The lives of donors like Ricketts, Friess and VanderSloot have become news fodder. | AP Photos
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
All they wanted was to get involved.
But to hear some of the biggest donors of 2012 tell it, their six- and seven-figure contributions have instead bought them nothing but grief.
Their personal lives are fodder for news stories. President Barack Obama and his allies have singled out conservative mega-donors as greedy tax cheats, or worse. And a conservative website has launched a counteroffensive targeting big-money liberals.
This is definitely not what they had in mind. In their view, cutting a million-dollar check to try to sway the presidential race should be just another way to do their part for democracy, not a fast-track to the front page.
And now some are pushing back hard against the attention, asking: Why us?
This idea of giving public beatings has been around for a long time, said Frank VanderSloot, a wealthy Idaho businessman who donated $1 million in corporate cash to the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney and says hes raised between $2 million and $5 million for the Romney campaign.
VanderSloot, who is also a national finance co-chairman for Romney, was among eight major Romney donors singled out on an Obama campaign website last month as having less-than-reputable records, and he thinks the purpose is clear intimidation.
You go back to the Dark Ages when they put these people in the stocks or whatever they did, or publicly humiliated them as a deterrent to everybody else watch this watch what we do to the guy who did this.
VanderSloot is one of the loudest of the aggrieved mega-donors, announcing that his familys privacy has been invaded and his health and home products company, Melaleuca, had lost hundreds of customers, and asserting the Obama campaign list and liberal websites have misrepresented his company and political activism.
Hes waged an aggressive response, making a series of appearances on the Fox News Channel in which he called for donations to Romney in protest of the list. He also spoke at a Heritage Foundation event in Washington this week. And he told POLITICO he intended to make additional donations to the pro-Romney super PAC each time something untruthful was published about him a plan he said his wife predicted could yield several hundred thousand dollars more in contributions.
The top lawyer for VanderSloots company has demanded corrections from media outlets writing about VanderSloots political activity. When one blogger emailed back, I do not appreciate thinly veiled threats, the lawyer responded, We have been neither thin nor veiled. Melaleuca is more than capable and willing to protect its reputation from false and defamatory statements as it sees fit.
Plus, VanderSloot launched a website where he defends himself against what he calls attacks from extreme, far left blog sites.
Other mega-donors seem to have been caught off-guard by media attention and partisan attacks.
Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade, was said to be extremely upset by the controversy that swirled around him after the New York Times reported he was considering spending $10 million on ads attacking Obama over his controversial former pastor.
More: 2012 mega-donors: Quit picking on us - POLITICO.com
