Nation’s power elite at play is no pretty picture
A “donor member” was Jim Hensley, wealthy Phoenix beer distributor and father of Cindy McCain.
It’s the American power elite at play, as photographed by Alejandro Tomas over 26 years of attending an annual horse ride called Rancheros Visitadores in the Santa Ynez Valley near Santa Barbara, Calif.
Who goes on the ride? The club is exclusive, white and male, with a membership limited to 600. A couple hundred invited guests and guys from the wait list attend each year.
Photos from the 1989 ride show Reagan, an honorary member, on a buckboard beside former Interior Secretary William Clark. Gen. P.X. Kelly, commandant of the Marines, also is pictured.
“I was a little taken aback by many of the attitudes,” Tomas said. “Here are men at the highest rungs of power in this country. Quite blatant forms of racism and anti-Semitism and misogyny are on display. … The festive debauchery represents a cohesion of the power class.
A United Airlines board member, John Mitchell, started the Rancheros ride in 1930 as a kind of Bohemians-on-horseback experience. Walt Disney was a member.