James D. Oberweis
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James D. Oberweis, popularly known as Jim Oberweis, is an Illinois politician, businessman and investment manager. He is most notable as a Chicago-area dairy magnate, owner of Oberweis Dairy in North Aurora, Illinois. Oberweis campaigned for the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois unsuccessfully in 2002 and 2004, and campaigned for the Republican nomination for Governor of Illinois unsuccessfully in 2006.
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[edit] Education
Oberweis attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he obtained a bachelor of arts degree. He then went on to obtain a master's degree in business administration from the University of Chicago. In 1968, he became a junior high school teacher until he switched careers in 1970 to become an investment stockbroker.
[edit] Profession
Having served on for a major New York Stock Exchange firm, Oberweis founded and published the Oberweis Report newsletter which focused on emerging growth companies. Hulbert Financial Digest ranked the Oberweis Report as one of the top five investment advice newsletters. In 1978, Oberweis and his wife established an investment management company of their own. In 1986, they used their profits to purchase the family business, Oberweis Dairy. A year later, Oberweis founded the Oberweis Emerging Growth Fund which then spawned the Oberweis Micro-Cap Portfolio and the Oberweis Mid-Cap Portfolio.
Oberweis moved the Oberweis Dairy from Aurora, Illinois to its present location in North Aurora, Illinois. He also began a chain of company-owned dairy stores, and has maintained a dairy delivery business to homes in the Chicago area. A franchise program was begun in 2004, to expand the dairy business outside of northeast Illinois.
[edit] Television
Oberweis became a financial news anchor and host of his own national cable show on the Financial News Network. In Chicago, Oberweis became a regular guest on the Ask an Expert show. Oberweis was also a popular guest on CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg TV.
[edit] U.S. Senate campaign
Oberweis ran twice for his state party's nomination for the United States Senate in 2002 and 2004. Despite endorsements from the sitting Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, Oberweis was unsuccessful in both races.
Due to his surprisingly strong second-place finish in the 2004 primary, many of the party faithful lobbied heavily for Oberweis to get the nomination when primary winner Jack Ryan dropped out due to scandalous material found in his divorce records. The path would have been clear if not for Oberweis' strong stance against illegal immigration — a stand he claimed was supported by a clear majority of the American public. Others thought he went too far, particularly in a television commercial where he flew in a helicopter over Chicago's Soldier Field, and claimed enough illegal immigrants came into America in a week (10,000 a day) to fill that facility.[1] The stadium seats 61,500 people.
While his anti-immigration values and ads had won him support among his state party's base, others were outraged and even picketed his business. The state party later claimed that the national party became concerned that they would cultivate an image of xenophobia at a time when President George W. Bush was heavily courting Latino voters. However, nearly half of Latino voters favored more restrictive immigration policies and the GOP was dependent upon major donors that profited from liberal immigration policies so it is plausible there was a fundamentally different political calculation involved.
There were unsubstantiated rumors that President Bush himself called the Illinois Republican Party, asking them not to choose Oberweis as the replacement candidate.[citation needed] The state party chose instead former Ambassador Dr. Alan Keyes to carry the party through the general election.
Oberweis supported Dr. Keyes in that election, at times drawing himself into some controversies involving Keyes. For example, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, Keyes called homosexuals "selfish hedionists" and went on to say that Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter was a selfish hedionist. While most socially conservative Republicans attempted to distance themselves from this statement, Oberweis agreed. He compared the difficulties of reforming homosexuals into heterosexuals into his own efforts to lose weight a few years earlier. Dr. Keyes lost the election by the largest margin in Illinois state history for any candidate of a major political party to Barack Obama.
[edit] Illinois Gubernatorial nomination campaign
On April 14, 2005, Oberweis announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the office of Illinois Governor. His campaign ran on many of the same issues as did his previous campaigns for U.S. Senate. During the nomination race, the Oberweis campaign was widely criticized for its use of attack ads that featured fake newspaper headlines. At least one of his opponents in the primary told reporters that Oberweis was unelectable in a general election because of his well-known socially conservative views.[citation needed]
In 2006, Oberweis supported two campaigns working to add an amendment to the Illinois constitution prohibiting same-sex marriage beyond existing laws.[2]
Oberweis lost the campaign for this nomination in Illinois' statewide primary elections held on March 21, 2006.
[edit] References
- ^ Article from the Chicago Tribune.
- ^ Article on WorldNetDaily.
