Howard Schultz

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Part of a series on Starbucks. [View Related Entries]

About

Howard Schultz is an American businessman and politician best known as the former CEO of Starbucks. In 2019, he stepped into the public spotlight when he flirted with the idea of running in the 2020 United States Presidential Election as a centrist independent candidate.

History

Schultz was born July 19th, 1953 in New York City, New York.^[1] He grew up poor but was able to attend Northern Michigan University on an athletic scholarship. After working small jobs, he ascended to senior Starbucks staff in the eighties and was CEO by 1987. There, he served as CEO until 2000, moving to the position of chief global strategist for eight years to help Starbucks expand internationally. He returned to the position of CEO in 2008, where he served until 2017. In the early 2000s, he purchased the Seattle Supersonics and Seattle Storm, where he was criticized for his inability to run a basketball team. He later sold the team and the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City, being renamed the Thunder, damaging the reputation of Schultz in Seattle.^[2]

2020 Presidential Campaign

In late January of 2019, Schultz began confirming that he was exploring the possibility of a 2020 run for the presidency.^[3]^[4] The move was widely mocked and condemned as commenters felt Schultz has little in the way of concrete policy ideas and at worst would split the opposition vote to Donald Trump, helping ensure his reelection. At an event with Schultz on January 29th, 2019, he was heckled by a protestor who told him he should not help elect Trump win and stated he should go back to getting Ratio'd on Twitter (shown below). Schultz has been known to get Ratio'd on each of his tweets, as many commenters respond to his tweets angrily against the idea of him running for President. This led to Wired^[9] calling him the "Babe Ruth of Ratios."

Schultz has come out mostly firing mostly against Democrats. He has described "Medicare for All" as "un-American" and called prominent Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris too extreme.^[5] He has been mocked for his statements such as claiming he "did not see color"^[6] and saying that the word "billionaires" was too mean and billionaires should be called "people of means."^[7] CNN covered a town hall of his,^[8] where Schultz was criticized for not appearing to care about specific policy. Vox called the town hall an example of the "vacuous politics elite centrism."