Steve Forbes

American publishing executive who announced his first presidential candidacy in 1995, vowing a self-financed, multimillion dollar campaign to overtake his eight Republican rivals. He declared his intent to sink as much as $25 million of his own money into the project, not taking any federal funds. His campaign centered on his plan to replace the seven-million-word federal tax code with a flat 17% income tax. At the close of the contest, he had indeed spent some $37 million dollars, one of the most expensive primary campaigns in American history. The family fortune is estimated at $1.3 billion. The son of Malcolm Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazinel and a wealthy libertine, Malcolm enjoyed a childhood of privilege coupled with his father's notoriety. Forbes Sr. made his sons wear kilts to Sunday church and learn how to play the bagpipe. Politics was in his blood at a young age as he was accustomed to staging mock conventions with his entourage of stuffed animals. Raised on an estate in the horse country of central New Jersey, Forbes graduated from the Brooks School in Andover, MA in 1966 and entered Princeton University the following fall. Eschewing the protesters and preppies, Forbes put his nose to the grindstone and launched a campus business magazine called Business Today, a magazine that is still in operation. Upon graduation from Princeton in 1970, he entered the Coast Guard and remained for six years instead of volunteering for Viet Nam, a war which he thought was "a mistake." He then joined the family's Forbes magazine and was promoted to associate editor in 1976 and rose to the position of deputy editor in chief in 1982. After college, GOP power brokers in New Jersey appointed him to a state commission and in 1985 President Reagan named him Chairman of the Board that oversees Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. After his father's death in 1990, he assumed total control of the publishing empire initially established by his Scottish born grandfather, Bertie Charles Forbes, which encompasses 10 magazines and 14 newspapers. Forbes has been described as a preppy who relishes a fight, dressing like the captain of the chess club but thinking like a captain of industry. Much of his adulthood has been spent studying capitalism and selling ads in a cutthroat market that, in his mind, is tougher than the arena of politics. Heads turned on 9/22/1995 when the multi-millionaire publishing tycoon tossed his hat in the ring on the Republican ticket for 1996, focusing his self-financed campaign on his flat tax proposal. Heads turned even more when he became the first Presidential contender to formally declare Republican candidacy on the Internet on 3/16/1999, his second shot at the nomination. "You and I are entering the information age" he states on his web page. "and the Washington politicians are stuck in the Stone Age," Alluding to his plan to tax all wage income at 17%. Citing his own personal fortune as a virtue, he said, "I am the only one who is not beholden to the Washington culture of special-interest lawyers, lobbyists and lifetime politicians." Forbes married Sabina Beekman in 1971. They have five daughters aged 5 through 25 and live on a 500 acre estate in Bedminster, New Jersey. Once more into the fray, Forbes entered the presidential competition in 1999, favoring the Ten Commandments posted in public schools, endorsing pro-life, and espousing his flat tax, determined to spend whatever it takes, an estimated $50 million, to remain competitive. Abysmally lacking in small talk, let alone charisma, he nonetheless has the most specific set of policy plans of anyone, according to former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. His flat tax of 17% is a genuine passion and he blithely maintains that the resulting deficit will be more than made up for by the boom that will follow, an assumption virtually no credible economic analysis supports. His followers like to talk about how knowledgeable he is and how well read, and endorse his book, "A New Birth of Freedom." Whether he has a chance remains to be seen, a geeky, hopelessly awkward plutocrat with a seemingly endless supply of money. Link to Wikipedia biography