Dwayne O. Andreas

Dwayne Orville Andreas (March 4, 1918 – November 16, 2016) was one of the most prominent political campaign donors in the United States, having contributed millions of dollars to Democratic and Republican candidates alike. For twenty-five years, he was in the leadership of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the largest processor of farm commodities in the United States, where he made his fortune.

Andreas was born in Worthington, Minnesota. He grew up mostly in Iowa (with siblings Albert, Lenore, Glen, Osborne and Lowell) and attended Wheaton College in Illinois, but dropped out in his sophomore year after getting married, and went to work for a modest, family-owned food-processing firm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When Cargill bought the Cedar Rapids facility in 1945, Andreas joined the commodity firm, eventually becoming a vice president. Andreas resigned from Cargill in 1952, and continued in the vegetable oil business, eventually as an executive of the Grain Terminal Association.

In 1971 Andreas became Chief Executive Officer of ADM, and is credited with transforming the firm into an industrial powerhouse — so powerful that by 1996, ADM had been investigated for price-fixing and was assessed the largest antitrust fine in United States history: 100 million dollars. Andreas remained CEO until 1997.

While not well known to the public, Andreas commands much respect among Washington politicians for his largesse. As part of the investigations surrounding illegal campaign fundraising linked to the Watergate scandal, Andreas was charged with (but acquitted of) illegally contributing $100,000 to Hubert Humphrey's 1968 presidential campaign. In 1972 Andreas unlawfully contributed $25,000 to President Nixon's re-election campaign via Watergate burglar Bernard Barker. Other recipients of Andreas's "tithing" — as he puts it — have included George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Jesse Jackson, and Jack Kemp.

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