MI-Gov: Dick DeVos (R-Amway), In a Nutshell

The advertising blitz started even before Tiger Opening Day. Republican candidate for governor Dick DeVos has been spending tens of millions of dollars to wage one of the cheekiest stealth campaigns in American political history. In those ads, DeVos has been holding himself out as a businessman who can turn Michigan's economy around. He's even attempted to portray himself as someone who's above politics--never mind that he and his wife, Betsy, were the biggest individual contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000. His TV ads don't even mention that he's a Republican, and his party affiliation is nowhere to be seen on the front page of the "DeVos for Governor" website.

Then there's the real Dick DeVos, the Son of Amway, the George W. Bush of the Great Lakes. The Michigan Democratic Party would like state voters to know him better. Its 21-page pdf document, "The Michigan Pyramid Scheme: Dick DeVos' Real Plan for Michigan," succinctly and effectively explains why DeVos is a dangerous and extremist candidate.

Behold! Some fun facts about Dick DeVos:

In 2001, Karl Rove asked him whether he would be interested in becoming U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.

Amway, the DeVos family business, now considers itself an Asian company, with 70 percent of its sales coming from that region.

Dick's wife, Betsy, who was the head of the Michigan Republican Party, blamed the state's economic problems on "high wages" and said that Michigan would be better off if it were a "right-to-work" state.

Between 1999 and 2004, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation donated $275,000 to Focus on the Family. DeVos money also went to the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Center for Policy Analysis.

The DeVos campaign signed up Alex Castellanos as a campaign advisor. Castellanos is best known for his race-baiting "Hands" ad, created for Jesse Helms's re-election campaign in 1990.

DeVos, who has financial interests in oil companies, opposes rolling back oil company tax breaks or capping excessive oil company profits.

The DeVoses are one of 18 families who are lobbing to repeal the federal estate tax. If they're successful, they stand to save more than one billion dollars.

Dick and Betsy DeVos have poured $7 million into three organizations that support school vouchers. Even though Michigan voters defeated a voucher proposal by a better than 2-1 margin in the 2000 general election, DeVos told the Heritage Foundation that he didn't consider the matter closed.

DeVos quit the Michigan State Board of Education two years into his eight-year term after missing what the Detroit News called "a slew of meetings." He also missed 13 of 24 meetings as an appointed member of the Grand Valley State University Board of Control.

DeVos believes that Michiganders should rely on employer-provided health coverage, even though the state's employers have been scaling back and even eliminating that benefit.

Newt Gingrich (remember him?) inserted a $300 million tax loophole in the 1997 federal budget that primarily benefitted Amway and its Asian investment. The previous year, Amway donated $2.9 million to the Republican Party.

DeVos contributed to the legal defense fund of Tom DeLay (remember him?), exchanged thousands of dollars with DeLay-affiliated PACs, and hosted a Potomac River cruise whose guests included none other than Jack Abramoff (remember him?).