Joe Manton
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Senator Joseph "Joe" Manton | |
|---|---|
| File:Joe manton.jpg A close-up of Senator Joe Manton's official Senate picture. | |
| President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Manton-Grossman Global Strategies | |
| Assumed office February 8th, 2013 | |
| Preceded by | Robert Manton |
| Imperial Senator from Arkania | |
| In office January 2nd, 2001 – January 3rd, 2013 | |
| Preceded by | Moshe Berman |
| Succeeded by | Aaron Asimov |
| President of Manton-Grossman Global Strategies | |
| In office May 17th, 1994 – June 18th, 1998 | |
| Preceded by | None. |
| Succeeded by | Robert Manton |
| Personal details | |
| Born | February 3rd, 1966 Ma'alot, Arkania |
| Nationality | Belhavian |
| Political party | Unaffiliated (1984 - 1989) Liberal Democratic Party (1989 - 2005) Independent Democrat (2005 - present) |
| Spouse | Mary B. Manton |
| Residence(s) | Netiyot, Arkania |
| Alma mater | B.A., Business Management, Arkania Provincial University M.B.A., City College of Dakos School of Business |
| Profession | Politician, Businessman, Entrepreneur |
Joseph "Joe" Manton, M.B.A. (born February 3rd, 1966) is a former Imperial Senator from Arkania and the leader of the since-dissolved Independent Centrist Caucus. He was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, but became a self-declared "Independent Democrat" because of his relative conservatism. He is a graduate of the Arkania Provincial University and the well-regarded but middle-tier City College of Dakos School of Business, where he received his MBA. He is the co-founder and former President of major financial giant Manton-Grossman Global Strategies.
He is currently the national co-chairman of his friend, political ally, and mentee Yitchak Feinstein's 2016 presidential campaign.
Early life and education
Manton was born to Adrian and Augusta Manton, second-generation working-income white Emmerian Catholics with distant ancestral ethnic ties to Rodarion, in Kiryat Gos, Arkania in Middle Belhavia. The Mantons ran a small restaurant and grocery store in the Catholic section of town, catering to ethnic Rodarians, ethnic Nijdelandish, and other non-Jewish cliente looking for Old World food and imported products.
Manton went to a private Catholic school on the other side of town, instilling a solid Catholic education, including Catholic social thought. He was entrepreneurial, and moderately devout. Around 14 years old, he hired himself as a shabbos goy to local Jewish observant families to make some money on the side, graduating to selling model airplanes to his high school peers. At 17, he started working as a part-time mechanic to help his family pay the bills.
Between his accumulated savings since age 14 and some modest funds his mother and father could raise, Manton went to Arkania Provincial University, a private college and the only center of higher education of note in the province. He studied Business Management, and interned at several companies, earning some money to support himself. In 1988, He took out loans and moved up north to attend the City College of Dakos School of Business in Dakos, North Dakos, to earn an MBA.
During his year-long stay in the northerly coastal city, he joined the local Catholic parish to pray and be active, where he met Stefan Dobrescu, a conservative Liberal Democrat on the Dakos City Council. Having been raised in conservative, Tory 'blue province' Arkania, especially with Catholic conservative social attitudes, he found the Lib Dems to be liberal for him. However, Dobrescu discussed politics with him from time to time, convincing him he could be a conservative Liberal Democrat and a devout Catholic. The next year, when conservative Lib Dem Garret Holleran was pushing the center-left party towards the center and visited Dakos for a fundraiser, Dobrescu took Manton with him and introduced the two, cementing Manton's allegiance to the party.
Business career
After he graduated business school in 1989 at age of 23, he sought out the financial sector in Dakos to make a strong livelihood for himself. He joined the hedge fund Goldman, Black, and Richman Group, gaining experience as a financial analyst in overseas markets for two years. He was courted by and jumped over to Rockland International Holding Company, an Emmerian-based venture capital firm that was making inroads to Belhavian markets. He stayed there for three and a half years, leaving with two other junior financial managers to start their own venture capital firm, Manton-Grossman Global Strategies.
Their firm heavily invested in Roth Industries' expansion into the telecom sector in the late 1990s, profiting them tens of millions. They retained a royalty agreement in perpetuity for the iconic Roth smartphone family, reaping the company hundreds of millions over the last two decades. In 1997, he and his family moved back to Arkania, though he partially commuted to his main offices in Dakos half the week.
By 1998, Manton was ready to retire, with his family well-supported by his new fortune. By this time, his wife Mary, had given birth to four children: Paul, Ronald, Betsy, and Carly. However, he had stayed in touch with Dobrescu over the years, who - along with local Lib Dems in his family's home of Arkania - had tried to urge to run for office. Manton was nonplussed, preferring a quiet young retirement.
However, the Tories under Yehuda Fiedler (who had ousted Holleran narrowly as president in 1996) attempted to undue the centrist reforms Holleran had passed, angering him. By June 1998, Manton agreed to run.
2000 Senate campaign
Around the same time Manton was contemplating a run for Senate, former President Holleran was engaging in political activities that caught the Provisa establishment's interest, sparking rumors that he was attempting to make a political comeback. Manton had served as a bundler for Holleran's 1992 and 1996, becoming a chief fundraiser in the 1996 campaign due to the rapid growth of his financial startup.
Confident that Holleran could defeat the embattled Tory incumbent President Yehuda Fiedler, he inched towards a decision to run to ride on his coattails. However, his home state was tough for Liberal Democrats to crack.
Arkania was a rural, conservative, so-called blue province Tory bastion politically. It was last won by the Lib Dem presidential candidate in 1972 by Vern Callan, and it last elected a Liberal Democrat to the Imperial Senate in 1966, and he promptly lost re-election in 1970 despite it being an otherwise banner-year for the Lib Dems Empire-wide.
After putting together a core political campaign team, Manton decided he could use his conservative views which were on the outer limits of the mainstream of the Liberal Democratic Party, his rag-to-riches success story, and his wealth to be a competitive candidate. In May and June 1998, he met with national party officials in Provisa as well as local provincial party leaders and activists, who all encouraged him to run and pledged financial and grassroots support. Holleran himself met with Manton at his home in Netiyot and promised to aid him as a friend and political ally, and also pledged to contest Arkania in the presidential election to boost his down-ballot Senate race.
On June 22nd, 1998, Manton announced his campaign. He trailed badly in early polls, running up to thirty points behind the three Conservatives running for the open seat. However, he took to public swings across the province, giving speeches at small rallies, headlining charity galas, giving press conferences, and holding fundraisers. By October 1999, his cash-infused campaign launched an ad blitz to boost his favorable numbers as the three Tories continued to batter one another in their primary.
He also recruited Yitzchak Feinstein to run for a local provincial senate seat, eventually leading him years later to create a political lineage in the province.
In February 2000, he had caught up to the other three. He ran ahead, 45% to Tory Gershon Netanyahu's 42%, 40% to Tory Nathaniel Schatz's 46%, and 44% to Tory Sarah Moskovits' 43%. He staked out political positions generally to the right of his party's mainstream, running a classic blue-province Lib Dem campaign strategy of distancing himself from the national party and its liberal policies. He used his conservative Catholic social stances to persuade Orthodox and Haredi Jewish voters he shared their cultural sensitivities, and rallied ethnic and religious minorities such as Rodarians and Catholics to his campaign.
Throughout March and April, he increasingly pulled ahead as swing voters started to tune in and liked his platform. In May, Netanyahu won the Conservative Party's Senatorial primary by a narrow 45.8%. However, the other two candidates, bitter of the caustic tone of the campaign, refused to endorse him. This panicked the Tories, who rushed to unite the party as Manton steamed ahead. In July, Moskovits crossed party lines and endorsed him, adding to his right-wing bipartisan credentials.
Later that month, Netanyahu, coffers refreshed from prodigious fundraising and barnstorming the province, launched a negative advertising campaign. By September, the campaign had turned to a grudge match as Manton fell behind Netanyahu. One public poll by the Netiyot Herald found Netanyahu at 47% and Manton at 43% on September 14th. On September 29th, 2000, an internal poll by Netanyahu had him hovering around 50% to Manton's 41%.
The backward sliding in the polls chilled Manton's campaign, and he began to lose faith he could win as it seemed the province's voters were returning to their natural home with the Conservatives. However, Holleran conducted a five-day swing through Arkania in early October, energizing disengaged Lib Dem voters.
For the next two weeks, he regained ground, climbing from the low 40s in polling to the upper 40s as Netanyahu dipped to the mid-40s. Manton opened up a tight but consistent 2.5% average lead on the Tory as Election Day approached, though the last three public polls had them tied by the election. On November 7th, 2000, Manton won with 50.5% of the vote, to Netanyahu's 49.1%.
Imperial Senator
Lib Dem honeymoon
When Manton was seated in January 2001, he and his 36-member Liberal Democratic caucus, with a 6-seat majority, were the largest majority the party had enjoyed since before 1981. Holleran had been elected president, defeating one-term incumbent Yehuda Fiedler and ousting the Conservative Senate majority. The Lib Dems had gained a net 3 seats, and the Tories lost a net 6, with the Libertarians also making a strong comeback that year, winning 3 new seats. The Senate's new composition - 36 Lib Dems, 30 Tories, and 4 Libertarians - gave the Lib Dems a decent majority.
Eager to pass Holleran's agenda and restore some of his first-term's reforms that had been repealed under Fiedler, the Lib Dems presented an unified front. By March 2001, Holleran's proposed a package of bills he called the "Belhavian Investments Initiative", including a per-kWH BTU tax, a tax credit for clean energy production, a moratorium on oil&gas exploration in the Far South, raising tariffs on Ulthrannic food imports to support domestic, Emmerian, and Westonarian imports of the same, creating a complex financial transaction tax, and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The package energized the Tory opposition and was widely panned by the public, but the Senate majority struggled to get the bills through committee and floor votes, eventually passing the last bill by October 2001. All but the financial tax would be repealed by 2009. Manton found himself increasingly critical of his party's actions as they turned towards Emmerian liberal and Arthuristan left-wing arguments to defend the package, logic that Manton disagreed with.
In December 2001, Holleran pivoted rightward, urging the passage of an enlarged 2002 SNIA reauthorization with increased defense spending levels. He turned to Manton to shepard the bill through.
2002 SNIA
By this point, Manton had made friends across the chamber, finding a mentor in conservative blue province Lib Dem Senator Andrew Levan (LD-Westland). He made several friends in his party's ranks, including centrists Drew Long and David Ruthson (both of whom would later join the ICC with him) and Azriel Ben-David, a liberal. He also had some friends among the Tories, including Senators Peter Beinart (an eccentric moderate), Adrian Kalian, a hawkish conservative, and others.
He used these friendships and political alliances to pass the 2002 SNIA, which enjoyed strong support but faced the prospect of a filibuster by the Lib Dem's left-wing and the Libertarians. After Chanukkah recess, Manton started whipping for the vote. 21 Liberal Democrats on the party's dovish antiwar left announced their opposition and intent to filibuster. This was added to by all 4 Libertarians and one Tory, libertarian-conservative Ron Herman. To get 60% passage to defeat a filibuster, Manton needed 42 votes. The opposition to the bill had 26 votes off the bat, 3 short to defeat cloture and allow the filibuster to proceed, dooming the bill.
Working with the Lib Dem and Tory hawks like Levan and Kalian, Manton identified 27 ayes from the Tories and 10 from the Lib Dems, leaving him at 37, 5 short. 2 Tories and 5 Lib Dems remained undecided. Over the course of January 2002, he haggled and offered vote trading to entice them onboard, assisted by Holleran's efforts as well. By late January, one Tory joined the aye chorus after being promised a military base in his territory.
Three of the Lib Dems demanded the creation of a limited unemployment insurance scheme in return for their votes, a non-starter that would break apart the fragile 'aye' coalition. After a weekend of negotiating, he peeled one of the three away with a pledge to seat him on the coveted Appropriations Committee in the next Senate, while the other two joined the 'nay' camp.
Stretching into February, the other two Lib Dems got onboard after each's specific small pieces of legislation on minor topics, languishing in committee, were promised votes. The last duo demanded a policy rider opposing PECA, a Rodar-led geopolitical bloc seeking to isolate itself from Free Pardes. The rider interfered with Holleran's effects to maintain strong bilateral relations in the wake of declining cooperation between Rodarion and the CDI. Holleran had declared victory with the collapse of the DSRA mere months earlier.
Extended negotiations failed, and the SNIA seemed to be scuttled. However, two days later, the two Tories returned and agreed to support the bill if the administration agreed to a watered down rider on PECA, which it did after some discussion. On February 12th, 2002, the SNIA bill defeated the filibuster 42-28, and then passed on a floor vote by the same margin. Manton had been handed his first legislative victory.
ICC
2004 and 2008 campaigns
2004
Manton had a target on his back going into the 2004 elections. He won in 2000 with 1.4% of the vote, and faced headwinds as the public swung against the Lib Dems and favored the Tories after a second term. With Arkania being a blue province, Manton looked vulnerable to strong Conservative challengers.
However, Manton had established himself as an independent, successful Senator with bipartisan and conservative/centrist leanings, which gave him a glimmer of hope for re-election. His successfully sheparding of the 2002 SNIA was well-regarded by military voters, and his support of Holleran's tariff on Ulthrannic food imports pleased domestic agricultural interests in the rural province.
When he kicked off his re-election campaign in November 2003, his poll numbers were stuck in the mid-40%, being dragged down by President Holleran's declining approval ratings. By March 2004, he had gained a primary challenge from the left and six Conservatives battling it out to take him on in the Tory primary for the general election. To show his independence, he frequently voted against his own caucus and firmly aligned himself as a "conservative Lib Dem," to the enmity of Empire-wide liberal policy groups, who tried to recruit a challenger who was firmly on the left. They found one in provincial assemblyman Evan Zevofsky, an outspoken liberal in the province's lower-house of the provincial legislature. Reviewed by political watchers as unimpressive on the stump, weak at fundraising, and constantly gaffe-prone, Zevofsky nonetheless was boosted by wealthy liberals, who infused $400,000 shekels into his campaign between February and April 2004.
As Manton fought off pleas by his consultants to start drifting leftward, he faced an onslaught of negative ads by various Tories, all seeking to win their party's nod to take him on. As April wore on, his poll numbers dropped into the upper 30s. Several pundits all but declared him politically dead in the water. He sought allies, and brought them in. While President Holleran avoided a public event, which would only harm Manton's campaign, he did fundraise extensively for his old friend, bringing in $2.3 million shekels by the primary.
He won the Lib Dem primary handily in June, with his campaign swelling as many unaffiliated and weak-Tory voters crossed over and overwhelmed the Lib Dems' naturally liberal-leaning primary electorate, with Manton cruising to a significant 59.4%-40.6% win. The Tories nominated provincial Treasurer Jordan Mintz, a charismatic rising star in the provincial Conservative Party. He won the contested primary with a solid 54%, and had over $2 million shekels in his campaign coffers.
The candidates battled over the ad waves and at campaign rallies, and ran neck-and-neck in the polls. Manton's approval rating also rose, aiding him. By September, however, Mintz had taken the lead, leading or tied for 7 out of 11 polls taken. Manton took the unusual step of publicly commenting that he did not plan to vote for his party's nominee, Governor Aaron Rappaport, and hinted that he felt more comfortable with the Tories than his own liberal-led party. The moves swung support from swing voters, and while some base Lib Dems voters stayed home, many Tory voters ended up ticket-splitting their votes, casting a vote for Manton and a vote for Jeff Arnoth, the 2004 Conservative presidential nominee. Mintz had come to use his political celebrity to not work as hard securing his base voters, and he came off as arrogant and entitled to many voters as he earned negative press.
On Election Day on November 2nd, 2004, Joe Manton won a respectable 52.3%-47.4% margin, besting Mintz.
2008
By 2008, Manton had become a Tory in all but name and was well-liked and -supported by a broad cross-section of voters and a bipartisan collection of interest and establishment groups, marking him as an untouchable political figure in the province. After the Belhavian left targeted him for defeat, he trounced the weak liberal candidate fielded against him by national Liberal Democrats and liberal interests by an overwhelming 40-point margin, 65.5% - 23.6%.
The Conservatives put up nominal opposition, with disliked and far-right firebrand provincial senator Oren Pinsky gaining the nomination. Manton crushed him to easily win re-election by a 62.4%-37.2% margin.
Electoral history
| Election | Lib Dems | Tories | Libertarians | Independents | Winner | Margin of victory | Loser(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 62.4% | 37.2% | <0.3% | <0.2% | Independent Democrat Joe Manton (inc.) | 25.2% | Conservative Oren Pinsky, And others |
| 2004 | 52.3% | 47.4% | <0.2% | <0.1% | Liberal Democrat Joe Manton (inc.) | 4.9% | Conservative Jordan Mintz, And others |
| 2000 | 50.5% | 49.1% | <0.3% | <0.1% | Liberal Democrat Joe Manton | 1.4% | Conservative Gershon Netanyahu, And others |
Post-Senate career
Following his retirement at the end of his third Senate term in January 2013, Manton returned to his investment banking firm Manton-Grossman Global Strategies and replaced his brother Robert as President and Chairman of the Board of Directors, as well as becoming an inside director on the Board.
Despite no longer being an elected official, he has stayed active in provincial and national Liberal Democratic causes and politics, despite his political independence towards the end of his Senate career, as well as his conservatism and Tory-friendliness. He is beloved and remains an influential power broker in Arkania's Liberal Democratic circles, for reviving the party's statewide electability in the largely-Tory province in the last 16 years through hand-picked recruited candidates.
Between 2014 and 2015, he donated $40 million shekels to various Catholic charities, churches, causes, and organizations.
Political views
Family and personal life
He is married to Mary B. Manton (neé Cantwell) since 1990, celebrating 25 years of marriage as of 2015. He has six children, order by year of birth: Paul (1991), Ronald (1992), Betsy (1994), Carly (1994), Jessie (1999), and Augustine ("Auggie") (2002).
His oldest, Paul, is pursuing his MBA at Imperial Provisa University School of Business while his twin daughters Betsy and Carly are college seniors at Callan Liberal Arts College and University of Saint Mihail (in Rodarion), respectively. Jessie and Auggie are teenagers living at home.
He is a prolific philanthropic giver to Catholic charitable causes, giving on-average $5.7 million shekels per year. When he served in the Imperial Senate, he installed his brother Robert Manton as President and CEO. When he retired in 2013, he returned to guide the global company, with his brother stepping aside.
He has a net worth of over $300 million shekels, and his family owns four homes, including one in Rodarion.