-Alec
(from The San Francisco Bay Gaurdian, Aug. 12-18, 1998)
All about Don Fisher, Founder and Chairman, Gap Inc.:
Estimated net worth of Fisher Family: $8 billion (source: _Forbes_) -- Boards: AirTouch Communications, Charles Schwab Corporation, UC Berkeley Haas Graduate School of Business, Princeton University, United Way of the Bay Area, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Presidio Trust, Bay Area Life Sciences Alliance, San Francisco Partnership.
- INFLUENCING CITY HALL: Founding member of Committee on Jobs, a downtown corporate lobbying organization pushing for cuts in city services, big-business tax cuts, privatization. Founder of San Francisco Partnership, a public-private group linking downtown and the Mayor's Office.
- THE GAP EMPIRE: Includes Gap, GapKids, Old Navy, Banana Republic. Number of stores: 2237. Projected earnings for 1998: $705 million on sales of $8.3 billion.
- REAL ESTATE (SELECTIVE LIST): Building Gap headquarters on the Embarcadero. Investor in Fairmont Hotels, downtown highrises. 235,000 acres of timber on North Coast.
- PUBLIC SCHOOL SELL-OFF: Funded and lobbied for privatization of Thomas Edison school in San Francisco.
- UCSF MISSION BAY TAKEOVER: Set up Bay Area Life Sciences Alliance, a group of corporate executives that have taken control of new UCSF campus at Mission Bay.
- PRESIDIO PRIVATIZATION: Key player in first-ever privatization of a national park. Head of Presidio Trust real estate committee.
- COMERCIALIZATION OF KQED: As a Board member of public broadcaster KQED, advocated for increased corporate underwriting of programming at the station.
How did a Republican apparel magnate become the most powerful unelected person in San Francisco? By Daniel Zoll
Sometime in the next century, if transnational corporations finally succeed in supplanting elected governments, Donald G. Fisher will be up for a major award. Other people contributed, the master of ceremonies will say, but few were so persistent, and so successful, on so many fronts.
As a philanthropist he gave generously--particularly to think tanks and business schools that lent academic legitimacy to concepts like privatization, downsizing, deregulation, and corporate tax breaks, as well as to nonprofits that didn't pose any threat to the big-business power structure.
. . .
In a city where a straight white male Republican would have little hope of getting elected dogcatcher, Don Fisher, a 70-year-old San Francisco native who has bankrolled the likes of Pete Wilson and Newt Gingrich and the antilabor Proposition 226, has become the most influential power broker in town. And he's using his influence to rehape San Francisco.
Etc.
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