliath battle,” Tracy said. “But I do have sufficient means to have a good team.”

The longtime attorney served as chair of the state’s Republican Party, but if he gets his way this November, the 75-year-old’s first stint in elected office will be as a U.S. senator.

“These seats are very, very expensive to run for, and it’s unfortunate that it takes so much money to run statewide, but it does,” he said.

His twofold pitch to voters is that his victory would help balance the state and avoid the centralization of statewide power in Chicago, although he notes, “I love Chicago and Chicagoland. I have a second home up there.”

O’Donnell views his run as somewhat of a divine mandate. After Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo’s team approached him about a potential run for office, he said he saw it as a sign.

“I was like, ‘Oh, this is a test.’ This is God testing me, saying, ‘Put your money where your mouth is.’ Literally, I am putting my money there.”

“I got pretty, I wouldn’t say lucky, I fought for it, but the money I have now is, in my mind, it’s a gift from God,” O’Donnell said. “I worked hard, but now it’s time to give back. And I believe running for office is actually a good place to give back. And by the way, it’s easy to give, running for office. They really take, they take a lot.”

O’Donnell and other self-funders NOTUS spoke with had a common pitch to voters:

Congress would be improved if it were made up of people who found their success outside politics.

Rodney Walker, a Republican from Alabama, is looking to leave behind his cattle ranch and sprawling network of gas and diesel terminals to serve a maximum of two terms in the Senate. He argued the temperament and fiscal acumen of business owners make them particularly well-suited to govern.

“Somebody reminded me a few days ago that, as compared to perhaps somebody that has PTSD or whatever, if you’re a businessman, you’re level-headed, and you take the highs and the lows, and you are able to mediate between them,” Walker said.

Walker loaned $1.8 million to his campaign. He has 18 followers on X, and has averaged between 1% percent and 4% in polls pitting him against a cast of formidable rivals: former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and Trump-endorsed Rep. Barry Moore, just weeks out from the May 19 primary.

“It’s very easy for someone running for office to spend other people’s money. It’s easy to waste other people’s money,” Walker said. “If you believe in this office … you should not be afraid to put your own money up in this campaign.” His spending includes $30,450 to rent out the Talladega Superspeedway in his hometown.

The rich are willing to spend more than ever to help themselves get elected. It’s not unheard of for a wealthy business mogul with no political experience to successfully leap into politics, but such efforts more often flame out.

Four self-funded candidates in Texas alone either withdrew from or lost their primaries this year after investing over $1 million into their respective races. In New York, tech founder Peter Chatzky spent nearly $6 million of his own money in a Democratic primary campaign to take on Republican Rep. Mike Lawler this year. Chatzky suspended his campaign earlier this month after The New York Times reported on his raunchy social media posts.

The starkest example of spending big and failing belongs to Michael Bloomberg. The former New York City mayor sank over a billion dollars of his fortune into his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. The heavy-spending strategy that helped earn him the mayorship fell flat on the national stage. The fruits of his investment amounted to third- and fourth-place finishes in key states and only a single claim to victory, the American Samoa caucus.

Bloomberg’s estimated net worth may have doubled to $109 billion in the years since he ran for president, but his personal recorded loss of $1,089,225,532 stands alone in modern campaign spending.

Self-funders who put significant cash into their campaigns are more likely to be men and tend to be Republican. Some on the right have leveraged their expensive losses to garner national attention, and, perhaps as important, the attention of Washington’s most powerful hiring manager.

Mehmet Oz, Kelly Loeffler and Linda McMahon each put eight figures into their respective losing Senate campaigns, and all were tapped for roles in the administration.

Doug Burgum’s futile 2024 presidential bid, which was boosted by his own eight-figure investment, allowed the governor to grab President Donald Trump’s attention and respect to the extent that he became a serious vice-presidential contender and eventually landed a Cabinet post, which he took despite earlier saying he wouldn’t accept such a position.

Biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, aided by some $31 million from his own pocketbook, went from nonexistent on the political scene to a major MAGA player and household name in a matter of months after running for president, later earning himself a spot in the incoming Trump administration co-running DOGE. While that job hit the skids before Inauguration Day, Ramaswamy’s elevated name ID helped make him the current front-runner in the Ohio governor’s race.

Three-time former Democratic Rep. David Trone put $63 million into a failed bid for a Maryland Senate seat in 2024. The Total Wine & More co-founder is running again for his old House seat and has already put $10 million toward the effort.

“He’ll do what it takes to run a strong campaign, but this has never been about money. It’s about fighting for the people who feel unheard and unprotected right now,” Gaby Krevat, his campaign’s deputy communications director, said in a statement.

Fellow Democratic centimillionaire Saikat Chakrabarti said self-funding allows him to run a campaign free from special interests attempting to influence his push for a wealth tax and his support of the Green New Deal.

Chakrabarti, a progressive candidate running for the seat held by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, made a fortune in the tech industry as the second employee for the payment processor Stripe, which he compares to “winning the startup lottery.” He went on to work on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, co-found Justice Democrats and serve as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff.

“I worked hard, but I didn’t work harder than a teacher or a nurse or the janitors in our offices did every single day,” he said. “I just won a lottery.”

Chakrabarti was being outraised by California state Sen. Scott Wiener until earlier this year when he put in over $3.3 dollars into his campaign, “and to be able to fight that amount of money, I have two options in front of me,” he said.

“I could either spend my time calling big donors for money, and then I’d owe a million people a bill of different favors,” he said. “Or I could choose to put in my own money, so I have the freedom to go to D.C. and actually fight against an oligarchy.”

Chakrabarti has put nearly $5 million toward his race.

Can the people affluent enough to spend more in one year on a congressional campaign than the average American will make over the course of their lives really represent said average American?

The answer given by the ultrarich was a resounding yes.

Each of the candidates NOTUS spoke with said they had faced financial hardships in the lead-up to their success. O’Donnell said that at some point in every business he started, he eschewed a paycheck to ensure his employees’ salaries.

“I know more about making do with what you have and being nervous about making ends meet than I’ve ever lived comfortably,” he said, recalling funds being tight dating back to his college years.

“At USC back, you know, back in 1982, ’81 as a grad student, I still remember coming home to our one-bedroom apartment and opening up the refrigerator and seeing literally a stick of celery and a carrot and I was like, ‘Is this it?’ And my wife’s like, ‘Yeah, sorry honey, this is where we are.’”

Some onlookers are less than convinced by these tales of woe.

“They have to take off months from work, maybe a year in order to run for office, and so I think it’s easy for even most well-intentioned people to kind of lose track of things a little bit, to lose track of what other people think,” Morris Pearl, the chair of the group Patriotic Millionaires, said of those running for office.

Members of Patriotic Millionaires are themselves quite wealthy — each member must have at least $5 million to their name, or an annual income that exceeds $1 million — but advocate for higher taxes on the rich.

“I don’t really understand what it’s like to be financially challenged either, really. But I know there are people who are facing severe financial challenges, and I know that some of them are just sort of losing faith in our whole democratic system,” Pearl continued. “I don’t want people to give up on our country. I don’t want to be in a situation with, like, I don’t know, a revolution or something.”