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Frank L. VanderSloot (born August 14, 1948) is an American entrepreneur, radio network owner and cattle rancher. He is chief executive officer of Melaleuca, Inc., an Idaho Falls, Idaho,-headquartered multi-level marketing company that sells nutritional supplements, cleaning supplies, and personal-care products.

VanderSloot served as the national finance co-chair for Mitt Romney's bid to serve as the Republican Party's 2008 presidential candidate and was chosen as one of thirteen national finance co-chairs for Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.

Early life and education

Born to a Dutch immigrant family, VanderSloot grew up on a small farm in Cocolalla, Idaho. His father, Frank, worked as a painter for the Northern Pacific Railway. Vandersloot attended Sandpoint High School, graduating in 1966. At the age of 16, he converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), and later served on a 2-year LDS mission in the Netherlands.

VanderSloot earned an associate’s degree in business at Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, and in 1972, he graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor's degree in business administration. He paid his own way through school, "selling beef jerky in bars and teaching Dutch to future missionaries. He lived in a laundromat, which "didn't have a shower, so Vandersloot took sponge baths."

Career

Early career

Prior to Melaleuca, VanderSloot served as a Regional Vice President for Automatic Data Processing (ADP), then later as Vice President for Cox Communications.

Oil of Melaleuca

In 1985, VanderSloot was offered the helm of a startup multi-level marketing business (Oil of Melaleuca, Inc.) in Idaho Falls, Idaho by his brother-in-law Roger Ball and Roger's brother Allen Ball. Oil of Melaleuca subsequently failed to achieve significant market share and was targeted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration because the company’s salespeople were making exaggerated medical claims. The partners shut down the company and later that year VanderSloot opened Melaleuca, Inc. Half of Oil of Melaleuca's 1,000 distributors quit because they could not make quick profits by passing along inventory to salespeople below them in their networks.

CEO of Melaleuca

VanderSloot hired a new research and development team whose work resulted in nine U.S. patents for the company, including a muscle relaxant and analgesic containing melaleuca oil, also known as tea tree oil.

The current company sells nutritional supplements, cleaning supplies, and personal-care products, which are distributed through multilevel marketing. According to VanderSloot, the company has a "business model for those people who want to supplement their income."

Melaleuca operates internationally, with U.S. operations centered in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Knoxville, Tennessee. Melaleuca was recognized as an Inc. magazine Hall of Fame business in 2000. According to VanderSloot, Melaleuca had gross sales in excess of one billion dollars in 2011. In 2004, 25% of company revenue came from Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Melaleuca is a member of the United States Direct Selling Association, a trade association and political lobbying group that represents multilevel marketing companies.

In 1997, Vandersloot received a warning letter from the FDA to stop marketing Melaleuca dietary supplements (i.e., ProVex, ProVex-Plus, and Replenex) as drugs for the treatment of disease conditions in contravention of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The warning, issued subsequent to an FDA inspection of Melaleuca’s manufacturing facilities, noted that the products carried claims that their use results in "halting and possibly reversing the process of articular cartilage degeneration" and that they were "an alternative in the treatment of degenerative joint disease or common osteoarthritis." Melaleuca subsequently announced that the claims would no longer be used for marketing the products.

Ranching

VanderSloot owns Riverbend Ranch, which is one of the largest operations in the United States for both purebred and commercial cattle. He also owns Fort Ranch Quarter Horses in Promontory, Utah.

Broadcasting

VanderSloot owns Riverbend Communications, a group of radio broadcast stations in Eastern Idaho that he purchased from Bonneville Communications in 2006. Riverbend Communications operates KLCE Classy 97, KCVI Kbear 101, KTHK 105.5 The Hawk, KFTZ Z103, and KBLI News-Talk AM 690 - 1260.

Net worth

In 2004, VanderSloot was included on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. According to Forbes, VanderSloot was worth $700 million and his company Melaleuca, for which VanderSloot owns 55% of the voting stock and 44% of the nonvoting stock, was valued at $1.4 billion. Although VanderSloot does not publically disclose his personal worth, estimates in 2011 suggest that Melaleuca would be valued at $3.2 billion to $3.9 billion were it to go public. In 2011, Vandesloot was listed by The Land Report as the 86th largest landowner in the United States, with holdings of 110,448 acres.

Public activity

United States Chamber of Commerce

VanderSloot is on the board of directors of the United States Chamber of Commerce, and in 2004 he was named to the organization's executive board.

Politics

Campaign financing

In 1994, VanderSloot supported Democrat Larry EchoHawk’s campaign to become governor of Idaho, but subsequently become the state’s most boisterous conservative financier. VanderSloot has since helped finance election campaigns for several conservative politicians/officials in Idaho. He spent more than $100,000 on independent advertising on three winning judicial campaigns, two for Idaho Supreme Court and one for district judge in Bonneville County. Vandersloot and Melaleuca were financial supporters of Concerned Citizens for Family Values, an organization that ran attack ads targeting incumbent Idaho Supreme Court Justice Cathy Silak during her 2000 re-election campaign against Republican challenger Daniel T. Eismann. The ads alleged that if Silak were re-elected, same-sex marriage and "partial-birth abortion" could become legal in Idaho.

In 2002, VanderSloot and Melaleuca contributed more than $50,000 opposing the election bid of Democrat Keith Roark, a former Blaine County prosecutor, for Idaho Attorney General. The contributions included a $35,000 donation to Roark’s Republican opponent, Lawrence Wasden, and a $16,500 donation to Concerned Citizens for Family Values, an organization run by Vandersloot, to finance a radio attack ad against Roark in Eastern Idaho. That year, VanderSloot and Melaleuca also donated $7,000 towards the 2002 gubernatorial campaign of Republican Dirk Kempthorne.

VanderSloot served as the national finance co-chair for Mitt Romney's unsuccessful bid to serve as the Republican Party's 2008 presidential candidate. In 2012, VanderSloot was chosen as national finance co-chair for Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. In 2012, VanderSloot’s companies contributed a total of $1 million to the Restore Our Future political action committee, a group that supports Romney for President. According to VanderSloot, he raised between $2 million and $5 million for the Romney campaign.

Endorsement

In 2006, VanderSloot endorsed Democrat Jackie Groves Twilegar for state controller.

Obama campaign mention

On April 20, 2012, a website operated by Barack Obama’s campaign team included VanderSloot on a list of 8 major donors to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign who have "questionable and troubling records on various issues" and described him as a "litigious, combative, and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement". VanderSloot waged an aggressive response, making a series of appearances on the Fox News Channel in which he called for donations to Romney in protest of the list. VanderSloot, who accused the Obama campaign of targeting him unfairly, said that he went through "living hell" and that his company Melaleuca lost about two hundred customers in the first two weeks after the list appeared. In July 2012, it was announced that VanderSloot was the subject of two new federal audits, one by the Internal Revenue Service and the other by the U.S. Department of Labor. VanderSloot said that the timing of the audits was curious and questionable, claiming that he received notice of the IRS audit two months after he was "singled out by the Obama campaign;" however, he noted that he did not think that the President was directly behind the audits.

LGBT issues

In 2012, Vandersloot stated that 'gay people should have the same freedoms and rights as any other individual." However, his controversial stances on certain issues of interest to the gay community have drawn criticism from journalists and gay rights advocates. In 1999 VanderSloot spent an undisclosed sum to sponsor billboards around the state of Idaho asking "Should public television promote the homosexual lifestyle to your children? Think about it!” in reference to It's Elementary, a 1999 PBS documentary exploring how four schools dealt with homosexuality. VanderSloot's efforts, and his wife's $100,000 donation to the Proposition 8 initiative to rescind gay marriage in California, drew criticism from the Human Rights Campaign.

In 2006, VanderSloot issued critical statements regarding an award-winning series of investigative articles in the Idaho Falls Post Register about incidents of child molestation by Brad Stowell while serving as a Boy Scout director in the Grand Teton Council. According to Peter Zuckerman, the author of the articles, the Mormon Church and Idaho Boy Scout officials had received prior reports of some of the incidents at the Council's Camp Little Lemhi and that Stowell was a pedophile, but had failed to take appropriate action. Zuckerman also reported on the 1983 rape of a junior counselor by Dennis Empey, an Idaho Scout camp swimming instructor, and the case of Scoutmaster Jeff Hardin, a counselor at Camp Little Lemhi who was was convicted of lewd conduct for molesting a Scout.

VanderSloot took out full-page ads in the Post Register that challenged the stories and devoted several paragraphs to establishing that Zuckerman was gay. One of VanderSloot's advertisements asserted that "the Boy Scout’s position of not letting gay men be scout leaders, and the LDS Church’s position that marriage should be between a man and a woman may have caused to attack the scouts and the LDS Church through his journalism." Another claimed "there is nothing wrong with having homosexual reporters, but since the Boy Scouts’ policy of not allowing homosexual men to be scout leaders has produced so much anger against the scouts from the homosexual community, it seems that if the Post Register had wanted a fair and balanced story on the Boy Scouts, they would have assigned a reporter who did not have a personal ax to grind." VanderSloot was accused of outing Zuckerman, and although VanderSloot denied the charge, Post Register editor Dean Miller confirmed that Zuckerman's sexual orientation had been known only by Zuckerman's family and a few of his close friends and colleagues.

According to VanderSloot, he employed Paul Steed, the father of two of Stowell’s victims, after the publication of Zuckerman's articles; helped broker a settlement between the Boy Scouts and the Steeds; and gave Espey's victim Jeff Bird a $30,000 check.

Defamation lawsuit threats

According to Rachel Maddow and other sources, VanderSloot has threatened defamation lawsuits, copyright infringement and other legal action against critics and outlets that have published critical views, including Maddow herself, Forbes magazine, lawyer Glenn Greenwald, Mother Jones Magazine, and Idaho journalist Jody May-Chang.

Philanthropy

VanderSloot created the Melaleuca Foundation, a non-profit organization, in 2001 to help victims of the September 11th attacks. Through its fundraising initiatives, the Melaleuca Foundation has been the primary financial supporter of the Santa Lucia Children's Home in Quito, Ecuador, which provides aid to orphaned and abused children. In 2007, VanderSloot's company Melaleuca received the Salvation Army Others Award for helping with relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

Each year since 1992, Melaleuca has organized the Melaleuca Freedom Celebration, in Idaho Falls. The event is billed as the largest Independence Day fireworks display west of the Mississippi.

In 2012, it was announced that Vandersloot would be funding, via the Vandersloot Foundation, the new American Heritage Charter School, a K-12 charter school scheduled to open in Idaho Falls in 2013. The school, which touts itself as “a patriotic choice for parents” with a focus on “individual freedoms and free market economics”, is modeled after a similar charter school, the North Valley Academy in Gooding Idaho, and bases its curriculum on the Core Knowledge Program established by E.D. Hirsch.

Awards

In 1998, VanderSloot received the Idaho Business Leader of the Year award from Idaho State University. In 2001, he was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the U.S. Northwestern region.

Personal life

Vandersloot has been married to Belinda VanderSloot (née Belinda Boyack) since 1995 and they currently reside in Idaho Falls, ID. Together they have fourteen children: six from two of Frank VanderSloot’s prior marriages, and eight from Belinda VanderSloot’s first marriage. Frank VanderSloot was previously married to Kathleen VanderSloot (née Kathleen Zundel), his first wife, and Vivian VanderSloot, his third wife.

See Also

• Melaleuca, Inc. v. Hansen— Melaleuca was found by a court not to be an "Internet access provider".

References

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• American chief executives
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• Living people
• 1948 births
• Brigham Young University alumni