How Jesse Jackson puts family first; exciting book digs behind the scenes to reveal how the Rev. Jesse Jackson turned the screws to put his sons in positions of influence and to launch a family dynasty

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 1, 2002 | by Kenneth R. Timmerman

On his initial financial-disclosure form, Jesse Jr. lists two sources of income for 1995. There is the $26,029 per year salary as "international organizer" for HERE, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. Then there is additional income, $24,500, that he earned from the Program Corporation of America in White Plains, N.Y., a company listed with Dun & Bradstreet as a supplier of "translators & interpreters" run by Alan S. Walker. He also lists unpaid positions with the Keep Hope Alive political-action committee (PAC) and with PUSH.

Jesse Jackson Jr. had an impressive portfolio of mutual funds for someone fresh out of law school, with a limited employment history and who was only 30 years old. He disclosed that he owned 10 mutual funds, each worth between $15,000 and $50,000, one fund worth $50,000 to $100,000 and two more funds worth between $1,000 and $15,000. The imprecise valuations were designed by Congress to frustrate political opponents frown putting an outrageous dollar figure on wealthy incumbents. Taken together, the spread of Junior's stock portfolio ranged somewhere between $200,000 to $630,000, in addition to the $300,000 in automobiles, and his three residences whose combined value was assessed for tax purposes at more than $700,000. And this was just his personal wealth. Jesse Jr. soon became a congressman reliant on PACs, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars during each election cycle from political-action committees and major corporations -- money that naturally came with strings attached. Big labor (including HERE) was a major donor, but so were trial lawyers, pro-abortion groups, teachers and government-employees unions, and a few choice companies whose names resonate from his father's shakedowns both past and present: Anheuser-Busch, Ameritech, BankAmerica, Citicorp, Nike. It was a good haul.

Jesse, King of Beer

With one son taken care of, Jackson turned to his younger sons, Jonathan and Yusef. Their destiny was to make money to support the family dynasty, while Junior was put in charge of the clan's political fortunes. Jackson asked old friend and financial supporter Ronald W. Burkle if he would scout opportunities for them. Burkle understood that by "opportunities" Jackson didn't mean a management job with the Dominick's or Food 4 Less supermarkets he owned. Nor was Jackson interested in getting his sons in the real-estate business, although Burkle sat on the board of developer Kaufman & Broad, whose cookie-cutter houses were being built in decent middle-class communities around the world. Jackson was looking for something big, something special, something his sons could call their own, something befitting black America's first family.

One year later, at a fund-raiser at Burkle's Los Angeles mansion where Jackson was the featured speaker, Yusef tagged along. Then 26, he happened to sit down beside August Busch IV, son of Jackson's old nemesis Augie Busch III. But the younger Busch was not like his father, and 1996 was not 1982. He hit it off with the younger Jackson, and two years later, when he was looking for a new majority owner of the Budweiser distributorship on Chicago's North Side, he called Burkle back and asked him if he thought Yusef might be interested.