According to an August 8 entry on Michigan Republican candidate for governor Dick DeVos’s website, Dick DeVos visited a North Carolina facility operated by the private security corporation Blackwater USA. Blackwater USA is one of several corporations providing thousands of hired “security contractors” to aid the Untied States’ occupation of Iraq and its “war on terror.” The blog entry, titled “Our First Responders,” features DeVos campaign member Larry Ward describing how the DeVos campaign traveled to the company’s 6,000-acre North Carolina facility with “some of Michigan’s first responders.” In the entry, Ward describes Blackwater as “a premiere military and law enforcement facility” and explained that DeVos campaign watched Blackwater personnel demonstrate training exercises in “SWAT Team tactical entry, K-9 Dog Training, and dignitary protection services.” Following the training demonstrations, Ward reports that the campaign had time to “enjoy the shooting ranges with Blackwater’s firearms instructors.” The blog entry concludes with Ward writing that the trip was an “amazing experience:”

One thing for sure, I'm glad we have the folks from Blackwater fighting for and protecting our country. We all learned a great deal about what our first responders do to protect our freedoms.

The trip is interesting for a number of reasons, perhaps the most noteworthy of which is DeVos’ personal connection to Blackwater USA, one of the more controversial and politically connected private corporations providing what essentially are mercenary forces in Iraq. Larry Ward acknowledges that Blackwater is owned by Erik Prince, brother of DeVos’ wife Betsy, an interesting admission in its own right, but Ward fails to look closer at this relationship. Erik Prince, along with his sister Betsy, is a child of one of the more wealthy conservative families in the West Michigan area. Their parents—Edgar and Elsa Prince—are millionaires who made considerable money from Edgar’s ownership of a Prince Industries, a company he grew from a minor die-cast shop into a major auto parts supplier. During his life (Edgar Prince died in 1995), Prince was a confidant of and financial backer of former presidential candidate and conservative activist Gary Bauer as well as a financer of conservative political causes through the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation. His widow Elsa Prince has continued funding conservative politics, with Prince contributing to a variety of organizations such as the Focus on the Family, Council for National Policy, and the Alliance Defense Fund (among others), as well as contributing $75,000 to the Michigan campaign to ban gay marriage. The Prince family has used their fortune to firmly position themselves as major financers of the religious right in Michigan and the United States as a whole. The influence and reputation gained from this funding likely helped Betsy DeVos gain her position as former chair of the Michigan Republican Party and helped Erik Prince establish lucrative and close relationship with the Bush administration. In addition to conservative organizations, Betsy DeVos has been a major donor to the Republican Party and the Bush campaign, Erik Prince has contributed $200,000 to Republican committees and candidates, and Elsa Prince has contributed several thousand over the past few six years.

DeVos’ trip to Blackwater USA—which will likely go unreported in the corporate press—is further proof that he is a part of what can be described as the “religious right” or the “far right” in Michigan politics. Indeed, DeVos’ own foundation—the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation—has funded a variety of far right political and religious organizations including Prison Fellowship, the Heritage Foundation, and Gospel Communications. However, it has not been just through donations to private organizations that the DeVos’ have sought to implement far right policies, Amway and its family owners have given $7.5 million to federal campaigns since 1990, with Dick DeVos’ father, Richard DeVos, giving $2.5 million to the Republican Party in 1994 in what was the largest single soft money donation in history to a political party. Given the controversy that surrounds Blackwater, this connection could be a political liability if it is widely known.

Aside from Blackwater’s connection to the DeVos family, Blackwater also maintains close relations with the Bush administration. A recent article in The Nation reveals that Blackwater has been awarded over $320 million since June of 2004 to provide “diplomatic security” services around the world as part of the State Department’s obscure Worldwide Personal Protective Service (WPPS) program to protect United States officials and “certain foreign government high level officials whenever the need arises.” Despite being little known before the killing of four of its private security contractors in March of 2004, Blackwater had and continues to hold the high-profile job of guarding senior United States officials in Iraq. Following the March 2004 incident, Blackwater hired lobbyists and the Alexander Strategy Group to build its reputation within the administration and reported 600% growth by fall of 2004. Blackwater troops were also hired to work in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and have been paid more than $30 million for work that involved efforts to “guard homes of the rich in New Orleans” according to The Guardian. Both Blackwater’s work in Iraq and New Orleans has been problematic, with the company being sued by the families of some of its contractors killed in Iraq and being accused of overcharging in New Orleans.