Richard DeVos Sr. -- who built a $1.6 billion fortune leveraging one multi-purpose cleaning product into a vast marketing empire -- is ranked by Forbes as the 175th richest American. DeVos serves on the board of Alticor, a new corporation that includes Amway and an Internet sales branch. A longtime Republican donor, he and his wife topped the Mother Jones 400 in 1998 (see "Tough Sell").
For the DeVoses, politics is a family affair. Their son, Richard DeVos Jr., serves as president of Alitcor and chairman of "Restoring the American Dream," a political action committee that supports candidates opposed to the "fundamental coarsening of our culture" and the "erosion of civility and basic decency." The family also invested more than a third of the $12.9 million raised to persuade Michian voters to divert funds from public schools into private-school vouchers -- a referendum defeated last November by a margin of 2 to 1. And in 1999, the inaugural fundraising event for a new "stealth PAC" called the Republican Majority Issues Committee was held aboard the DeVos family yacht.
The RMIC was founded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) to take advantage of Section 527 of the tax code, which allowed certain campaign contributions to remain secret. The committee, which declared its intention to "identify, educate, and mobilize conservative voters in key House races," was later forced to reveal its contributors after Congress closed the 527 loophole. DeVos donated $150,000 to the group, which ran ads in Utah last October attacking House candidate Jim Matheson for being "gay-friendly."
DeVos and his wife also donate millions to charities -- especially those that promote conservative causes. The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation handed out $95.1 million between 1990 and 1997, with nearly a third of the money going to support organizations that espouse Christian values. But the couple doesn't give to homeless shelters and food banks, saying the poor should raise themselves out of poverty. "I don't want to make 'em too comfortable there," DeVos told the Grand Rapids Press. "I want them to get a little desperate to go out and find their way out of it."
The Amway founder certainly knows what it's like to be a little desperate. When his new book, Hope From My Heart: 10 Lessons for Life, was published last year, his agent was accused of trying to create the appearance of popularity by purchasing 18,000 copies. Alerted to the self-promotion, The New York Times excluded the sales, and DeVos failed to make the bestseller list.
-- Helene Blatter
