GOP Group Has Big Hitters
in Business, Education, Arts
The New Majority is a group of 65 (and counting) mostly wealthy, mostly high-powered executives who want to change the direction of Orange County’s Republican Party.
That’s quite an undertaking, a longshot, in fact, in the eyes of most political observers. But the guys (and a few gals) who make up the New Majority are people who know how to get things done, and usually have the resources and ingenuity to accomplish their tasks. In their bid to elect like-minded candidates to the local party’s central committee, they are kicking in $10,000 each, meaning the better part of $1 million has been raised for normally obscure intra-party races.
But the New Majority’s members are used to doing things in a big way. They run the county’s biggest companies. They include the biggest benefactors of UCI and Chapman University. They dominate the board of the Performing Arts Center. And a number of them invest together in venture capital deals, providing seed money to emerging technology companies throughout the U.S.
And, for the most part, they know each other well, linked as they are through their business, educational and philanthropic connections.
In fact, until now political activism seems to have been one of the few things they haven’t shared in common.
“We’re involved in a number of things,” said investor Tom Tucker, who is chairman of the new group. “These individuals have created jobs and provided opportunities for others. They’re very philanthropic. But they’ve abdicated their political involvement to others.”
Corporate Clout
Tucker’s reference is to the New Majority’s inner circle. Some other members of the group, such as Donald Bren and George Argyros, have been big givers to the GOP.
The list of New Majority members include several of the county’s most venerable business names: Bren, chairman of the Irvine Co. (Bren’s point men on government relations, Gary Hunt and Franz Wisner, are also members of the New Majority); developer/businessman Argyros; homebuilder William Lyon; and Marion Knott, former owner of Knott’s Berry Farm.
Eight members of the New Majority are current or former top guns in public companies that each boast at least $1 billion in market capitalization or annual revenue. The eight companies combined represented more than $50 billion in market capitalization as of last week, and nearly that much in trailing 12-month revenue.
Billion-Dollar Companies
These eight New Majority members are: multi-billionaire Henry Samueli, co-chairman of Wall Street sensation Broadcom Corp., OC’s largest company by market cap (over $33 billion); David Dukes, retired co-chairman of Ingram Micro Inc., the company with the most revenue in the county ($22 billion in 1998); Paul Folino, CEO of Emulex Corp., Costa Mesa; Terry Hartshorn, vice chairman of Santa Ana-based PacifiCare Health Systems Inc.; Parker Kennedy, president of First American Financial Corp.; Ted Smith, chairman of FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa; Larry Higby, president of Apria Healthcare Group Inc., Costa Mesa; and Don Beall, retired chairman of corporate icon Rockwell International.
There may be even more executives of billion-dollar-companies in the New Majority, but only 44 of the group’s 65 members have been identified.
Other prominent executives who belong to the New Majority include: Nick Shahrestany, a co-founder of Procom Technology, Inc.; Dick Marconi, owner of Orange-based Global Health Sciences; Tom Tierney, chairman/ CEO of Body Wise International; Ben Du, founder of Irvine-based Flojet; Steve Myers, president of SM & A; Corp., Newport Beach; Mark Chapin Johnson, owner of Corona-based Chapin Medical Co.; Richard Rodnick, founder of Irvine-based Geneva Cos.; and Mike Lutton, CEO of PLC Commercial, Newport Beach.
JenStar Investors
Close to a dozen of the group also invest together. The vehicle is JenStar Capital, a Newport Beach-based venture capital firm whose chairman is Tucker. The fund is comprised of about 20 investors. The group typically puts $1 million to $3 million into a deal.
JenStar investors who are in the New Majority include Higby, Johnson, Dukes, Tierney, Smith, Rodnick and David Horowitz, manager of Horowitz Management in Laguna Niguel.
JenStar currently is invested in nine technology companies, as well as in other funds, including Gemini Funds and H & Q; Access Investment Technology Fund.
One JenStar investment that paid off big: Massachusetts-based Art Technology Group, which helps businesses sell their products over the Internet. “The stock today is at 109 3/4. We were in at 95 cents,” said Tucker last week.
Recently, JenStar provided $2 million of $20 million in bridge financing for Eloquent Inc., a Silicon Valley-based technology firm that provides “rich media” solutions for business-to-business communications. It’s expected to go public in a few weeks, Tucker said.
Another venture is CUShopper.com, a Burbank-based Internet firm that Tucker said has found a niche linking consumers to credit unions on the Internet.
“They’re pretty much alone in their space. It’s a great little company. We’ve provided $750,000 and now we will be putting in another $2 million,” said Tucker, adding that JH Whitney is kicking in $14 million.
Of course not every investment was a winner: Tucker laughed about a firm that made portable electric toothbrushes. “All we’ve seen out of that company is about $2,000 each. The company is still limping along. We cannot even get a tax writeoff.”
The New Majority members also see each other in social settings. They are heavily involved in the arts and education.
Cultural Connections
A dozen or so of the New Majority members are on the county’s cultural A-List,the board of the Orange County Performing Arts Center. The center’s current chairman is New Majority member Roger T. Kirwan, founder of Ganis Credit Corporation, a national mobile-home lender that was sold to the Bank of Boston in 1995. Its vice chairman is Higby. Previous chairmen include New Majority members Lyon and Johnson. Tucker is a former vice-chairman.
“We don’t talk politics at those meetings, but you do form a personal bond. In social situations, you discuss other interests,” said Tucker.
New Majority members are also heavily involved in the county’s leading educational institutions; some of their names decorate buildings and programs on the UCI and Chapman campuses.
Argyros has been chairman of the board of Chapman University for 25 years and its main benefactor, bestowing millions of dollars on the university. Also on Chapman’s board are New Majority members Knott and Zelma Allred, co-owner of Pool Water Products of Irvine. Johnson and Folino are , with Argyros , members of the Executive Fellows, a group of business executives who support Chapman. Parker Kennedy’s father, Don, is a board member of the university.
Bren is one of the single largest contributors to the University of California system. Over the years he has given $26.5 million, including $11.5 million to UCI, creating some 20 endowed chairs. Bren also gave $1.5 million to Chapman last year.
Bren’s Irvine Co. is managing the University Research Park, a 185-acre joint venture with UCI to attract corporate research facilities; so far, 14 buildings have gone up and they are 90% leased.
In December, Samueli and his wife, Susan, gave $20 million to the school of engineering at UCI, along with $30 million to the engineering school at UCLA.
Tierney and Smith are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the UCI Foundation, the university’s main fund-raising organization.
UCI’s CEO Roundtable is a group of 80 top local executives who each pay $10,000 a year for university scholarships; they also lend additional support to university activities. The roundtable’s vice chairman is Samueli. Dukes is a former chairman. Other Roundtable members in the New Majority are Tucker, Smith, Folino, Beall, Shahrestany, Johnson, Tierney, The Gordon and Morris Group chairman Mike Gordon, Himes Peters Jepson CEO Ken Himes, RSI Home Products CEO Ron Simon and Doug Freeman of Freeman, Freeman & Smiley.
The group’s members think of three areas,philanthropy, investments and politics , as intertwined.
“We call them the three circles. We think that they play on each other,” said Tucker.
The connections among these executives extend well beyond the limits of Orange County:
“We have a huge amount of ability to tap resources throughout the country because of friendships,” Tucker said. n
