Ex-fund manager with Pa. ties throws big bucks behind Santorum
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Foster Friess
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Foster Friess, onetime Pennsylvania resident and current Wyoming multimillionaire, is not shy about why he's backing Rick Santorum's presidential bid.
"The man starts his day with 50 push-ups," Mr. Friess said of the former Pennsylvania senator. "That's the type of energy the Republican Party needs."
But compare Mr. Friess, 71, to other big-money moguls whose contributions have made headlines in this year's GOP race, and the retired mutual fund manager demurs.
"I'm the underdog millionaire in that bunch," said Mr. Friess, who formerly lived in Chadds Ford, Delaware County, last week in an interview. "They've all got 50 times more money than I do."
So far, though, he has done a pretty good job of keeping up.
Mr. Friess -- who made his money managing the $15.7 billion portfolio of the Brandywine Fund -- has put up a "good chunk" of the nearly $1.5 million spent by a super PAC backing Mr. Santorum, the Red, White, and Blue Fund.
Last week, he upped the ante, sending notes to 5,000 friends and colleagues pledging to match their donations -- up to $500,000 -- in advance of the South Carolina primary.
But while Mr. Friess declined to put a figure on his contributions, that total has put him in league with such Republican donors as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who gave $5 million to a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich this month, and Jon Huntsman Sr., who funneled millions into his son's now-aborted presidential bid.
Together, they have buoyed once-trailing campaigns, saturated airwaves with ads, and raised the hackles of groups who want to curb big money's role in picking presidents.
"They're in a class of a couple hundred Americans that can keep a presidential candidate afloat all by themselves," said James Browning of Common Cause. "It warps the political process."
Mr. Friess, an outspoken evangelical Christian, veteran supporter of conservative causes, and ally of the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, defends his right to bestow his largesse on whomever, and to whatever degree, he chooses.
"My donations are destined for people who can reshape America and rejuvenate it back to its traditional value system," he said.
Friends say Mr. Friess' support for Mr. Santorum exhibits the flair for showmanship for which he has become known.
A tall man with the weathered face of an outdoorsman, he delights in stunts such as the one he pulled at his 70th birthday party, said Molly F. Greene III, friend and cofounder of the Christian charity Water Missions International.
Inviting 200 guests out to his Jackson, Wyo., ranch, Mr. Friess asked all to write pitches for their favorite charity. He pledged to give $70,000 to one that caught his eye.
Ms. Greene won't soon forget what happened next: Mr. Friess passed out envelopes to each guest, promising that the winner would find a check inside -- whereupon nearly every person at the dinner jumped out of their chairs at once. The Friesses gave away $7 million that night.
"The Lord really knew what he was doing when he gave Foster a ton of money," Ms. Greene said, "because he just loves to give it away."
On the trail -- he stumped with Mr. Santorum in Iowa -- he's become a frequent fixture on cable TV news shows seeking out the limelight where other donors prefer the shadows.
"He's passionate about his ideas and not afraid to defend them," said his friend Art Brosius, who met Mr. Friess in Bible study group in the 1970s.
Mr. Friess was born in 1940 in Rice Lake, Wis., then a town of about 5,000. His father dealt livestock; his mother dropped out of grade school to pick cotton on her family's farm in Texas.
High school valedictorian and president of his fraternity at the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Friess wed a sorority president and beauty pageant winner in 1962. He and Lynette are still married.
After cutting his teeth in the investment world, he moved east to launch Friess Associates and its flagship Brandywine Fund -- which eventually grew into a billion-dollar enterprise, dubbed one of the top mutual funds of the 1990s by Forbes.
These days he has ceded the reins of the fund, moved west, and redirected his investing acumen to philanthropy.
Last year, Charles Koch cited him among more than two dozen donors who'd given at least $1 million to conservative causes. In 2010, he gave more than $200,000 to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett's campaign.
Mr. Friess draws no distinction between his charitable and political giving. "We have to do a good job vetting where our money is going to have the greatest impact," he said.
And in Mr. Santorum, Mr. Friess sees opportunity.
"There's nobody else standing up for the American dream that I epitomize," he said. "I worked hard. I want to encourage that."
First Published January 22, 2012 12:00 am
