| His family's company returned $349.2 million to shareholders last fiscal year, while it raised prices under the tariffs he votes for. |
| LEAD ESSAY / 5 MIN / 3 DOCUMENTS / STORY FILE SULLIVAN-RPM |
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| What would you call a stock ban that lets the senator voting on it keep his biggest stock? |
| I'd call it a campaign ad. And the Senate votes on one today. Majority Leader John Thune put the Stop Insider Trading Act on the floor this Wednesday. It's one of the last votes before the midterms. The bill bars members and their spouses from buying new shares. But it lets them keep what they already hold, the Washington Examiner reports. |
| So who does that help? The Hill reported Thune picked this vote to help three Republicans in tight races. Dan Sullivan of Alaska is one. His opponent, Mary Peltola, keeps telling voters he got rich trading stocks. Let me show you what his own filings say he owns... |
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Dan Sullivan and the family company |
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| Sullivan's grandfather founded RPM International in 1947. You know its brands: Rust-Oleum, DAP, Zinsser and The Pink Stuff. His father ran it next. Since 2002, his older brother Frank has been chief executive. |
| RPM stock has been the senator's biggest single holding since he got to the Senate, The New York Times reported. His latest disclosure puts it at up to $5 million. That's a range. In plain English, senators tick a box between two numbers instead of writing the exact figure. Newsweek read the same 2025 filing, and it found RPM listed as his largest asset. |
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| "It would have been nice to raise prices earlier." |
| FRANK SULLIVAN, RPM CEO, VIA JUNEAU EMPIRE |
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| Frank said that to investors in October 2025. He was talking about tariffs. His brother the senator votes for those tariffs in Washington. Frank put their unmitigated cost to RPM at $90 million to $95 million. About half of it was offset, the Times found, partly by raising what you pay on the shelf... |
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| Here's where your money comes in. When spray paint costs more at the hardware store, part of that price goes back to RPM's owners. I read the company's July 22 filing with the SEC to see how much. |
| I'll be fair with you here. Owning a family company is legal, and so is selling its stock. But you deserve to know what a senator owns when he votes on rules that pay him. I think that's the point of a disclosure form. |
| FILED / RPM FORM 8-K, EXHIBIT 99.1 |
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| RPM reported record fiscal 2026 sales of $7.86 billion, helped by pricing to offset inflation. The company returned $349.2 million to stockholders, and $271.7 million of that was cash dividends. Its board also added $700 million to the stock buyback plan. |
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| Dividends are cash a company pays its owners for each share. A buyback is the company purchasing its own stock. In plain English, each remaining share then claims more of the profits. Sullivan collects on both, because he holds the stock. And the Times noted RPM has raised its dividend 52 years in a row. |
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154 trades, 29 filed late |
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| Sullivan's campaign wouldn't discuss his finances with the Times. His filings say an outside adviser handles the RPM sales as part of a diversification plan. Over eight years he's sold as much as $800,000 of the stock. Even so, the stake grew. It went from up to $1 million in 2014 to up to $5 million in 2025. |
| I checked the rest of his record, too. SenatorDB, which compiles Senate trade filings, counts 154 Sullivan trades. Just 30 were purchases, and 124 were sales. Twenty-nine came in after the 45-day deadline. That deadline is set by the STOCK Act, the 2012 law that makes members disclose trades. You can read RPM's filing with the SEC yourself. |
| Now read today's bill with those numbers beside it. The ban stops new purchases, and Sullivan's record is mostly sales. Existing holdings stay untouched. His biggest one is his family's company. Chuck Schumer says the voter ID language in the bill was put there to defeat it. The Examiner expects it to fall short of 60 votes. |
| So here's your stake. When you pay more in the paint aisle, part of that money reaches RPM's shareholders. Your taxes pay the senator who backs the tariffs behind those prices. And the ban he gets to campaign on lets him keep every share. |
