Carl Icahn, guest star of 'King of Bain,' becomes a Mitt Romney backer
Mitt Romney in a factory. Reid Pillifant
6:02 pm Feb. 21, 2012
Among the new donors to Mitt Romney in January was Carl Icahn, the legendary businessman who made billions of dollars buying out companies in the 1980s.
Icahn gave $2,500 to Romney's primary campaign on Jan. 18, and his wife, Gail Golden-Icahn, gave $2,000, according to the campaign's latest filing. (Golden-Icahn had previously given $500, bringing her total to the maximum, too.)
Icahn would seem to be a natural fit for Romney, given that he pioneered some of the aggressive strategies that would become commonplace in the private-equity industry, from which Romney later profited as a co-founder of Bain Capital.
Icahn even got a brief, unflattering cameo as the picture of a "corporate raider" in the anti-Mitt Romney film "King of Bain," a half-hour attack on Romney's business record that was purchased and posted online by the super PAC Winning Our Future, which is backing former House speaker Newt Gingrich. (Icahn responded by defending Romney's background.)
Icahn has, in the past, tried to distinguish his own brand of "shareholder activism" from the kind that's practiced in private equity.
"Today's activist, by campaigning against management, greatly enhances the value of a company for the benefit of all shareholders, while private equity firms keep most of the spoils for themselves when they purchase a company," he wrote to BusinessWeek in 2007.
And, while Icahn warned in 2008 that Barack Obama would make a "terrible" president, it appears to have taken him some time to convert to Romney's cause.
In February, Icahn was among a number of Republicans seeking a candidate to coalesce around, and in July, Icahn and his wife each gave $2,500 to former Utah governor Jon Huntsman.
Icahn did not return a call for comment.
