Darrell Issa
Darrell Issa was born in Cleveland, Ohio, United States on November 1st, 1953 and is the Politician. At the age of 70, Darrell Issa biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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After leaving the military, Issa and his second wife, Kathy Stanton, returned to the Cleveland area. According to Issa, he and his wife pooled their savings, sold their cars (a 1976 Mercedes and a 1967 VW Beetle) and a BMW motorcycle, and borrowed $50,000 from family members to invest in Quantum Enterprises, an electronics manufacturer run by a friend from Cleveland Heights. It assembled bug zappers, CB radio parts, and other consumer products for other companies. One of those clients, car alarm manufacturer Steal Stopper, became the path to Issa's fortune. It was struggling badly, and he took control of it by foreclosing a $60,000 loan he had made to it when its founder, Joey Adkins, missed a payment. Adkins remained as an employee.
Issa soon turned Steal Stopper around, to the point that it was supplying Ford with thousands of car alarms and negotiating a similar deal with Toyota. Early in the morning of September 7, 1982, Quantum and Steal Stopper's offices and factory in the Cleveland suburb of Maple Heights caught fire. The fire took three hours to put out. The buildings and almost all the inventory within were destroyed. An investigation of the fire noted "suspicious burn patterns" with fires starting in two places aided by an accelerant such as gasoline.
Adkins said Issa had appeared to prepare for a fire by increasing the fire insurance policy by 462% three weeks earlier, and by removing computer equipment containing accounting and customer information. St. Paul Insurance, suspicious of arson and insurance fraud, initially paid only $25,000, according to Issa.
Steal Stopper soon returned a profit again. As car theft rose in the U.S. during the 1980s, so did the demand for security devices. Rolls Royce, BMW, and General Motors joined Ford and Toyota as customers of Steal Stopper. In 1985, Issa sold the company to a California-based maker of home alarms, and moved to the San Diego suburb of Vista, to work for the company.
Shortly afterward, Issa left to start Directed Electronics, Inc. (DEI). He has continued to live in Vista. Issa used his knowledge of the weaknesses in automotive security to develop effective theft deterrents. Using sensors that, when armed, would detect motion and pressure on the car's body, his device made loud noise to draw attention to a would-be car thief, such as the car's horn honking or a speaker playing a recording with Issa's voice saying: "Protected by Viper. Stand back" and "Please step away from the car", warnings for DEI's signature product, the Viper car alarm. Sales grew from $1 million in the company's first year to $14 million by 1989.
Issa is partner in 17 limited partnerships and limited liability companies (LLCs) that own commercial properties across North San Diego County. He is CEO of Greene Properties, Inc., a privately held real estate investment company with commercial real estate holdings in San Diego North County. Headquartered in Vista, it manages three commercial office buildings in Carlsbad with a total of 26,354 square feet. Employees include his wife and son William "Will" Issa as assistant property manager. The office is in the same building as Issa's former congressional office, near their house of the last 20 years.
Early political career
Active in consumer-electronics trade organizations, Issa became more directly involved in politics. He went to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress and later became one of California's biggest individual campaign contributors to Republican candidates. In 1996, he chaired the successful campaign to pass California Proposition 209, a ballot initiative that prohibited Californian public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in public employment, public contracting, or public education. He was instrumental in persuading the national Republican Party to hold its 1996 convention in San Diego.
Issa's first campaign for elected office was in 1998, when he sought the Republican nomination for United States Senate to face incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer. He spent $10 million of his own money in the primary, running against California State Treasurer Matt Fong, Congressman Frank Riggs, and three others. Fong's campaign raised $3 million from contributions and complained that Issa's wealth made for an uneven playing field (Issa received only $400,000 in contributions from others). An Issa spokesman countered that the money was needed to compensate for Fong's statewide name recognition. Issa lost to Fong, 45% to 40%; Riggs got 10% of the vote. A San Francisco exit poll suggested large numbers of Asian Americans, who typically vote in the Democratic primary, had crossed party lines to strategically vote for Fong.