Case file #1:
Bowles’s Good "Luck": Dems spare U.S. Senate candidate from an embarrassing lawsuit.
"Bowles doesn't consider himself responsible for helping to destroy over $100 million in pension money for state workers in Connecticut. He says that he was only "there part-time on and off for a couple of years." Bowles continues his defense by noting that "over a 20-year period" — when Bowles was not a Forstmann Little partner — "[Forstmann Little] had a return of their investment of over 35 percent." In other words, he embraces the period when he wasn't a partner, but dismisses the time span during which he was one.
But Bowles's salary alone belies his claims that he was a part-timer: $4.3 million per year.
By all accounts, Bowles was seen as an asset to the firm, someone who had extensive experience with higher-risk/higher-return investments, a model that Forstmann Little had largely eschewed for most of its history."
Not your Business as Usual Conference
One of North Carolina's most successful investors, Bowles is former Managing Director of Carousel Capital in Charlotte and former General Partner of New York equity firm Forstmann Little. Additionally, Bowles has a long record of service to North Carolina and the Nation, serving as head of North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt's Rural Prosperity Task Force, chief of staff to President Clinton and as the former head of the Small Business Administration.
Bowles majored in business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Following graduation in 1967, he served in the Coast Guard reserves and then enrolled in Columbia Business School, earning his MBA in 1969. Immediately after business school, Erskine went to work for Morgan Stanley & Co.'s corporate finance group in New York.
In 1973, Erskine was named vice-president of corporate finance at Interstate Securities in Charlotte. Two years later, he founded the firm that would become Bowles Hollowell Conner, one of the country's leading investment banking firms specializing in middle market transactions.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton asked Bowles to head the Small Business Administration. Bowles reorganized the agency and significantly increased the number of loans awarded to businesses owned by minorities and women. He also reduced the agency's basic loan application from a one-inch thick document to just one page.
Bowles served as Deputy Chief of Staff to the president from October 1994 to December 1995. One of his chief responsibilities was the coordination of the government's response to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Bowles returned to Charlotte in 1996 and helped found the merchant bank Carousel Capital. But in December of that year, President Clinton asked him to return to Washington to serve as his Chief of Staff.
In this position, Bowles helped negotiate the first balanced federal budget in nearly 30 years while protecting such Democratic priorities as Social Security and pushing through President Clinton's proposal to hire 100,000 new teachers and to provide health insurance for millions of uninsured poor children.
In November 1998, Bowles resigned as chief of staff, returned to Charlotte and resumed his responsibilities as managing director of Carousel Capital. In January 1999, Bowles also became a general partner in the New York equity firm Forstmann Little. That same year, Bowles was also asked by North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt to head a Rural Economic Prosperity Task Force to study the economic conditions of rural North Carolina. After holding hearings around the state, the task force recommended several proposals to bring affordable high-speed Internet access to rural communities and businesses; and to create a rural redevelopment authority to provide equity funds to help rural businesses grow and create jobs. All five of the task force's proposals are now being implemented.
Remarks by the President and Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles
Bowles comments regarding the Tobacco IndustryBowles speaking on "soft money" campaign contributuions:"MR. BOWLES: Sam, I'd be delighted to forego my vacation. As a matter of fact, seriously, I talked to Senator Lott today, and I told Senator Lott that we would be here in the month of August, that we would be here in the month of October, and we were prepared to move forward with this bill and continue to fight at every step of the process."
Q Well, what do you say, Mr. Bowles, to those who say there was a $350 billion deal that the state attorneys general made, and that in the process of getting legislation you added on another $150 billion which made it simply intolerable to the tobacco industry?
MR. BOWLES: I think that's incorrect. I think what we did was make this bill have a higher probability of doing something about stopping teenage smoking. Every study I've seen has shown that you need at least $1.10 increase in the price of tobacco in order to do something serious about stopping kids from smoking. So this bill that we had had full FDA authority in there; it had $1.10 increase in the price of tobacco; it had the right kinds of things in there to stop marketing to kids; and it had the right things in there to lessen the chance that kids would have access to tobacco. So it had the kinds of things that we felt were important.
Q Is this an indication, sir, that the President may have lost some clout with Congress because of his legal and personal problems?
MR. BOWLES: I don't see how.
Bowles, in a recent interview, said he backs the reform measure but could not abide by any new restrictions until they become law. "I just don't want to fight with one arm tied behind my back," said Bowles, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House.
His joint account with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has changed names several times and now is called the North Carolina Victory Fund. It pulled in $66,000 through March 31, according to reports with the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service.
Included in that amount were several big contributions. Philadelphia education consultant Peter Buttenwieser gave $10,000, as did Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television. Both are heavy Democratic backers.
If they had written a check to Bowles' regular campaign, the donors would have been limited to $2,000 -- the maximum permitted per election cycle.
White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles Speaks On Tobacco Legislation
At the same time, multimillion-dollar marketing and advertising campaigns have been designed to get our kids to light their first cigarette. I believe that is an outrage.As chief of staff of this administration, I can tell you that protecting our children from the threat of tobacco is right at the top of President Clinton's agenda....This is a matter of priorities. It is not a matter of politics.
We also anticipate seeing some gaps in the bill. The McCain bill does not try to comprehensively address the questions of how best to use tobacco revenues to protect the public health and to help our children.
A CHAT WITH DEPARTING WHITE HOUSE STAFF CHIEF ERSKINE BOWLES
For much of 1998, he has worked to keep the White House functioning smoothly amid the distractions of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.Erskine Bowles Flunks EconomicsQ: You lament your inability to renew the Presidential fast-track trade negotiating authority. What happened?
A: I made a mistake there. I so believed in the benefits of free trade that it was inconceivable to me that the opponents could mount a jihad against it and make this one vote the only vote that mattered. That was a misjudgment I regret. Had I understood the extent of the opposition, I would have gone for half a loaf instead of the whole thing.
Q: So what's the future of trade liberalization now?
A: It's good, but some things will have to be done in order for fast-track-type legislation to pass. First, the business community is going to have to do more in terms of educating the public and their workers about the benefits of opening up markets and bringing down trade barriers. They have also got to be more flexible in the areas of [accepting] labor and environmental [side agreements]. If you have some compromise that's not too extreme, then I think you could pass bipartisan legislation.
Q: Can you achieve Social Security reform next year given the partisan divisions in Congress?
A: If [Republicans] are going to spend their whole time investigating, investigating, investigating, you can take the probability of all those things happening and diminish it.