Caroline Kennedy will feel right at home in the Millionaires’ Club known as the U.S. Senate: The Camelot heiress’ net worth easily tops $100 million, a Daily News review found.
The former First Daughter is refusing to release financial information as she seeks to become New York‘s next senator, maintaining her family dynasty’s longstanding practice of keeping its fortune tightly under wraps.
Public records paint a portrait of an enormously wealthy 51-year-old woman, whose dad, 35th President John F. Kennedy, is featured on the half-dollar coin.
Her crown jewel appears to be the 366-acre ocean-side estate on Martha’s Vineyard passed down by her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Onassis bought the swank vacation getaway for $1.1 million in 1978. Tax records show the property is valued at nearly $40 million.
Experts predict it would sell for far, far more on the open market.
“If you were going to sell it it, it would be between $50 [million] to $75 million,” said Cathy Goudy, owner of American Real Estate on Martha’s Vineyard. “It’s breathtaking. It’s extremely unique.”
Caroline Kennedy cashed out rather than own two Massachusetts waterfront homes, selling her father’s Hyannis Port house for $3 million several years ago to her uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Onassis, upon her death in 1994, also handed Kennedy and her brother, John Jr., the gift that keeps on giving: JFK’s share of a massive family trust – with never-disclosed millions invested in real estate, gas and oil.
Family patriarch Joseph Kennedy launched the far-reaching financial empire for his children more than 60 years ago, split among JFK, Robert F. Kennedy, Edward Kennedy and their three sisters.
In 1998, Caroline Kennedy received an estimated $38 million from her share of the family’s sale of Chicago‘s Merchandise Mart and other related properties.
Joseph Kennedy bought the Merchandise Mart, once the largest building in the world, in 1945.
Onassis also gave her children a sizable fortune, valued at $43.7 million by the executors of her will, though various auctions of her assets may have increased the value to upward of $70 million.
In 2005, a Sotheby’s auction of more than 700 pieces of Kennedy family furniture, artwork and knickknacks amassed $5.5 million for Caroline Kennedy.
That’s on top of the 1996 auction that raised $34.5 million – including $2.5 million for her mom’s engagement ring from Aristotle Onassis.
And her brother left an estimated $50 million estate following his death in 1999, with Caroline Kennedy and her three children the prime beneficiaries.
Kennedy and her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, live on Park Ave. on Manhattan‘s upper East Side. From 2002 through 2004, she worked for $1 a year for the the city Education Department.
Aides said Caroline Kennedy will not release her tax returns if appointed to the Senate by Gov. Paterson. Her spokesman Stefan Friedman declined to comment Tuesday on her finances.
