The Myth of Eshelman
For me, the right context for understanding developments like this one about RightChange.com (PPD’s CEO bankrolls ads attacking Obama), a conservative counter-punch to MoveOn.org created by local businessman Fred Eshelman, or this recent letter to the editor decrying Eshelman’s politics as unbecoming a local “philanthropist” (Politics v. Parks), is the mythology of Eshelman himself and his relationship to Wilmington.
Fred Eshelman is the CEO of PPD, one of Wilmington’s largest and most successful businesses, a pharmaceutical research firm that’s recently built its worldwide headquarters on Wilmington’s north side. With 1000 employees moving from PPD’s previous location in Midtown, on 17th near the Cameron art museum, and 1000 more slated for hire, Wilmington’s downtown would enjoy two thousand mid-day shoppers, lunch-eaters, two thousand extra bodies downtown, two thousand people looking for a place to stop for milk or quaff a beer standing up on the way home from work.
Has this happened? I’m not sure. PPD started in a modest space downtown ten or more years ago (?) and quickly outgrew it. The story of PPD’s return after having been, according to some reports, kicked out of downtown despite having the area’s best interests at heart, and then brooding for years on nearby 17th Avenue like Achilles in his tent, is the recreation myth of Wilmington. When PPD expanded, the mythology goes, the company outpaced what Wilmington’s then-mayor Harper Peterson would allow in terms of commercial development in or near the historic downtown. These two clashed and Eshelman repaired to Midtown, where he vowed to return to the downtown he loved and wanted to support when the political climate (of historical preservation and anti-commercialism) was improved and Peterson was out of there.
In the many years that Eshelman waited and prospered in Midtown, he had incentives and offers from all over, and would have been greeted as a hero of commerce by any number of medium-sized or large cities. Charlotte and Greensboro would kill for PPD but Eshelman…abided.
Now he’s back (near) downtown in a new, immense, controversial corporate high-rise, whose effect upon the downtown has been middling at best (Is there better news about all those PPD employees drinking beers on the way home? I haven’t heard it.), and he’s spending millions of dollars to promote the conversative agenda, especially around tax policy (read: no taxes), and he’s using a 527 group called RightChange.com.
What?, many people asked. The guy’s a right-winger? A corporate survivalist? Eshelman, the savior of Wilmington??
Having spent more than a million dollars of his own money right before the election — and just after a folklorically-large economic crisis that has even the right-wingers saying they have to get serious about government, protection of citizens, regulation — he’s obviously thrown his money right down the tubes. Which is great, in my mind. I don’t relish the rich convincing the not-well-off that they, the rich, should be taxed even less than they are, but it’s absolutely their prerogative as a rich people to spend on this. The stories around Eshelman, Peterson, downtown’s success or failure commercially, historic preservation, the pharmaceutical industry and its spending excesses — all of these lend to the reading of this Big Move by Eshelman readable as epic, and certainly hubristic, and possibly tragic.
Great post, Ian.
I had the displeasure recently of doing a story about PPD for a local website. It was a total puff piece with the noble intention of promoting Wilmington as an up-and-coming destination for business and pleasure. I have friends who work there, but when I hit them up for information/quotes they informed me that PPD employees are not permitted to speak with the media.
When I contacted PPD’s media relations department, which I assume is employed to relate the company’s message to the press, I was stonewalled. One rep was downright rude, the other kept putting me off with promises to call the following day.
Eshelman’s pre-election ploy was as ugly as it was futile, and I wonder how it affected employees. Given the company’s penchant for secrecy, we may never know. Mr. E: Your company may make billions worldwide, but your actions shout that you’re still a big fish in a small pond.
I’m not the least bit surprised that Eshelman would throw as much cash as possible at a smear campaign. Power does not cede easily and money is often power in this society. No matter what Obama does as President the good new is that people took the power, regardless of what was being thrown at them.