Sugar Daddy
Much has been made in the last decade about the new philanthropy, the chief exponents of which are former chief executives or other business/high-tech luminaries who bring a hard-headed, bottom-line, private-sector perspective to the management of charitable giving. In an article entitled "They Won't Know What Hit Them", The Atlantic describes the hard-ball political strategy of IT- pioneer-turned-philanthropist, Tim Gill, co-founder of the publishing-software giant Quark:.
The software mogul Tim Gill has a mission: Stop the Rick Santorums of tomorrow before they get started. How a network of gay political donors is stealthily fighting sexual discrimination and reshaping American politics.
Here's the what and how of Gill's initial foray into the political fray:
While Gill participated in gay activism in college, his passions ran more toward differential calculus, and he didn’t feel particularly beset by his homosexuality. He had come out to his parents when he was a teenager and been accepted. It was the very ordinariness of his upper-middle-class upbringing, in fact, that made his political awakening such a shock. In 1992, a ballot initiative approved by Colorado voters altered the state constitution to prohibit laws aimed at protecting gays and lesbians (it was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court). Gill noticed bumper stickers supporting the measure on the desks of some Quark employees. Not long afterward, he set up the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, through which he donates to “mainstream” charities—libraries, symphonies, vaccination clinics, even a Star Trek exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science—to spread the message that gays and lesbians care about the same things as everyone else. In 2000, he sold his interest in Quark for a reported half-billion dollars in order to focus full-time on his philanthropy.
And here are his modus operandi and endgame:
For years he gave generously to gay organizations and dutifully supported gay-friendly candidates. His guiding ambition was helping to teach other donors and nonprofits how to operate more efficiently, and he had organized a series of major-donor conferences toward that end. ... Gill decided to find out how he could become more effective and enlisted as his political counselor an acerbic lawyer and former tobacco lobbyist named Ted Trimpa, who is Colorado’s answer to Karl Rove. Trimpa believes that the gay-rights community directs too much of its money to thoroughly admirable national candidates who don’t need it, while neglecting less compelling races that would have a far greater impact on gay rights—a tendency he calls “glamour giving.” ... Together, Gill and Trimpa decided to eschew national races in favor of state and local ones, which could be influenced in large batches and for much less money. Most antigay measures, they discovered, originate in state legislatures. Operating at that level gave them a chance to “punish the wicked,” as Gill puts it—to snuff out rising politicians who were building their careers on anti-gay policies, before they could achieve national influence.
What is interesting and unique about Gill is the love that motivates and permeates his giving. As a philanthropist, he is, as the etymology of the word suggests, a lover (philo) of men (anthropos = humanity or mankind). As an openly gay man, he is also, obviously, a lover of men. And what other than "tough love" would describe this man who plays hardball advocacy politics and who does not spare the rod vis-a-vis his political opponents. One can only surmise that Gill has internalized Christ's injunction to love one's enemies (Matthew 5:44).
That said, it is puzzling that Gill would employ Old Testament rhetoric like "punish the wicked" and say that the best way to achieve his goal is to "snuff out" rising pols in their cribs before they "know what hit them." Rather vicious language for a man who is only "out" for "equality". One wonders whether the ghost of Herod the Great, the original proponent of kill-them-in-the-crib politics, is Gill's other political adviser?