Former Starbucks founder seriously thinking of running for president

MARCY OSTER

In an interview aired on CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday night, Schultz told correspondent Scott Pelley that he would run as a “centrist independent” in spite of being a lifelong Democrat.

Schultz said the reason he would run as an independent, which critics say would help President Donald Trump’s chances of being elected by splitting the vote, is that both parties “are consistently not doing what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics”.

When asked “what effect” his being Jewish would have on his campaign, Schultz noted, “I am not running as a Jew if I decide to run for president, I’m running as an American who happens to be Jewish.”

He also said, “I have great faith in the goodness and kindness of the American people. We elected an African-American president. I’m old enough to remember in 1960 when John F Kennedy was running, and there was an outcry of hate that no Catholic should be president. I am Jewish, I have faith in G-d.”

Schultz, who is 65, briefly addressed some of the issues of the day. He said there should be a “fair and equitable way” for illegal immigrants to become United States citizens; that every American “deserves the right to have access to quality health care”; and that the 2018 tax cut should have focused less on business and more on the people who need it the most, those “who don’t have $400 (R5,456) in the bank”.

In late June, he became chairman emeritus of the company he founded in the 1980s. He is also the former owner of the Seattle Supersonics NBA franchise. His net worth is about $3.5 billion (R47.7 billion), and he told Pelley that “we’ll be fully resourced to do what’s necessary” to run a presidential campaign.

He said as a coffee entrepreneur running for president, he would “recruit and attract people who are smarter than me and more experienced, more skilled”. He said there would be a “complete separation” between him and the company for the duration of a campaign.

The Democratic Party in Washington, where Starbucks was founded, has called on Schultz not to run as an independent. Tina Podlodowski, the chair of the Washington State Democratic party, said that he could garner enough votes, mostly from Democrats, to push more states for Trump. She recently sent him an invitation for a coffee date to discuss his plans when he is Seattle on his recently launched book tour.

Schultz has written about his hardscrabble Jewish upbringing in New York, and about his transformative encounter in Jerusalem with Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, who headed the Mir Yeshiva.