In the long march to the Oval Office, personal wealth isn’t the propellant it used to be. Federal law limits to $50,000 the total amount a candidate and his family can contribute to a campaign if he accepts federal campaign financing. Of this year’s 11 major candidates, only John Connally has rejected it. Still, it helps to be financially independent — if only because that allows a politician to put in a year or two on the hustings without fear of missing a mortgage payment.

An ethics law passed in 1978 requires candidates to file statements listing their sources of income, their assets and their liabilities with the Federal Election Commission. But the statements can quite legally be vague. The candidates are only required to assign ranges of value to their holdings. The ranges are broad, and the highest categories — over $ 100,000 for income and over $250,000 for assets — can make a multimillionaire look like just a plain old millionaire. Candidates do not have to disclose what their houses are worth or how big their mortgages are. And certain holdings — trusts set up for the candidate by a parent, for example —  don’t have to be listed.

To provide a fuller picture than the law requires. Money asked the 10 men still in the race early last month and one who had not declared his candidacy — Gerald Ford — for copies of their 1978 federal income tax returns and for a detailed list of their assets and debts. We asked that the income and net worth of their wives be included. Republican George Bush had already filed this material with the Federal Election Commission, and Democrat Jimmy Carter had disclosed his finances in May 1979. Republicans Philip Crane and John Anderson complied with our request. Democrats Edward Kennedy and Jerry Brown gave us tax returns only, while Republican Howard Baker submitted nothing more than a summary of the first two pages of his tax return. Through aides, Ronald Reagan and Robert Dole, also Republicans, agreed to fill out Money financial questionnaires, but only Dole did so. Ford, who says he does not expect to run for the Republican nomination “unless circumstances change sufficiently,” asked not to be included. Representatives of Republican John Connally refused to cooperate after promising that they would.

Money turned to public records and other sources for material on those who did not provide information. All the candidates’ valuations of their assets were checked, where possible, against independent appraisals or estimates. When we had to fall back on federal filings, we used the lowest value in a range to calculate income and assets and the highest value in a range to estimate liabilities.

Of the candidates who gave us 1978 tax returns, Bush paid the smallest percentage of his income in taxes — only 2%, partly because of a paper loss from real estate partnerships. The man most severely bitten by the IRS was Kennedy, who paid 47%. Donations to charity ranged from Anderson’s .4% of total income to 13% for Bush.

Seven of the 11 candidates have a net worth of $1 million or more. Kennedy, Connally, Reagan and Bush are on top of the countinghouse pile. The rest — in descending order, Ford, Carter, Dole. Crane. Baker and Anderson — are very, very comfortable. The least well off is Brown. For a closer look at the candidates. ranked by net worth from richer to poorer, turn the page.

EDWARD KENNEDY

• 1978 Income: $674,034
• Estimated Net Worth: $20.4 million

Kennedy, 48, inherited his wealth from his father, the late Joseph Kennedy, who accumulated nearly half a billion dollars by investing in oil, liquor, movies, stocks, banks and real estate. Before his death, the elder Kennedy established trusts for his children, partly to avoid inheritance taxes. In 1978, Senator Kennedy received $505,081 in income from two of the trusts. Other assets Kennedy inherited were placed in a blind trust in 1978. According to required public disclosures last year, that trust has assets of at least $6.4 million and liabilities of as much as $3 million. In 1978, the blind trust lost $ 14,465.

Kennedy has never revealed what assets are in the family trusts. Presumably some of the money is invested in stocks and bonds. However, two of the biggest Kennedy family holdings are the Merchandise Mart, a 4.3-million-square-foot wholesale center in Chicago, and the Apparel Center next door, which opened three years ago. Ted Kennedy’s 13% share in the Merchandise Mart is worth about $15.5 million, after subtracting his $4 million portion of the mortgage. Assuming he owns a similar 13% share of the Apparel Center, his equity would be about $1.4 million.

Other real estate holdings in Kennedy’s blind trust include a $5,000 to $15,000 share of 2,740 acres of timberland in the Florida panhandle, and at least $ 15,000 worth of stock in Darby Realty Corp., whose principal asset is 110 acres of land on Cape Cod. Local real estate agents say the property would sell for about $4 million.

Oil and gas royalties and leases worth at least $261,000 make up the rest of the blind trust. Leases and royalties are usually valued at their original cost. Because Joseph Kennedy acquired them years ago, rising costs of oil and gas lands may make them worth many times $261,000.

Besides the assets of his various trusts, Kennedy owns a $750,000 estate in McLean, Va., a $450,000 Hyannisport summer house, the $200,000 condominium in Boston’s Back Bay that his wife lives in, one-seventh of his mother’s $2.2 million Palm Beach mansion and half of an empty lot on Cape Cod worth about $ 100,000. Kennedy has another $211,000 or more in bank accounts and invested in commercial paper, plus $53,800 in contributions to his Senate pension plan. He is also custodian for his three children of a portfolio of blue-chip stocks and savings accounts worth at least $318,000.

JOHN CONNALLY

• Estimated 1978 Income: $730,000
• Estimated Net Worth: $6.1 million

If John Connally, 63. makes it to the White House, he may face some financial headaches. The $250,000 presidential salary and expense allowance will entail a drastic pay cut, since Connally earned about $500,000 in 1978 from his law practice and corporate director’s fees and at least another $230,000 from investments. Mortgage payments on the Texas ranchland he owns come to about $500,000 a year. Connally may need more than overdraft privileges on his checking account to keep him afloat.

Over the years, Connally has rubbed elbows with people of wealth. When he did, some often rubbed off on him. In 1952 Connally took a job with Texas oilman Sid Richardson as a kind of legal troubleshooter. When Richardson died in 1959, Connally was one of the executors of the $105 million estate. As a result, Connally made $750,000.

Since joining Vinson & Elkins, one of Houston’s most prestigious law firms, in 1969, Connally has earned a hefty share of profits by bringing in business and counseling clients on business deals. Clients often offer to write him in on their deals, and sometimes he goes along. In 1977, for example, Connally joined with his client Ghaith Pharaon, a Saudi Arabian investor, and another Saudi to buy the Main Bank of Houston. Connally paid about $1.1 million for a 15% share that he later sold for a profit of at least $100,000.

Along with his $600,000 house in the River Oaks section of Houston, Connally owns two ranches totaling 7,500 acres near his hometown of Floresville, Texas; an interest in a ranch in Val Verde County near the Mexican border; and a half-interest in 584 acres of unimproved land in Freestone County. Together the ranch and land investments are worth about $7.5 million. Mortgages on the properties total about $3.3 million.

In 1973 Connally and a friend, Frederick Erck, bought the First City National Bank of Floresville. Connally’s shares are now worth $462,500. Until he resigned his corporate directorships last May, Connally owned stock — in some cases, a substantial amount — in companies on whose boards he served, including Dr Pepper and Justin Industries, a building materials manufacturer.

Connally has liquidated most of these holdings. By last May he had sold most of his stock, leaving at least $300,000 in checking accounts and certificates of deposit. Connally also sold about 10 acres he owned in a Fort Worth housing development. He still is owed at least $406,000 from the sale.

RONALD REAGAN

• Estimated 1978 Income: At least $615,000
• Estimated Net Worth: $4.1 million

The mid-life career change of Ronald Reagan from actor to politician has brought him no financial hardship. After eight years as Governor of California, he turned his position as unofficial spokesman for the right wing of the Republican Party into a successful business. Reagan produced a twice-weekly column that appeared in 130 newspapers in 33 states, and a five-minute daily radio broadcast aired on 275 stations. Also, in 1978 he made 131 speeches for a typical fee of $5,000 each to groups ranging from the National Turkey Federation to the Distilled Spirits Council. After expenses, all those activities netted him about $447,000 in 1978.

Over the years, Reagan, 69, has made a few large investments in California real estate. After selling a 290-acre ranch near Malibu at a $1.5 million profit in the 1960s, he paid $347,000 for 771 acres of undeveloped land in Riverside County. In 1976, he sold it for $856,500. In 1974 he and his wife Nancy bought a ranch near Santa Barbara for $527,000. Today it would probably sell for $1.8 million. Their house in Pacific Palisades is worth about $1.3 million.

Reagan has put at least $1.2 million of his real estate profits in a trust that is now invested in Treasury bills and other money-market instruments. William F. Smith, one of three Reagan friends who serve as trustees, says that the trust has performed “consistent with market conditions.” In 1978, the trust’s securities produced at least $65,000 in income and capital gains. Reagan also has at least $107,000 in savings accounts, life insurance policies and ranch equipment. If he financed 75% of the cost of the Santa Barbara ranch at 10% interest for 25 years — terms that were common when he bought the property — Reagan would still owe about $370,000 on the mortgage.

GEORGE BUSH

• 1973 Income: $94,429
• Estimated Net Worth: $2.1 million

Son of the late Prescott Bush, who was an investment banker and U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Bush rejected a “cut and dried” job in a Wall Street office. After Yale he took off for Odessa, Texas, where he sold oil-drilling equipment. In 1953, he teamed up with a friend and raised $500,000 through family contacts to form what became the Zapata OffShore Co. Shares in the company originally were worth 7¢ apiece; when Bush sold his 38,000 shares in 1966 to run for Congress, they were worth $20 each. That $757,340 profit was invested while he held various government offices.

Until last spring, Bush, 55, had two businesses — writing and lecturing, and business consulting and serving on corporate boards, among them those of Purolator Inc. and Texasgulf. His 1978 income from both businesses was $75,381. His income that year also included $4,160 in interest, $53,020 in dividends and capital gains on stocks and $12,100 from $165,585 worth of tax-exempt bonds. He had $50,232 in losses from two real estate partnerships.

Bush’s stocks, bonds and partnerships are worth about $1.2 million. The Bushes own a house in Houston that’s worth about $550,000 and a summer place in Kennebunkport, Maine valued at about $150,000. All that plus Bush’s life insurance, cash, personal belongings and business equipment comes to $2,148,000. He has no debts except for some $50,000 that he borrowed against his life insurance last year.

GERALD FORD

• Estimated 1978 income: $1 million
• Estimated Net Worth: $1.6 million

According to Jerry terHorst, Ford’s onetime press secretary, the former President was almost broke when he moved into the White House in 1974. Since leaving office in 1977, Ford, now 66, has turned the ex-Presidency into a lucrative career. Certain benefits come to Ford simply because he sat in the Oval Office for 2 1/2 years — notably a pension equal to the salary of a Cabinet officer, which will be $69,630 in 1980, and all his office expenses — about $306,000 this year. Ford collects another $48,400 pension for his pre-presidential government service — four years in the Navy, 25 years in the House of Representatives and eight months as Vice President.

Ford picks up $50,000 a year as the only Distinguished Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, and another $18,000 annually as the president of the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, a program for foreign businessmen. For $25,000, he serves as chairman of the Academy for Educational Development, a consulting firm.

After leaving office, Ford and his wife Betty joined the ranks of William Morris Agency clients, who include Clint Eastwood and Donna Summer. The agency won a $1 million advance for the Fords’ memoirs, a $1 million five-year NBC contract for him and a $500,000 two-year NBC contract for her. Mrs. Ford’s book, The Times of My Life, was published in 1978; her husband’s A Time to Heal, which came out last summer, turned into a bestseller. Mrs. Ford got $500,000 from Ballantine for the paperback rights to her book. She fulfilled her NBC contract, but her husband’s was “terminated amicably” last year.

Ford also earns about $30,000 a month giving speeches. Appearances on TV in Japan in 1978 provided Ford with another $100,000. In 1977, for $86,000, Ford helped design and promote a Franklin Mint medal series depicting great moments in presidential history. Norman Brokaw, the Fords’ agent at William Morris, insists: “The President doesn’t do anything undignified.”

The Fords rent out their unpretentious condominium in Vail, Colo. Inflation has kicked its value up to $350,000. They have built a $700,000 11-room ranch house in Rancho Mirage, a community near Palm Springs where some of America’s wealthiest people live. Ford and his new neighbor Leonard Firestone plan to acquire two radio stations in Colorado for $ 1.6 million. In a financial statement required by the FCC, Ford revealed last September that aside from his California house and Colorado condominium, he had $505,000 in savings certificates, $10,000 in securities, $35,000 worth of personal possessions and $10,000 in cash. For liabilities, he listed only a $1,000 credit card debt.

JIMMY CARTER

• 1978 Income: $267,296
• Estimated Net Worth: $1.4 million

When Money last examined Carter’s finances in 1976, his net worth of $666,000 was, relatively speaking, peanuts. Now Carter, 55, is worth more than twice that. Poor management has substantially reduced his equity in the family peanut warehouse, but his farmland has tripled in value.

When Carter was elected, he established a blind trust to avoid any conflicts of interest. Into the trust went two major holdings: a 91% share of his 2,000-acre peanut farm and his 62% portion of the peanut warehouse, both in Plains, Ga. Last year, Carter’s land was worth about $800,000, according to tax assessors — but Plains real estate agents say that Carter’s share of the farm, along with 150 acres acquired from brother Billy by the trust, would probably sell for about $1 million.

The warehouse, valued at $1.5 million by tax assessors, is now leased to Gold Kist, a farmers’ cooperative. Using the tax valuation, Carter’s share would be worth about $930,000. However, his share of liabilities comes to about $558,000. On Carter’s 1978 tax return, he reported a $28,000 loss on the trust, largely from the warehouse; since 1976, Carter has had to lend the business a total of about half a million to bail it out.

Carter’s house would now sell for at least $95,000 — probably more, because it has been owned by a President. The Carters also have $228,750 in savings accounts and savings certificates, $50,783 in life insurance cash value, $2,554 in U.S. savings bonds, a $50,000 note from his son Jack and an aging Chevrolet Impala worth about $2,850. In 1978 their liabilities came to $1,500.

Carter earned $250,000 as President in 1978. He deducted $13,000 for business expenses, mostly entertaining the White House staff. Although the President and his family get free housing, medical care and servants, they don’t always get a free ride. Carter had to include in his taxable income $4,534 for transportation provided by the government to family members when they weren’t traveling on business.

ROBERT DOLE

• 1978 Income: $139,554
• Estimated Net Worth: $1.1 million

One of Robert Dole’s greatest political assets in 1976 and 1980 campaign appearances has been his brainy, good-looking wife, former FTC Commissioner Elizabeth Hanford Dole. The Doles’ marriage in 1975 also provided him with financial assets.

On his own, Dole, 56, has a net worth of $345,000. His largest holding is an apartment and garage space at the Watergate, worth about $258,000. He still owes about $50,000 on the mortgage. Dole owns no property in his home state of Kansas. When he visits, he stays with his mother. A 19-year member of Congress, Dole has $58,300 invested in his government retirement plan.

Mrs. Dole has $165,000 in stocks and bonds, and she inherited another $176,250 when her father, John Hanford, a wealthy North Carolina wholesaler, died in 1978. She has about $37,000 in savings and a real estate partnership worth at least $63,000. The cash value of her life insurance is $77,600 and her pension contributions amount to about $25,400. She also has a smaller Watergate apartment than Dole’s that’s worth about $183,000. The apartment was hers before she married; now the Doles rent it out. She owes about $15,000 on the mortgage.

In 1978, the Doles together took in almost $140,000. He made $57,500 as Senator and earned another $22,500 for making speeches. She earned $50,000 at the FTC. In addition, Dole, who was severely wounded in World War II, collected $8,563 in veterans disability pay. Investments, mostly in Mrs. Dole’s name, netted only $991 because the real estate partnership lost more than $17,000.

PHILIP CRANE

• 1978 Income: $85,582
• Net Worth: $688,681

Philip Crane, 49, son of syndicated columnist George Crane III, who writes “The Worry Clinic,” can always retreat to his Indiana farm if his political worries become too trying. Besides providing a refuge, the farm, where Crane’s parents still live, is more of a financial asset than Crane thinks. In a financial statement for Money, Crane lists his 75% share of the farm at $50,000. Local real estate agents say the farm would sell for about $212,000, so his share would be worth $159,000.

The Cranes own no property in the Chicago suburb he represents, though they maintain a voting address at a friend’s house there. They owe $43,646 on the mortgage of their house in suburban Washington, which real agents say would sell for $250,000. Crane also has stocks and bonds worth $119,-299, by his estimate. Although he has some fairly standard industrial stocks such as International Paper, he has also invested in two South African gold mining companies. Along with about $33,000 in personal property, Crane has a coin collection he values at about $95,000. He has a whole life insurance policy with a cash value of $10,960, contributions of $38,100 in his government retirement fund and $8,207 in cash.

Like many politicians, he moonlights as a speechifier. Over the years he has contributed to a Keogh plan now worth $18,761. In 1978, Crane made a $21,976 profit from his writings and lectures in addition to his congressional salary of $57,500. Profits on the sale of farm produce added $5,575 to his income. He made $6,923 from his stocks but lost  $6,406, mostly on commodity trading.

That accounts for all but $ 14 of his income. The $14 was a royalty payment for words Crane wrote in 1957 for a song called Little Sandy Sleighfoot.

HOWARD BAKER

• 1978 Income: $340,748
• Estimated Net Worth: At least $568,700

Baker, 54, son of a prosperous Congressman from Huntsville in north central Tennessee, was a partner in the family law firm now called Baker Worthington Crossley Stansberry & Woolf until his election to the Senate in 1966. He developed corporate clients through the firm’s Knoxville branch, and in the backwater of Huntsville he created clients where none existed. He formed several quasi-public nonprofit entities, including the Highland Telephone Cooperative and the Huntsville Utility District (for water). All used his firm as counsel. Baker helped expand the First National Bank of Oneida; he and two friends bought a controlling interest in 1959, and one of them, William Swain, became president. Hard work made the bank more profitable, according to Swain.

Until 1977, one of Baker’s biggest holdings was a 10% interest in a land company that owned the Payne-Baker tract, more than 60 square miles of Tennessee forest that has coal, oil and gas beneath it. Baker’s father had owned an 11% share, and Baker managed the property. In 1972, Baker, Swain, John W. Rollins, then chairman of the Rollins International conglomerate, and others arranged to buy the entire tract; Baker paid $200,000 for 10% of the company. Although the partners say they originally intended to sell only the timber, they strip-mined some of the land for coal.

Baker has sold his major assets — but mostly to friends or law partners. He is no longer a member of the law firm nor a shareholder in the Oneida bank, though his children own at least $50,000 worth of Oneida stock. In 1977, he sold his share of the land company for $1 million, to be paid over seven years.

The capital gains and interest Baker gets each year, mostly from that sale, contributed $250,998 to his total income in 1978. The rest came from his Senate salary of $65,000 and $24,750 in honorariums for speeches.

Baker’s $718,700 in assets includes about $450,000 due on the land-company sale; a house and guesthouse on 10 1/2 acres of land near Huntsville, worth about $150,000; a $35,000 share of 26 acres of timberland in Gatlinburg, Tenn.; and miscellaneous savings accounts worth at least $24,000. He also has $52,200 invested in his retirement plan.

However, Baker has liabilities of about $150,000. A mortgage makes up about $50,000 of the debt. The balance is in promissory notes owed to the Oneida bank. In 1978 Baker took out a series of notes that at one point totaled almost $200,000 to pay taxes on his land-company capital gains.

JOHN ANDERSON

• 1978 Income: $80,229
• Net Worth: $541,600

Though now solidly comfortable, Anderson, 58, didn’t start with much. His father, who emigrated from Sweden to Rockford, Ill., ran a small grocery store there. Anderson has been in public life for nearly 24 years, most of them in Washington. As a result, other than a modest portfolio of stocks worth about $43,300 and retirement contributions of $58,300, his biggest holdings are three houses, with mortgages totaling as much as $95,000. One house in Rockford is worth about $85,000, and another in Bethesda, Md. about $175,000.

The Andersons also own a rental property, a Washington house worth about $275,000 that provides office space for the Canadian embassy. Anderson charges $19,800 in rent. He deducts about $10,000 of the rent for expenses and depreciation. The net income of $10,083, his salary of $57,500 and about $12,000 profit from lecturing and writing are Anderson’s major sources of income.

JERRY BROWN

• 1978 Income: $50,987
• Estimated Net Worth: $333,700

Brown’s view that less is more seems to carry over into his personal finances: he has less than any other candidate. In 1978, his salary as Governor of California was $49,100, he earned $1,419 in interest and had a $468 tax refund.

Besides his savings accounts, which totaled about $25,000 in mid-1979. Brown, 41, owns two pieces of real estate. In 1972, he bought a small house in the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles that would now sell for at least $200,000. His second deal, however, sounds like a land-fraud victim’s nightmare. In 1978, for a retreat site, he bought a 160-acre plot in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills now worth $188,700. The land, about a mile from the nearest public road, is described as “rattlesnake infested” by local folks. Brown still has at least $100,000 left to pay on the mortgage. His only other asset is $20,000 in contributions he has made to the California state retirement system.

Brown is in line for a considerable inheritance from his father, former Governor Edmund G. Brown Sr., reputed to be a multimillionaire. When he left the governorship in 1967, the elder Brown went into law practice in Beverly Hills and started an oil-importing business, the Perta Oil Marketing Corp. The firm holds a U.S. marketing franchise from the Indonesian state-owned oil and gas corporation, Pertamina. Jerry Brown, who has remarked that he has no interest in it and wishes it did not exist, will still have to manage or dispose of an inherited share of it someday.