Thomas H. Lee Partners is the teddy bear at the gate. Known as a "friendly" leveraged buyout (LBO) firm, the company uses a mix of debt, funds from institutional investors, and its own money to buy companies. Unlike the fearsome LBO outfits of the 1980s, Thomas H. Lee Partners eschews the axe for the handshake; it builds up a stake and courts management cooperation. Typical acquisitions are middle-market companies with the potential for growth. Lee then usually sells the revamped acquisitions or takes them public. Thomas H. Lee, who founded the company in 1974, left his namesake firm in 2006 to start a long-planned rival hedge fund and private equity venture.
http://www.hoovers.com/thomas-h.-lee-partners/--ID__40463--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml1995-95 political contributions in MAssachusetts
10) Thomas H. Lee 35,000 0 35,000 (Democrats, Republicans, total)
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1997 -- Someone from this comapny went to the infamous 'coffees with Bill' at the WH (for a price)
* Scott Sperling, a senior executive with Thomas H. Lee Co., Boston's leveraged buyout giant, attended two coffees. Sperling's boss, Thomas Lee, gave $35,000 to the DNC.
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Gave to the Gore campaign in 1999
Capitalizing on his position, Gore leads Bradley by almost 2-to-1 margins in the number of contributors and the amount of money raised in Massachusetts.
Gore has raised $550,000 from 706 contributors in Massachusetts, according to a computer analysis of Federal Election Commission records performed for the Globe by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based good-government group. Bradley has collected $301,000 in the state from 374 contributors.
"People who have been active in the Democratic Party and active in campaigns in Massachusetts for the last decade have a lot of support for what the Clinton-Gore administration has accomplished," said Charles A. Baker, an attorney and political consultant active in the Gore campaign. "The vice president has been the beneficiary of that support."
Most of the deep-pocketed donors and fund-raisers from Massachusetts are in Gore's camp. Included on this list are the former party chairman and current Massachusetts Envelope Co. executive, Steven Grossman; John P. Manning of Boston Capital Corp.; the venture capitalist Thomas H. Lee; Gerald and Elaine Schuster, both party stalwarts; Fred Siegel of Energy Capital Partners; nursing home operator and former DNC finance chair Alan Solomont; and Viacom's Sumner Redstone.
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They were part of and had their name on the commission that brought the DNC to Boston in 2004. (Ahm, that's a friggin Democrat for sure.)
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He endorsed and helped Kerry in 2004. Big time business and wall street endorsement for Kerry during the latter part of the campaign.