Mike Johnson Is The Least Wealthy House Speaker This Century

In his first address as Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson invoked his father, a former firefighter in Shreveport, Louisiana. “All I ever wanted to be when I grew up was the chief of the fire department in Shreveport,” he said. Today, he is second in line for the presidency and battling a far-right effort to oust him—but financially, he may be more similar to a midsize city’s fire chief than to those who were speakers before him.

Worth around $350,000, Mike Johnson is the least wealthy House speaker of this century. His immediate predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, owned a modest investment portfolio in the six figures that would have put him well above Johnson. Two other Republicans, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, both of whom served as speaker in the 2010s, held investment assets worth millions of dollars while in office. Republican Dennis Hastert, speaker from 1999 to 2006, held a sizable real estate portfolio when he left office. And the fortune of Nancy Pelosi—the only Democratic speaker since the 1990s—dwarfs the others; her 2022 disclosure includes extensive interests in commercial properties and publicly traded companies, almost all in her venture capitalist husband’s name.

Compared to these former speakers, Johnson stands out for his lack of wealth. His biggest asset by far is his Benton, Louisiana home, worth an estimated $600,000 and encumbered by half that in debt. Other than retirement assets and some additional debt, that’s it—he doesn't even list a checking account on his financial disclosure. In terms of his finances, Johnson is far closer to the median American his age than to his predecessors at the head of the House of Representatives.

The future lawyer was born in 1972 in Shreveport, a city in northwestern Louisiana near the Texas border. His parents were teenagers when he was born; it was just a year before abortion was made legal by the Supreme Court in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, a fact he says helps shape his anti-abortion views. Johnson’s father, an assistant chief in the local fire department, was critically injured while fighting a fire at a cold storage facility when Johnson was 12, leaving him permanently disabled. He went on to found a consulting firm focused on emergency response and hazardous materials before dying in December 2016 at age 63, days before his oldest son was elected to Congress.

Johnson went to Louisiana State University for college, studied business administration and graduated in 1995. He stayed in Baton Rouge for law school, earning his J.D. in 1998. He also met Kelly Lary, marrying her in 1999.

The couple took in and raised a Black 14-year-old boy soon after. Then, the Johnsons had four biological children of their own starting in 2001, and Johnson has noted that his Black son, Michael, who now has his own family, had it much harder than his white son at age 14 “simply because of the color of his skin.” The couple bought their first home in Shreveport in 2002, then moved three times over the next decade, routinely tapping their homes for additional lines of credit but always paying them off when the next move came.

Johnson built his legal career by focusing on religious liberty issues—defending “fundamental freedoms” and “traditional values,” as he puts it. For much of the 2000s, he worked at the Alliance Defense Fund—an conservative Christian legal advocacy group, now called the Alliance Defending Freedom—on First Amendment issues. This included supporting same-sex marriage bans and anti-sodomy laws in court; in one 2004 op-ed in a Louisiana newspaper, he warned of “chaos and sexual anarchy,” including people marrying their pets, if same-sex marriage were to become legal in the state.

In 2010, Johnson took a job as dean of a future Christian law school attached to Louisiana College (now Louisiana Christian University). But, as multiple news outlets reported after Johnson became speaker, the law school never opened due to financial problems and accreditation issues at the parent school. Two years later, Johnson resigned; his employment at the school is left off his campaign website. A spokesperson for Johnson declined to comment. LCU did not respond to a request for comment.

After that debacle, Johnson took a job as a partner at a Louisiana law firm, where he made plenty of money—$128,000 in 2015 and $181,000 in 2016, according to his disclosures. He also founded Freedom Guard, another Christian legal advocacy group. And he and Kelly moved a final time in 2013, borrowing just over $290,000 to buy their current Benton home for $428,500.

In 2015, Johnson won a seat in the Louisiana state House; the part-time gig paid him $35,000 in 2016. Moving quickly, Johnson ran for Congress in 2016 and won again. His congressional salary, $174,000, was a slight drop from practicing law, and on his first disclosure in office, he reported no assets except a small retirement account (he is not required to disclose his personal residence).

The same year he started his congressional term, his wife founded a Christian counseling company called “Onward Christian Education Services” that, per an operating agreement obtained by The Huffington Post, provides “biblically-based pastoral counseling for individuals, couples, and families.” She reported up to $50,000 in income from it for several years. Additionally, starting in 2018, Johnson began teaching college courses online at Liberty University—a Virginia college founded by Jerry Falwell that “develops Christ-centered men and women,” according to its website—which earns him up to $30,000 a year.

Johnson kept a low profile for most of his time in Congress, though he did spearhead efforts by Congressional Republicans to overturn the 2020 election results by filing an amicus brief, signed by 105 of his colleagues, urging the Supreme Court to invalidate some states’ electoral votes. Even so, his ascent to speaker in 2023 at age 51 following Kevin McCarthy’s dramatic ouster was a surprise—he prevailed following the failed candidacies of longer-serving and higher-profile members of the Republican caucus like fellow Louisianan Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan of Ohio.

The promotion came with a salary bump to $223,500. Because his federal pension is based on his highest-compensated years and his tenure, it will get more valuable the longer he remains speaker and remains in office. Forbes currently estimates that it is worth about $63,000. If he can’t successfully defend his position from a challenge—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican from Georgia, filed a motion to topple him last week but hasn’t moved it further yet—his speakership boost may be short-lived.

Otherwise, Johnson’s finances haven’t changed much since he joined the federal government. A personal loan of between $15,000 and $50,000 that he took out in July 2016 still appears on his disclosures, and in 2019, he took out a line of equity against his home, also in the $15,000 to $50,000 range. He has never reported a checking account, though a spokesperson told Politico Playbook in 2023 that he has one. House rules do not require checking accounts to be disclosed if they do not bear interest.

Aside from his pension and his house, currently worth an estimated $600,000 before around $290,000 in debt, Johnson has just one other possible asset: From 2017 to 2020, Johnson said that he contributed to a Thrift Savings Account, the government’s equivalent of a 401(k). It took until 2019 for the reported value of the plan to exceed $15,000, which suggests that he was likely only contributing around 2% of his salary, missing out on matching funds of up to 5%. The account no longer shows up on his disclosure, but this could be because he cashed it out or because he is not actually required to report it. Assuming he has continued to contribute at the same low rate, Forbes estimates that it is worth around $60,000 today.

With four kids at or nearing college age, Johnson’s lack of savings may present difficulties former Speakers haven’t faced. He sees his modest portfolio as a plus, though, something that sets him apart from his predecessors. “I didn’t grow up with great means,” he told Fox News in November. “But I think that helps us be a better leader, because we can relate to every hard-working American family—because that’s who we are.”