2nd District (OH) Race: The McEwen Connections, Part 4–
Those “Self-Employed” Contributors

Part 1: Advantage Associates
Part 2: Jefferson Consulting and the 12-Year Gap
Part 3: The Non-Disclosure Gambit
Part 4: THIS POST
Part 5: The Amway-Quixtar (AQ) Business
Part 6: The McEwens and Amway-Quixtar (AQ)
_____________

Bob McEwen’s primary May 25 campaign reports can be seen at the following two links:
- Summary of Finances; at that point, he had received contributions from individuals of $104,329, had lent $100,000 to the campaign, and had spent $188,715.
- Detailed list of Individual Contributors–There were 91 contributions from 80-plus individuals living in 22 different states totalling just over $90,000 (perhaps smaller contributions do not need to be individually listed).

Someone e-mailed me yesterday about the nature of this list. This person said “McEwen has nationwide (support), probably friends because he apparently knows everyone.”

Most of y’all have no idea, do you? That’s okay, two weeks ago neither did I. But now I know, and so will you: Bob and Liz McEwen have not told 2nd District voters that they are an Amway-Quixtar distributorship Team (or IBO), and have been for well over 10 years. BizzyBlog further believes that they have made, and perhaps even to this day, continue to make substantial income from those endeavors.

The first thing you notice on McEwen’s individual contributor detail is a preponderance of people listing themselves as “self-employed,” or “business owner,” or “small business owner,” or “independent business owner,” or “self-employed/IBO,” and a few other variations. Roughly 45 of the listings fit this description. Throwing in one particular retiree (you’ll see why later) and the total from these “self-employed” folks is over $47,000, or just over half of the listed total of $90,000.

Now isn’t it odd for so many “self-employed” people to be listed in a campaign report?

Look at DeWine’s list, by contrast. Roughly 16 of the 300-plus listings has “self” as part of the person’s occupation, and every one of those followed it with a description of an occupation you would recognize, or the name of their company. The word “business” or the acronym “IBO” is nowhere to be found on DeWine’s list.

So who are these “self-employed” people?

I learned of what’s going on here just before Memorial Day when doing a Google search on “McEwen for Congress” (without the quotes). Here are some of the McEwen endorsers I found:

- From “Fred Harteis International Business News Today” (Harteis and his wife have donated $4,200)
- From something called E-Quad News
- Then there’s “BizNet Productions.”
- And what’s this Randy Haugen Headlines, with the quotes from Bob about liberty and government, and the McEwen for Congress links at the bottom left?
- How about this, and this (put on sunglasses first), or this, all with McEwen for Congress links?
- And what’s with all these people having links to each others’ blogs on something callled “Blogharbor”?
- And what is this “Quixtar” thing that keeps popping up?

Then I refined the search a bit to include “McEwen” and “Quixtar” and “speaker” and got Blogharbor links like this one:

Welcome Bob McEwen
by Orrin Woodward’s Biographer on August 31, 2004 11:01PM (EDT)
The Team is anxiously awaiting the coming of Bob McEwen for our Free Enterprise day. Bob is a former state representative and a super great guy. Bob is the best teacher of free enterprise principles that I have ever met. He is a man of integrity and worth the ticket price just for the two talks he will give. Thank you Bob for finding time in your busy schedule to share with us!

and this one….

WHAT A TEAM
by Network News at 07:00PM (PDT) on August 26, 2004 | Permanent Link
Just heard (again) a copy of the talk Bob McEwen did at the Free Enterprise conference right after 9/11. Wow! What a powerful talk!

I’m looking forward to the line-up at the conference this year. Fred Harteis and the whole BizNet Productions Team do an awesome job of organizing and bringing in super-stars for our conferences at rediculously inexpensive costs!

What a team!

Somewhere along the way, I saw another word, a word that made me shout “holy bleep” (well, actually a different word from “bleep”) at the computer at least a half-dozen times, because I realized how, and from whom, Bob McEwen is earning a large portion, and perhaps nearly all, of his substantial speaking fees.

You see (apparently having lived in a cave sealed off from multilevel marketing all these years), I had no idea until I saw the word I reacted to that “Quixtar” is a company affiliated with a company most of you have heard of but may not love. That company is: AMWAY. Over half of the listed individual contributions to Bob McEwen’s campaign are from Amway distributors, who now prefer to be called Independent Business Owners (IBOs).

I will begin to cover the significance of the Amway/Quixtar connection, and the very troubling questions it raises about Bob McEwen and his candidacy (especially given the fact, as noted in Part 3, that we won’t see McEwen’s personal financial disclosure until June 15), in Part 5, and continue in Part 6.