Philanthropist, Political Insider Gets Envoy Post : Diplomacy: Glen A. Holden, multimillionaire insurance executive, campaign contributor, horseman and polo player, had bipartisan support for appointment as ambassador to Jamaica.

One Saturday afternoon in March, insurance executive Glen A. Holden came home to his Bel-Air mansion to hear his grandson announce, “Hey gramps, the President’s calling.”

In that surprise phone call, President Bush asked his old friend and financial supporter to serve as the next ambassador to Jamaica and to play a key role in formulating U.S. policy in the Caribbean.

The nomination was by far the highest honor in the career of Holden, a self-made multimillionaire who plays polo with such royalty as Prince Charles of England and fraternizes with political powerhouses such as Republican Sen. Pete Wilson and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Charles Manatt.

Although the garrulous businessman has become a familiar fixture in the limousines, board rooms and black-tie events, he is protective of his privacy, little known outside the inner circles of the political and social elite.

What is known is that Holden, a life-long political dabbler, has established himself as a major campaign contributor and philanthropist.

“I give to a great many things,” Holden said. “What may seem like a large amount of money to someone is not to another one.”

Since 1981, Holden has scattered hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than 100 candidates and causes--from a West Covina city council candidate in suburban Los Angeles to the Bush presidential campaign.

Locally, Holden is the single largest contributor to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. He, his family and his closely held company, the Holden Group--which holds a lucrative county contract--have donated $117,695 to the five supervisors since 1984, according to campaign reports.

Nationally, Holden made the Republican National Committee’s list of top contributors last year, being named to its exclusive “Team 100” by giving at least $100,000 to GOP candidates and causes. He is one of only 250 contributors in the nation to gain the Team 100 designation.

His contributions, Holden said in an interview, are a way to support those who share his belief in the free enterprise system.

“He enjoys the political game,” said Ron Smith, a political consultant and former deputy to County Supervisor Deane Dana.

Holden, 62, a six-footer with wavy silver hair and deep blue eyes, has the looks and manner of a successful politician. According to friends, he is the sort who easily works a crowd with a ready smile and firm handshake--”never snooty.” He is also a man known to arrive for a polo match by helicopter.

He spends his considerable wealth in some disparate ways. On one hand, he has contributed more than $600,000 in the past two years to a variety of cultural and educational charities, ranging from Pepperdine University to a Hollywood day-care center. On the other, he has joined 17 tony social organizations, such as the Palm Beach Polo and Country Club and the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club.

Holden--who divides his time among a Bel-Air mansion, Santa Barbara ranch and Palm Desert condo--said his interest in politics dates back to the 1950s. He was finance chairman of the Oregon Republican Party at age 30 and was a fraternity brother of Oregon Republican Sens. Mark O. Hatfield and Bob Packwood.

Like Ronald Reagan, Holden is a Democrat who turned Republican with a vengeance. And in George Bush he found another ally.

The two met, according to Holden, when he was running an insurance company in Houston in the early 1970s while Bush was serving as a Texas congressman.

In 1980, Holden was one of the political insiders who pushed for the inclusion of Bush on Reagan’s presidential ticket. In fact, Holden says, he and his wife shared a limousine with Barbara Bush when they rode to the Republican National Convention.

Although he had been a financial backer of Bush, Holden said in a recent interview that he was surprised when the president tapped him for the Jamaican ambassadorship. Holden said he not sought the $82,500-a-year post, nor any of the other 139 ambassadorships. The White House declined to comment on the appointment.

“He has never even asked for a White House tour,” said one Republican fund-raiser who asked not to be named.

Holden said that he has traveled throughout the Caribbean, but is not a student of Jamaica.

Holden--who still refers to the Peoples Republic of China as “Communist China”--said he believes “Marxism and Communism is going down all over the world.”

And, he said, he hopes to advance the cause of capitalism in Jamaica, a country run by Prime Minister Michael Manley, whom Holden described as once being “very leftist, very socialist, if not totally Communist, certainly Marxist.”

During the 1980s, Holden said, Manley changed his tune. “In his quest for reelection, he reversed himself” and is pursuing free enterprise solutions to his country’s myriad problems.

“When our President heard that and saw (Manley’s) apparent conviction . . . I got a call from the White House . . . that the President would like to have someone that he knew, that he knew could get results” in assisting the transition in Jamaica, Holden said in explaining his nomination.

Holden said he plans to use the embassy for “charitable . . . receptions and things” to support educational causes. “They have to develop into other kinds of economic and commercial development,” Holden said. “People have to be trained and cane cutters have to become something else.”

Holden’s nomination has been confirmed by the Senate and he is scheduled to be sworn in later this month. He expects to take his post early in December.

Bush has come under fire from Senate Democrats, particularly Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.), for allegedly appointing an inordinate number of big political contributors to ambassadorial posts. Sarbanes has labled some of these nominees “unqualified” and sought to block their confirmation.

However, Holden’s appointment had bipartisan support, including a lobbying campaign orchestrated by former Democratic party chief Manatt, who met Holden a decade ago through a mutual interest in the Boy Scouts of America. Manatt also is in a partnership with Holden in the ownership of a Westside office building that houses Holden’s business headquarters.

Sarbanes spokesman Bruce Frame indicated that Holden’s appointment faced no opposition in part because his resume indicates a strong management background that “counts for something” in administering an embassy with 300 employees.

While Holden’s business experience appears to have helped him win a federal appointment, the business that he does with state and local government helped make him a wealthy man.

With 4,000 government contracts across the nation, much of the Holden Group’s business is providing investment and insurance services to public employees, including those in Florida, Tennessee and Texas and in Los Angeles County.

Soon after the conservative three-man majority was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1980, the Holden Group was awarded an exclusive contract to administer a $500-million retirement income plan for 50,000 county employees. County officials project the company will make $36 million in a five-year period from the contract, which was recently extended until 1991.

The contract was awarded after a lobbying campaign led by former Democratic Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown.

Since 1984, Holden, his company and his family have contributed extensively to the Board of Supervisors’ conservative majority. Mike Antonovich has received $48,445; Pete Schabarum, $30,750; and Deane Dana, $26,000. But he and his company also have contributed $8,000 to liberal Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and $4,500 to Supervisor Ed Edelman, the other liberal on the board.

His contributions eclipse those of better known companies and individuals, such as the late Howard Hughes’ Summa Corp. and real estate developers Nathan Shapell and Ray Watt.

Holden said he supports conservative and liberal supervisors alike because “that’s the best-run government and, by golly, those people ought to be supported.”

“We do business (with the county), but. . . I’ve never asked for a favor,” he said.

A recent study by the California Commission on Campaign Financing said: “Most contributors to Los Angeles County supervisors stated their donations are, in the words of one, ‘part of the cost of doing business in the county.’ ”

Schabarum, who has ridden horses with Holden in the Andes, said: “He wants to make sure that the Board of Supervisors knows he is an important player in providing the services that he does.” Schabarum would not elaborate.

Dana said: “I think he likes doing business with us.” Dana added that Holden has never asked for favors, nor has he received any. Born July 2, 1927, in Idaho, Glen Arthur Holden grew up on a ranch near Portland, Ore. He made spending money in the Depression through a labor of love--training horses.

Although most of the dozen horses he now keeps are trained by professionals in Argentina, Holden maintains his passion for horses through the game of polo, in which he has built a national reputation as an amateur.

“It’s a high-energy, addictive sport,” said Jim Tribbin, manager of the Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club in Carpinteria.

His passion for polo and his business acumen came together in the late 1970s when Holden, according to Tribbin, grabbed the reins of the club after it ran into financial problems. He personally guaranteed some of the club’s debts and helped navigate it back to financial safety, Tribbin said. In appreciation, members renamed the grandstand field, Holden Field.

Although daring on the polo field, Holden is a cautious man. His plush office in a high-rise on Los Angeles’ Westside is under tight security. TV cameras monitor visitors coming and going and uniformed guards direct the traffic.

His office suite is decorated with expensive art work--much of its featuring horses--and includes a tapestry of polo players, which was a gift from the Maharajah of Jaipur.

He began selling insurance while studying at the University of Oregon, and he married his college sweetheart, Gloria, with whom he raised two daughters and a son, Glen Jr.

He went on to build a large and successful insurance agency business based in Portland that spread over Oregon, Washington and Northern California.

Later he was hired to run an innovative insurance firm, Variable Annuity Life Insurance Co., where, Holden said, “I pioneered the whole concept of variable annuities and variable life insurance in the United States.” Holden moved to Los Angeles in 1973 and founded the Holden Group, a closely held company that specializes in the “design, marketing and administration of tax-advantaged, income-producing plans through annuities, insurance products and real estate.”

In 1986, Holden sold a 59.2% interest in his company to Toronto-based Lonvest Corp. for $79 million.

In preparing to leave for Jamaica, Holden is resigning as chairman of the Holden Group and plans resign from--or take an inactive role in--the many civic organizations he serves.

But it is unlikely that Holden will give up his commitment.

“As people get into it, they do more,” said Holden explaining the extent of his involvement in political and civic causes.

“And it’s true, whether it be the Boy Scouts or Pepperdine University or for Pete Wilson. . . . I got started pretty early. I was supporting and helping political causes and educational institutions the day I got out of the university. . . . So I’ve been at this a long time.”