Posted on 04/14/2004 4:10:29 AM PDT by Liz
Meet Teresa's Wealthy Friends: The Heinz Foundations and the Kerry Campaign
Teresa Heinz Kerry's Philanthropy Empire
Summary: The head of the Heinz charitable foundations happens to be the wife of John Kerry, the Democratic Senator and presidential candidate. What's the relationship between the foundation's charitable gifts to environmental groups and environmentalist supporters of the Senator's presidential campaign? What might that mean for a Kerry presidency?
Teresa Heinz Kerry is the widow of the late Pennsylvania Senator and ketchup heir H. John Heinz III. She is the current wife of presidential candidate and Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry (D.). And she is a member of the board of three Heinz foundations that altogether are worth more than a billion dollars. Annual tax reports (IRS Form 990) show that Teresa Kerry Heinz is:
Chairman of board of the Heinz Family Foundation. With assets of $69 million in 2002, it made grants that year of $4.8 million.
Chairman of board of the Howard Heinz Endowment. It had assets of $773.3 million and made grants of $43.7 million in 2002.
Member of the board of directors of the Vira I. Heinz Endowment. Its 2002 assets were $399.2 million and it made grants of $17.9 million.
That adds up to $1.24 billion in assets and $66.4 million in grants disbursed in 2002. One other fact: All three Heinz foundations make large grants to environmental pressure groups led by powerful persons who support her husband's political ambitions.
The Woman Behind the Money
Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira was born in 1938 in Portuguese-ruled Mozambique, the daughter of a prominent Portuguese expatriate doctor. She grew up in South Africa and took her undergraduate degree in Romance languages at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She speaks Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian and English.
During graduate study at the University of Geneva's interpreters' school she met young H. John Heinz III, who was working at a Swiss bank on summer break from Harvard Business School. She didn't know who he was at first--he told her only that his father "made soup."
They were married four years later in 1966 at the Heinz Chapel in Pittsburgh and had three sons. John entered politics and was elected a Republican Representative from Pennsylvania's 18th District in 1971 and a U.S. Senator in 1976. His tragic 1991 death in a freak plane crash devastated Teresa and their sons.
The couple had been important environmental advocates for nearly a decade before his death: In 1984 they established a fund to help environmental causes, and in 1989 Teresa worked to stop a road-building project in Brazil.
When John Heinz died, Teresa became chairman of the Howard Heinz Endowment and a member of the Vira I. Heinz Endowment board of directors. From then on, she had oversight over numerous environmental grants from both endowments, including a grant of more than $200,000 in 1992 to the Environmental Defense Fund, where she had been a board member since the early 1980s (and remains one today).
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush sent Teresa Heinz to the United Nations "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro. Sen. Heinz had introduced Teresa to his colleague, Sen. John Kerry, at an Earth Day rally in 1990. In Rio they became reacquainted, and Teresa was impressed by Kerry's devotion to environmental issues. Three years later, in 1995, they were married.
Perhaps you could chalk up the environmental movement's strong and early support for John Kerry's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination to the influence of his wife. Her colorful background, sharp intellect and passionate commitments go a long way in explaining her hold over environmental audiences. Susan Smart of California's League of Conservation Voters says, "We will soon have not one but two environmentalists in the White House! It makes me giddy to think about that!"
However, comments like Smart's miss a critical detail about Teresa Heinz Kerry's behind-the-scenes influence. Before considering her personality and intellect, first consider all that Heinz money.
League of Conservation Voters
Will First Lady Teresa Heinz Kerry have to resign her foundation positions if John Kerry becomes President next year? The answer is "No," according to Title 18 of the U.S. Code. Heinz Kerry can continue unchecked to help her environmental group friends and harm their enemies using the majesty of the White House and the funds of the Heinz foundations.
In late January Heinz Kerry told Cox News Service reporter Bob Dart that she would not give up financial control of the Heinz foundations if her husband became president. Said Heinz Kerry: "I don't make money in my office. I give it away."
And give it away, she does. Heinz foundation grants pay for groups sponsoring thinly disguised anti-business drives and partisan political campaigns. The most important group is the League of Conservation Voters (2001 revenue--$2.3 million), a political advocacy group that monitors office-holder voting records, coordinates issue campaigns, and mobilizes voters.
LCV also sponsors a separate segregated fund, the LCV Action Fund, which contributes to political campaigns. It is registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as a so-called 527 group, which (under Section 527(h) of the U.S. Tax Code) can make independent expenditures on behalf of political candidates. The FEC ranks "LCV Political Action Committee" in its Top 50 PAC Receipts--1999-2000 as Number 41 with $2,080,304.
In January 2004, at the very start of the primary season, the national LCV formally endorsed John Kerry for President. By late January, LCV had also given $18,528 directly to the Kerry Campaign. By mid-February, League political director Mark Longabaugh said the group had spent "six figures" on TV ads promoting Kerry's candidacy. By contrast, in 2000 LCV waited until April before endorsing Al Gore, whose environmental reputation was far greater than Kerry's.
When the New York Post asked Longabaugh whether Heinz money was behind LCV's early Kerry support, it got a non-denial denial. Longabaugh said none of Kerry's early 2004 LCV funding came from his wife, but he admitted that from 1993 to 2001 LCV received $57,300 from the Heinz Family Foundation, including a $2,500 personal contribution in 2000 from Teresa Heinz. He asserted that Sen. Kerry received LCV's endorsement because of his stellar 96% LCV voting score. Gore's score had averaged 63% over eight years in the House and 73% over eight years in the Senate.
So who contributed to jumpstart LCV funding for the Kerry campaign? FEC records for the 2004 election cycle show that 166 donors, many of them close Heinz friends and colleagues, contributed $459,680 to the LCV as of mid-February 2004.
These "Friends of Teresa" are among the rich, the famous and the doctrinaire. Eight Kerry backers (names in bold) actually sit on the 24-member board of directors of the League of Conservation Voters.
The Rich:
Four Rockefellers: Larry ($5,000); Richard ($2,500); Wendy ($5,000); and Alida Rockefeller Messinger ($5,000).
Rampa Hormel ($5,000)--she and husband Tom, a meatpacking heir, own a home in Ketchum, Idaho, close by one of Teresa's four homes.
Theodore Roosevelt IV ($5,000 and $5,000 from wife Constance.) He's Managing Director of the investment house Lehman Brothers.
John Hunting ($5,000) Hunting is co-founder of Steelcase, Inc. and a donor to the Beldon Fund. The Beldon Fund is a New York City-based philanthropy (2001 assets--$87.6 million; 2001 grants--$11.5 million) that gives mainly to environmental causes.
John A. "Jay" Harris ($5,000 and $5,000 from wife Laurie.) He's a former investment banker, heir to the Standard Oil fortune, and a Republican contributor to a donor-advised fund--managed by the leftist Tides Foundation--called Changing Horizons Fund.
The Famous:
Liz Claiborne ($5,000 and $5,000 from husband Art Ortenberg). She's the fashion designer and marketing mogul.
David Stern ($5,000 and $5,000 from wife Dianne). He's a sports-management icon and NBA president.
S. Bruce Smart, Jr. ($5,000 and $5,000 from wife Edie). He's a Virginia horse breeder and former U.S. Commerce Department undersecretary.
The Doctrinaire:
Frances Beinecke ($5,000 and $5,000 from husband Paul Elston). She's executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council and an heiress to the Sperry and Hutchinson fortune (i.e., S&H green stamps).
Marie W. Ridder ($5,000), a multi-faceted activist and widow of newspaper magnate Walter T. Ridder.
Gene Karpinski ($250), the executive director of United States Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG).
Rafe Pomerance ($2,500), a Clinton State Department official and a co-author of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Russell Train ($1,000 and $5,000 from wife Aileen). He was EPA chief under President Nixon and is chairman emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund.
They and the 143 other donors made contributions through the League of Conservation Voters to elect John Kerry president. These donors are not a random sample of politically active environmentalists, but its inner circle. They know each other and they know Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Heinz Grants Fund the Green Network
And that raises a related issue: In recent years, the Heinz foundations have given money to LCV board members and their organizations, sometimes in lavish amounts.
League board member John H. Adams is president of the 500,000-member Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which received $56,000 in Heinz grants from 2001-2003. Kerry donor Larry Rockefeller (son of Laurance Rockefeller, whose American Conservation Association was the financial "mother-ship" of the early environmental movement) is also a NRDC staff lawyer.
William Meadows III, executive director of The Wilderness Society, is a member of the LCV board. The Heinz Endowments web site and IRS records show that the Heinz foundations gave The Wilderness Society $50,000 in 2003 and $56,350 in 1996 (total $106,350).
Environmental Defense (ED) president Fred Krupp is also a LCV board member. ED (formerly Environmental Defense Fund) had 2002 revenue of $42,129,333, and received Heinz foundation grants of $601,000 in 2001-2003. (1992-2000 grants total $2,846,819; cumulative total--$3,447,819). What's more, Teresa Heinz Kerry sits on the board of directors of the 400,000-member group.
Heinz Kerry also wouldn't have to resign her vice-chairmanship of The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, D.C. She established the Center with a $20 million grant from the Vira I. Heinz Endowment in 1995.
Peggy Shepard leads West Harlem Environmental Action and is another LCV board member. In 2003, she personally received the Heinz Award, established by Teresa in 1993 to honor the memory of her late husband.
--SNIP--
long read---click on source for rest of story
C'mon Teresa. We all want to hear you speak. What have you got to say for yourself (snicker)?
How dare those Brazilians try and build roads!
No, Susan, its the weed that makes you giddy..
scares the he$$ out of me.
Mozambique was extremely racist. The whites lived in their own conclaves at that time, and treated blacks like subhumans.
At least the Boers in South African farms usually left their kids grow up with their Bantu workers-- with apartheid they believed that each culture should be separate (similar to multiculturalism) but in reality they mixed.
Teresa tells lots of stories about her "romantic" childhood, but you notice she doesn't mention she speaks any Bantu languages.
Says a lot to me....like most Portuguese, they acted like kings and queens to their servants and treated the locals like inferior peasants.
For me, it's a class thing. My ancestors came here because they were peasants...now we are seeing a new "queen" of America who will talk down her nose at us...
Mozambique was extremely racist. The whites lived in their own conclaves at that time, and treated blacks like subhumans.
At least the Boers in South African farms usually left their kids grow up with their Bantu workers-- with apartheid they believed that each culture should be separate (similar to multiculturalism) but in reality they mixed.
Teresa tells lots of stories about her "romantic" childhood, but you notice she doesn't mention she speaks any Bantu languages.
Says a lot to me....like most Portuguese, they acted like kings and queens to their servants and treated the locals like inferior peasants.
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mhking, please ping your list to this thread, and to ladydoc's comments. We all need to know this.
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