Rich's Stealth Campaign

Howard Rich is not a household name, and he is trying hard never to become one. But this New York-based real estate magnate and big-money player may well do more this fall to bring down state and local zoning and environmental regulations and to restrict state spending than any fifty conservative officeholders.

You won't find Rich's name on any official political contribution records. The estimated $11 million to $14 million he's kicked in (so far) for state initiative campaigns in Arizona, California, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon and Washington comes through a cluster of organizations almost as obscure as he is. Among them: the Fund for Democracy, which he acknowledges is his personal front and which is located in the same lower Manhattan building that he lists as his address; Americans for Limited Government (ALG), which he chairs; Club for Growth State Action, which Rich also chairs and which shares ALG's Chicago address; Montanans in Action, Oklahomans in Action, America At Its Best (or, according to some of its state filings, America at it's Best), Colorado At Its Best (ditto), U.S. Term Limits, which he heads as president, and a handful of others.

But if this is some cross between self-effacement and stealth, the measures he's bankrolling are mostly stealth. California's Proposition 90, the Protect Our Homes Initiative on the November ballot, is advertised as a way to stop state and local governments from seizing private property by eminent domain and delivering it to private developers. It's supposedly a response to last year's Supreme Court decision, in Kelo v. New London, in which the Court ruled 5 to 4 that a city could condemn even viable homes and businesses for private urban redevelopment projects.

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