Oberweis business, campaign dovetail

February 17, 2004
Chicago Tribune

By John Chase, Tribune staff reporter.
Tribune staff reporter Robert Manor contributed to this report

Oberweis business, campaign dovetail
Opponents decry close relationship

Many North Shore residents have recently gotten calls from telemarketers trying to get them to buy milk from Oberweis Dairy. In the next few weeks, they may get another call asking them to buy, or at least vote for, Oberweis himself.

In the world of politics, there is a long history of successful businesspeople trying to make the leap into elected office. But never before in Illinois has a candidate for major office so clearly blended his political identity with that of his high-profile business as has Republican Jim Oberweis.

Oberweis, one of the U.S. Senate candidates running in the GOP primary, is chairman of the board for his family's North Aurora-based dairy and ice cream-parlor chain. He has also recently appeared in the company's first-ever TV ads, given away free ice cream at campaign events and uses a cartoon image of an ice-cream cone as part of his campaign logo.

As Oberweis barnstorms across the state, his campaign and his company are selling themselves along parallel tracks. By promoting his personal image, it increases his business' name recognition. And when his business advertises, it boosts his profile as a candidate.

"I can't see how this will hurt him with his business or his candidacy," said Paul Sanford, an attorney with the Center for Responsive Politics, a national non-partisan group in Washington, D.C., that monitors campaigning. "And that's good business sense."

Sanford and a few of Oberweis' opponents said they believe Oberweis is skirting federal election law, which forbids businesses from engaging in political activity. Federal officials were recently brought into the mix after Springfield attorney and Sangamon County Democratic Party Chairman Tim Timoney filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission claiming Oberweis is illegally using his dairy to help his campaign.

Whether Oberweis is violating the law remains to be determined, though Oberweis says there has been no collusion between his campaign and his dairy on their marketing strategies.

"We're not coordinating anything," Oberweis' spokesman Bill Kenyon said. "We're associating our campaign with Jim's history, which he is proud of." Kenyon, who said attorneys have reviewed the situation and signed off on it, also dismissed the FEC complaint.

"Any pipsqueak can file a complaint with the price of a postage stamp," he said.

As for the telephone calls, dairy officials say they have used telemarketing for years to drum up business, and that the number of calls being made has not been increased during the campaign season.

"The campaign has nothing to do with what we do," said Bob Renaut, Oberweis Dairy's president and chief executive officer. "It's business as usual."

Oberweis is hardly the first businessperson possessing a name well known to consumers to make a bid for public office. He's also not the first to be accused of using his business to further his candidacy.

In 1994 in Ohio, Joel Hyatt, the owner of a legal services business that routinely ran TV commercials, was charged with using his firm and its commercials to promote his Senate candidacy. The FEC decided the advertisements were "for the purpose of influencing" Hyatt's bid because the ads indirectly referred to the candidate and his qualifications, as well as the issues of health care and crime. Hyatt eventually paid the FEC $11,000. But other well-known businesspeople have benefited from their name recognition without being accused of abusing their ties to their companies. In the 1970s and 1980s, Pennsylvania residents were likely reminded of Republican U.S. Representative--and later U.S. Senator--John Heinz III every time they picked up a ketchup bottle.

And while Heinz certainly used his family fortune to help his candidacy, he was rarely accused of abusing his family's business for his bid.

In Wisconsin, Democrat Herb Kohl's family had sold off the popular Kohl's grocery and department stores before he won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1988. And in Minnesota, Democrat Mark Dayton won a Senate seat in 2002 as heir to the former Dayton Hudson department store chain.

But Dayton early on in his political career eschewed his connections to his wealthy family's business, once calling it his "original sin."

Oberweis, on the other hand, has made a concerted effort to attach his candidacy to that of his family's dairy company, so much so that opponent Andy McKenna Jr. has publicly tried to shame him into pulling the ads, saying they stretch the ethical bounds by "commingling" his business and campaign.

"He obviously is trying to get some face and name recognition," said political ethicist Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago. "Does this violate the spirit if not the letter of campaign law? It would be a judgment call."

But Stephen Presser, a professor of law and business at Northwestern University, said he sees nothing wrong with Oberweis advertising for his dairy while running for office. Presser likened the advertising to an aspect of John Kerry's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kerry's backers often refer to his military record to demonstrate what kind of man he is.