Word: checchi
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...California Governor's Race. In a political culture that favors government by proposition over experienced leadership, and has strict fundraising rules that weaken candidates who can't drop 10 to 20 million dollars of their own money on their campaign, multimillionaire Democratic gubernatorial candidates Al Checchi and Jane Harman just might succeed in buying their way into the governor's seat...
...Checchi's desire to run for office comes from his middle-class upbringing in the suburbs of Washington, where his father was the No. 3 man in the Food and Drug Administration from 1946 to 1960. Checchi says he has been thinking of running for office ever since age 12. "I was raised in a household where public service was valued," he says, recalling vividly that "[President] Kennedy died when I was 15. Bobby Kennedy died on my 20th birthday." Says author Scott Turow, Checchi's undergraduate roommate at Amherst College: "Al can rub people the wrong...
...record as a "real world" businessman that he claims makes him appealing as a prospective Governor. Fresh from Harvard's M.B.A. program (where he sported hair down to his shoulders), the twentysomething Checchi rose quickly through the ranks at Marriott by arranging clever financing for hotel developments at home and abroad. Hired in his 30s by the secretive Bass brothers of Texas, he helped them acquire a 25% stake in then troubled Disney, pocketing a reported $50 million for himself in the process. His work with Disney helped him befriend Hollywood heavyweights like Michael Eisner and Michael Ovitz...
...Checchi knows, his years as co-chairman of Northwest are the ones his critics are most likely to use against him. When asked about his piloting of the airline, he gets a scowl on his face and pulls out two yellow, legal-size pages of scrunched-up notes to defend his record there from 1989 to 1993. Critics charge that he took the once profitable carrier, burdened by debt from the LBO, to the brink of bankruptcy. Checchi used his charisma to extract some $800 million in union concessions and an additional $837 million in state and local bonds, subsidies...
...version, Checchi was the "white knight" who kept the company from being dismantled by asset strippers or from going down the tubes like Eastern Air Lines. He also gave Northwest employees stock that has tripled in value. "Look," he says, "we took one of the worst airlines in America and made it one of the most profitable." But Paul Omodt, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association for Northwest, says the LBO was "disastrous" for the employees, who ended up bailing out the company in return for stock and three directors' seats. As for the state's involvement, critics like...