IRS: He's leading donor in state
March 8, 2004

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top executive for Strong Financial Corp. made $100,000 in campaign contributions last year, more than any other resident, employee or business in Wisconsin, Internal Revenue Service reports reviewed by The Associated Press show.

Richard T. Weiss, a vice chairman and portfolio manager, made two $50,000 contributions to the Club for Growth, according to IRS reports compiled by Political Money Line (www.fecinfo.com/), a web site that tracks campaign contributions. The Club for Growth supports conservative candidates for Congress.

Weiss, who was named to lead Strong Financial's investment department last year, lives in Illinois, but he splits his time between the company's Menomonee Falls headquarters and its Chicago office.

Weiss' donations were in the form of "soft money" -- large, unregulated contributions from individuals, corporations and labor unions. The McCain-Feingold campaign finance law banned such donations to the national parties, but contributors have found a way around the restriction by donating to tax-exempt groups, called 527s.

The Federal Election Commission is reviewing whether to rein in these groups, which collectively plan to spend millions of dollars on get-out-the-vote activities and ads mentioning candidates in this fall's elections.

"It is not a surprise that with the political parties now out of the soft money game, new 527 groups are seeking to capture their major donors," said Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who co-authored the McCain-Feingold law. "The question is whether they are complying with the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the McCain-Feingold bill."

He called on the Federal Election Commission to closely monitor the groups to ensure they are not coordinating their activity with the national parties or federal officeholders.

Officials with Strong Financial declined to comment on Weiss' contributions and said Weiss was unavailable for comment.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Strong Financial and its founder, Richard Strong, for alleged improper fund trading. Strong, who has denied any wrongdoing, resigned in December as the company's chairman, CEO and chief investment officer.

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The Club for Growth -- The Elitism Myth

February 2004: A commercial airs on Iowa television in which the then-front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Howard Dean, was blasted for being the choice of the cultural elites: a "tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show" who had no business trying to talk to the plain folk of Iowa.

The commercial was sponsored by the Club for Growth, a Washington-based organization dedicated to hooking up pro-business rich people with pro-business politicians.

The organization is made up of anti-government economists, prominent men of means and big thinkers of the late New Economy, celebrated geniuses of the sort that spent the past 10 years describing the low-tax, deregulated economy as though it were the second coming of Christ. In other words, the people who thought they saw Jesus in the ever-ascending Nasdaq, the pundits who worked themselves into a lather singing the praises of new billionaires, the economists who made a living by publicly insisting that privatization and deregulation were the mandates of history itself are now running television commercials denouncing the "elite."

See: www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10070