About

Foster Friess sold a majority stake in his investment firm for $247 million in 2001, and he tells Forbes his net worth is less than $1 billion, but it's safe to guess he's close to that threshold. For one thing, the septuagenarian had been running Friess Associates profitably since age 34. For another, his charitable foundation had assets in excess of $175 million in 2008 and has funneled $37.8 million into one of the primary charitable conduits of the religious right since 2005. For a third, he and his wife Lynn marked their 70^th birthdays in 2010 by giving away almost $8 million to friends' charities.

Friess' philanthropy is certainly not limited to politics – he and his wife "are often among the first philanthropists to respond" following natural disasters around the world, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy – but his giving is driven by "his twin passions for Christianity and free markets." That certainly shows in the reported contributions of the Friess Family Foundation; the now defunct One Church/One Family foundation, for example, got $160,000 for its work connecting families on welfare with church mentors. Prior to 2005, when the foundation simplified its giving by funneling a single large annual contribution to the National Christian Foundation, Friess directed millions in mostly small contributions to churches and Christian charities (including a high-five-figures total to various chapters of the Campus Crusade for Christ). But he's also funded conservative political organizations like Concerned Women for America, the Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the anti-gay Family Research Council (to the tune of $50,000 since 2002) and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty (over half a million dollars).

And before Rick Santorum bowed out of the 2012 presidential contest, Friess was the first major donor to the super PAC that supported him, ultimately providing over $2 million to the Red White and Blue Fund. The Wyoming finance mogul and his family had been Santorum donors since 1997, and are reportedly quite close on a personal level with the arch-conservative former senator who based his campaign on social issues and pushed Mitt Romney to the right. The Friesses have given nearly $5.5 million in political contributions since the 1980s, and spent $3 million to get the right wing Daily Caller off the ground, but it was this year's Santorum giving that thrust "The Man Atop The Horse" into the spotlight.

Beyond his ill-timed jokes about contraception and suggestions that President Obama needs bulletproof teleprompters, Friess' connections to Islamophobia and the "climate skeptic" brigade make him a better fit for Republican primaries than a general election. None of this stopped the Romney campaign from reaching out to Friess the day after Santorum dropped out, or stopped Friess from climbing aboard the Romney train. In June, Friess gave $100,000 to the Romney-supporting Restore Our Future super PAC.