McCain and Perenchio

I suspect I am not the only person following the Republican race for the Presidency and wondering why Senator John McCain has any support at all. Well today, Michelle Malkin points out the obvious that obviously many of missed. McCain has a sugar daddy.

Jerry Perenchio is Malibu's largest landowner and certainly one of the City's wealthiest residents. Forbes estimated his net worth to be $2.4 billion in 2005. … His biggest payoff came with his decision to enter the Hispanic market. In 1992, he joined with Mexico's Televisa and Venezuelan programmer Venevision International to buy five TV stations and a small Spanish network for $550 million, the foundation of Univision Communications Inc., now the nation's largest Spanish-language TV network.

Perenchio is one of the billionaires for big government. A shrewd businessman, he now plays at the loftiest gaming table where politicians and parties and governments are bought and sold. In the 2004 Presidential race he was #11 in contributions to 527’s. In the 2006 congressional elections he was the #2 big money player. Jerry Perenchio is the capitalist counterweight to the socialist George Soros and his Democracy Alliance. Being a true capitalist, however, means he doesn’t care which party gets his money, only that the politicians he purchases improve his business. That’s why his business is important.

Pushing the Hispanic Button: According to the census, Hispanics now account for more than 14 percent of the U.S. population, and their numbers are growing far faster than the national average. … In all, there are now 12.14 million Hispanic TV households in the U.S., according to Doug Darfield, the senior VP of multicultural measurement at The Nielsen Company.

Q3 Results: The Univision Network out delivered CBS, ABC and the CW to rank as the #3 network in the country in primetime among all Adults 18-34, as measured by Nielsen’s NTI, in the third quarter of 2007. Among all Adults 18-49, Univision maintained its ranking as the #5 network in the country, out delivering the CW. In the third quarter, Univision delivered more young adult viewers than ABC, CBS, NBC or FOX on 84% of the nights of the quarter. In addition, Univision was the #1 network for the entire night 26 times – nearly 30% of the nights in the third quarter – among all Adults 18-34 in any language.

I tend to believe private business audience measurements are more accurate than those fuzzy immigration numbers from government bureaucrats. Jerry Perenchio sees the social trends that that lifted him from simple affluence to fabulous wealth continuing into the American future. Luck, however, favors the prepared and I’m sure he deeply wants (another?) President who will insure the good times keep rolling.