Vol. 116: Nothing in common, except…

Four financial finaglers

What common characteristics do the following people share?

—Wayne LaPierre, longtime chief of the National Rifle Association.

—John Dougherty, longtime de facto head of Philadelphia’s politically powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 98.

—Morton Klein, longtime president of the Zionist Organization of America.

—Marine Le Pen, longtime leader of France’s far-right National Rally party.

If you guessed “longtime,” step to the front of my classroom, there to receive a gold star and my hearty handshake.

Anything else?

Lavish lifestyles

—After running the National Rifle Association for 33 years, Wayne LaPierre was forced to resign last year when a jury concluded that he had misspent $5.4 million of his organization’s money on such personal items as expensive suits, home landscaping and mosquito treatment, chartered jet flights, and a traveling “glam squad” for his wife.

—After leading Philadelphia’s Electrical Workers union for more than 30 years, John Dougherty was convicted in 2021 and again in 2023 of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from his union to pay for home renovations, extravagant meals, sumptuous birthday parties, and shopping sprees. The items he charged to his union included a $125 cake for his father’s 81st birthday, a $19,882 security system plus large-screen TVs for his daughter, and nearly $8,000 spent on household items like dog food, cereal, clothing, and makeup.

—After leading the Zionist Organization of America for 30 years, Morton Klein was sued last year by two board members for allegedly awarding himself hundreds of thousands in unauthorized pay raises to support a lavish lifestyle, including first-class travel, luxury hotel stays, and high-end limousine services. Seven other board members voted last July to investigate Klein. The charges against him remain to be proved. But the public disclosure of Klein’s salary does give one pause. In 2023 (its most recent year on record), Klein received a salary of $571,717 plus other compensation of $41,289— a nearly 450% increase since 2001, all to run an organization that last year brought in less than $7.4 million in revenue. (Klein’s choice of Donald Trump’s former personal attorney to represent him is also less than reassuring.)

—After inheriting leadership of France’s National Rally from her founding father in 2011, Marine Le Pen was convicted last week of orchestrating a complex scheme to funnel almost $5 million in European Parliament funds for her own party’s expenses.

Anything else?

Billionaire paranoia

One other thing: All these organizations are not-for-profits, which is to say they lack investors who are likely to scream if their life’s savings have been ripped off. The only players with real financial skin in this game are the chief executives themselves, who’ve invested their adult careers and their considerable egos. For their followers, the organization is an important but ultimately peripheral piece of their lives.

Anything else?

All the above executives have remained in office by catering to the fears of constituents who believe themselves threatened. To be sure, gun owners, union members, Zionists, and French conservatives may well be threatened by gun control advocates, union busters, Arabs, and Muslim immigrants, respectively. But of course, just about everyone in the world is threatened, to some degree. That’s the nature of human life, not to mention animal life. Even billionaires, several studies have concluded, tend to grow more paranoid rather than more secure as their wealth increases.

The notorious billionaire Koch brothers, for example, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a network of think tanks, foundations, grassroots movements, academic programs, and advocacy and legal groups, all supposedly to impose their Libertarian anti-government philosophy on the rest of us. Yet if you read the writings of the Koch brothers themselves, you will find that they sincerely believe that the government is out to destroy their family’s industrial empire.

It worked for Imelda

So, put yourself in the shoes of our four above-named larcenous leaders. When your income and status depend on serving threatened people over a very, very long period, can you be blamed for confusing yourself with the cause you represent? How better to soothe your followers than by allowing them to live vicariously through your tailored suits, landscaped villas, home security systems, and chartered jets? It’s an idea that’s persisted at least since Imelda Marcos, if not Louis XIV.

“I got a different world than most people ever exist in,” John Dougherty explained in a conversation recorded on an FBI wiretap. “I am able to take care of a lot of people all the time.”

Yet to me, the remarkable thing about my Fearful Foursome is how unalike they actually are, aside from their longevity in office and their financial gluttony. Wayne LaPierre was born in upstate New York to descendants of a French family that emigrated to Canada in the 17^th Century; he worked as a lobbyist throughout his adult life. John Dougherty grew up blue-collar Irish in South Philadelphia, dreamed of a law career, and abandoned that ambition to become an electrician only after he got his girlfriend pregnant. Morton Klein was born to Holocaust survivors in a displaced persons camp in post-World War II Germany and worked as an economist and biostatistician before hooking up with the Zionist Organization. Marine Le Pen, born in a Paris suburb, is the youngest daughter of the right-wing French politician who founded the populist National Rally party 53 years ago in reaction to Muslim immigration from Algeria.

If you locked the four of them together in a room, what on Earth would they talk about?

And the moral of this story?

Like beer and pretzels, like wine and cheese, like peanut butter and jelly, like Abbott and Costello, like Yoko and John, like Bonnie and Clyde, like Thelma and Louise, like Martin Luther King and Coretta, like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, like Martin and Lewis, like Sonny and Cher, like Ike and Tina Turner, like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (wait— scratch those last four examples), like Trump and tariffs, like Abelard and Eloise, like Antony and Cleopatra, like Adam and Eve, like Dan Rottenberg and similes, longevity in office and financial hanky-panky invariably go— yes, you guessed it!— hand in hand.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s newest book, The Price We Paid: An Oral History of Penn’s Struggle to Join the Ivy League, 1950-55. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com