Nikki Haley Slated for Houston Fundraiser

Nikki Haley will be holding a fundraiser here in Houston. One of the host committee members is Fred Zeidman. A good friend of Barack Obama as well as the Bush family.

Fred S. Zeidman, who was appointed chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Museum by President George W. Bush in 2002, grew up in Wharton, Texas, and received a B.S. degree in finance from Washington University in St. Louis in 1968 and a Master’s in Business Administration from New York University in 1970. Houston-based, he began his career in the Corporate Finance Department of Dean Witter. Later he served as Vice President of Alliance Business Investment Company; Chairman of the Board of Unibar Corporation; Chairman of the Board and President of Parking Inc; President and Chief Operating Officer of Service Enterprise; President of Enterprise Capital; President of Interpak Terminals; Chief Executive Officer and Director of InterSystems; Chairman of the Board of Seitel; Chairman of Turnaround Partners; Founder of Houston Venture Capital Association; Managing Partner of WoodRock & Company; Chairman of the Southwest Region Anti-Defamation League; Vice President and Director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; and Vice Chairman of the Board of Regents, Texas Southern University.   In 2005 he was appointed Senior Director of Governmental Affairs for Greenberg Traurig, where he is still on staff as a lobbyist. Zeidman is also is on the Jewish National Fund’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee; the Executive Committee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); and he is a National Board Member of Development Corporation for Israel; and he is the Texas State Chairman of Israel Bonds. In April 2006, President Bush named Zeidman’s son, Jay, White House Liaison to the Jewish Community. He was 22 at the time. In January of 2007, John McCain engaged Jay Zeidman to help with Jewish Outreach in his Presidential campaign   Fred S. Zeidman is an active campaigner for the Republican Party. He was Vice Chairman of the Dole-Kemp Presidential Campaign in Harris County, Texas in 1992. In 2000, he earned Bush Pioneer status for his fundraising feats for the Bush/Cheney campaign and in 2004 he moved up to Bush Ranger. He was also Co-Chairman of Victory ‘04 Florida Jewish Outreach/Bush-Cheney ’04. Zeidman is currently Vice Chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition; Co-chair of the Finance Committee of the Republican Party of Harris County; and he serves on the Finance Committee of the Republican Party of Texas. Zeidman also contributed to the 2008 presidential campaign of Rudy Giuliani.

Kinder History:

Kinder began his career in the energy business as an attorney with Florida Gas Transmission which eventually became Enron Corporation, after a series of mergers^. He had been friends with its founder, Kenneth Lay, in college.From 1990 to December 1996, he served as its president and COO. He resigned from Enron in 1996 to start a new pipeline company with college friend William V. Morgan.^[They purchased Enron Liquids Pipeline for $40 million. They also merged with KN Energy.After a number of acquisitions, the most prominent being El Paso Corporation, Kinder Morgan became the largest midstream energy company in North America.

He is the chairman of the board of trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and serves as chairman of the Kinder Foundation. He previously served as a member of the board of Baker Hughes, Transocean and Waste Management, as a national board member of the Smithsonian Institution and is a past chairman of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. A Republican, he campaigned for Bush-Quayle in 1992, for Bush-Cheney in 2004, for John McCain in 2008, and for Kay Bailey Hutchison and Tom DeLay.

In 2014, Kinder was listed on Forbes Richest People in the US. Kinder is one of seven self-made billionaires from Houston on the list, with a net worth of $11 billion. In 2020, he was ranked No. 103 on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America.

Kinder and his wife Nancy donated $2 million to a Super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Jeb BUSH in 2015.

A $25 million grant from the Kinder Foundation to the University of Missouri in October 2015 went to establish the university’s Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy .In November 2019, the foundation granted an additional $10 million to support new degree opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy and the College of Arts and Science. Kinder Foundation gave an additional $25 million in November 2022 to expand faculty and popular program offerings, bringing the total philanthropy from Rich and Nancy Kinder and the foundation to $60 million.