For Richard Kinder, the Enron Corp. was a place of family and fraternity. His wife Nancy worked at the energy conglomerate, and Kinder himself stepped down as president in 1996 to clear the way for his fraternity brother Kenneth Lay (No. 76, $387,050) to assume the position of chairman and chief executive.
Another fraternity brother, Bill Morgan, quickly stepped in to recruit Kinder for a new project based on assets purchased from an Enron general partner. The two men created Kinder Morgan, now one of the nation's largest energy firms with more than 30,000 miles of pipeline. Along with Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, the company is worth an estimated $15 billion.
Enron has long enjoyed close ties with George W. Bush, and Kinder strengthened his own connections with the candidate during the campaign. In 1999, he and Nancy served as regional co-chairs for Bush's Presidential Exploratory Committee, and Kinder signed on as a Bush Pioneer, pledging to give the campaign at least $100,000.
A former oil executive himself, Bush knows from experience what Kinder and other industry leaders want: expanded oil drilling on public lands, and looser environmental regulations. The president has pledged to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for private exploration, and has called for deregulating energy markets in the face of rolling power blackouts in California.
Nancy Kinder is known in Houston for her extensive fundraising for charities and community projects. She works from what she calls her "bible of charity fundraising," which explains in detail how to host luncheons and open checkbooks. Among the rules: give a lot of money and ask others to match it, make sure everyone's name is spelled correctly on the invitations, and "choose an honoree carefully" for fundraising events, because "this is what you are selling." Honorees Kinder has carefully chosen in the past include President George Bush and his wife Barbara.
-- Karem Saïd
