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Haim Saban

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Saban Capital Group, Inc.
Beverly Hills, California

Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media entrepreneur behind the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, is a financial superhero to the Democratic Party. In 2002, his company, Saban Capital Group, ranked as the top donor to Democratic committees. Today, he and his wife, Cheryl, are the most important Hollywood backers of Hillary Clinton.

A native of Egypt whose family was forced to flee to Israel during the 1956 Suez crisis, Saban immigrated to the United States in 1983 to seek his fortune in the television industry. His production company, Saban Entertainment, hit the jackpot by creating the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, an Americanized version of the Japanese children’s genre in which a team of rainbow-costumed protagonists use martial arts and outlandish weaponry to battle alien invaders. In 1995, Saban merged his operation with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Kids Network, creating a children’s TV empire that eventually reached more than 250 million homes worldwide. When ABC bought the company in 2001, Saban had a breathtaking $1.7 billion payday. Since then, he’s dabbled in German broadcast TV and was part of an investment group that acquired Univision, the Spanish-language TV network. Saban’s estimated net worth of $2.8 billion ranks 98th on Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans.

Saban’s vast fortune has enabled him to become a major money player in the Democratic Party. Since 1994, he’s given more than $13.4 million to Democratic candidates and committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. His deep pockets are legendary; in 2000, when he learned that another donor had given $250,000 more than him to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he sent the committee a check for that amount with a $1 bill attached. (“I hope this guy doesn’t find out,” Saban told The Washington Post. “He may send another $2.”) That money was just part of the nearly $1.5 million in soft-money contributions that Saban made in 2000. He was an even bigger player in the 2002 election cycle, when he gave nearly $9.3 million in soft-money contributions to various Democratic committees. In 2004, he and his wife gave $167,948 to Democratic committees and candidates, including every major presidential contender. (Perhaps to hedge their bets, they also gave $4,000 to George W. Bush’s reelection campaign.) In the 2008 presidential race, the Sabans are supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton. So far in 2007, they have given $9,200 to her campaign. The couple also co-hosted an event that raised $850,000 for Clinton in May at the Los Angeles home of Peter Chernin, the president of News Corporation.

The main issue on Saban’s political agenda seems to be his ardent support of Israel. “Look, President Bush is very one-sidedly pro-Israel, but look at the results of his policy,” he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2006. “They were not beneficial for Israel. We are in a major mess. Look at the facts on the ground. Bush is a massive failure. Hillary will be more balanced than Bush. She will try to create credibility among the Arabs in order to mediate between them and us. We will get nowhere with them in direct negotiations. Only with billions, with pressure.” But he also admits to the allure of having intimate access to world leaders. “I’m not after power,” he told Haaretz. “But I do not belittle the fact that . . . I sit with [Bill] Clinton in the White House and he goes to the refrigerator and asks me if I want regular water or fizzy. Sometimes I tell myself that there’s something a bit nutty here. He’s the president of the United States. I sell cartoons. So he is going to serve me and ask if I want regular or fizzy water?”