I had written that Ron Johnson's only qualification was that he started a small plastics company in Oshkosh.
That claim was completly wrong and I apologize.
The reason why I came to that conclusion is that on Ron Johnson's campaign website it says,"In 1979, Ron and Jane moved to Wisconsin, where Ron started a business called PACUR with his brother-in-law".
The truth, though, is that this statement is completely wrong. I should have known better to fact-check something I read on the internet. Again, I apologize.
PACUR was actually a spin-off company of another plastics company called Curwood, which was co-founded by Howard Curler (Ron Johnson's father-in-law) in 1958.
Howard Curler was a giant in the plastics industry. In the late 1960s, he led a merger with the huge multinational corporation, the Bemis Company, but stayed on as president of Curwood. From 1978 to the early 1990s, Howard Curler would be CEO of Bemis. (Today, Howard Curler's son, Jeffrey Curler is president and CEO of the Bemis Company.)
Howard Curler's other son, Pat Curler, headed-up the spin-off company, which started in 1977 and was named PACUR, as a shortening of Pat Curler's name. For many years PACUR's only "client" was "selling" plastic products to parent company, Curwood.
In 1979, when Ron Johnson was 24, he accepted an offer to join his wife's family's plastic business, moved to Wisconsin, and worked in the PACUR company under his brother-in-law, Pat Curler.
This is exactly how it happened, but if you just learned about Johnson from media coverage and Johnson's campaign, you would be led to believe (as I was) that an entreprenurial Johnson was a "self-made man" that started a plastics company in Oshkosh.
For example, the NRSC likes to refer to Johnson as an "entrepreneur" and a on a recent campaign trip to LaCrosse, GOP State Rep. Mike Huebsch introduced Johnson as someone that "built a successful manufacturing company from scratch."
This is simply not true.
The reality is that Ron Johnson lucked-out by marrying Howard Curler's daughter, but that doesn't make him an entrepreneur and a business-dynamo, that makes him lucky.
It also makes him far more unqualified than previously thought.
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