Mitchell Rales and wife, Emily Wei Rales (l.), are the founders of the Glenstone Museum.
In the mid-1970s, Steven Rales, the oldest of the four Rales brothers and already a titan in the business world, reportedly had discussions with the late San Francisco Giants owner Horace Stoneham to purchase the then flailing franchise and move the team to Washington D.C.
Around that same time, Norman Rales, the family patriarch and a product of the Great Depression, already had an ownership stake in the Texas Rangers, although he would later sell that asset around 1979.
While Josh Harris – the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils owner — and Hall of Fame NBA player Magic Johnson may be the more flashy names in the group that has a deal in place to purchase the Washington Commanders from the beleaguered owners Daniel Snyder and wife Tanya, there is another Rales in the sports ownership mix.
Mitchell Rales, Steven’s younger brother — the two founded Danaher in 1984, a publicly-traded global conglomerate based in Washington — is the fellow billionaire alongside Harris who appears set to take the ownership reins of one of the NFL’s jewel franchises for a staggering $6.05 billion, according to multiple reports.
Rales, 66, who Forbes estimates is worth $5.6 billion, was born in Pittsburgh, the third of four sons of Norman and Ruth Rales. Norman, who died in 2012, spent his childhood in New York City’s Hebrew Orphan Asylum, where he lived until graduating from high school. Norman Rales was a self-made businessman, and founded Mid-South Building Supply Company in the mid-1960s after he moved his family to Bethesda, Maryland.
“There’s no question that many of the things that he taught us, just can’t be taught in a classroom,” Mitchell Rales said in a video tribute to his father after Norman’s death. “The street smarts of knowing when it’s time to fold your cards, and when it’s time to bluff, he brought forth. That’s coming out of the (orphanage) and all the hard energy that he learned on each corner of the street that was passed on to us. That’s not something that the Harvard classroom can teach you.”
Mitchell Rales has been Danaher’s chairman of the executive committee since the company’s founding in 1984 and he is a former Danaher president, while older brother Steven is the Danaher’s chairman of the board. Danaher’s name comes from a western Montana tributary where Steven and Mitchell went on a fishing trip in the early 1980s. According to the company’s website, during that trip both brothers “envisioned a new kind of manufacturing company—one dedicated to continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.”
“The strategic vision and leadership of Mr. Rales and his brother, Steven Rales, helped create the Danaher Business System and have guided Danaher down a path of consistent, profitable growth that continues today,” reads the website.
The Rales’ youngest brother, Joshua, is the founder of RFI Associates in Bethesda, a real estate investment company, while the other Rales brother, Stewart, 71, resides in Florida, according to court records. A 1988 Washington Post story said Stewart Rales was made president of their father’s Mid-South wholesale building supplies company in the late 1970s, but left in 1980 because of a drug addiction.
Beyond their business interests, both Steven and Mitchell Rales are also active in the arts. Steven, 72, founded Indian Paintbrush in 2006. The film production company is known for financing numerous Wes Anderson movies. Mitchell is the president of the National Gallery of Art’s board of trustees and he is the co-founder, along with his wife Emily, of Glenstone, a Potomac, Maryland art museum with a vast post-World War II art collection. The museum is free to the public.
Last month, Mitchell made a $1.9 billion donation to Glenstone Foundation, which supports the museum.
According to reports, the Commanders sale isn’t expected to be approved until at earliest, during the league meetings next month. But if the Harris/Rales/Johnson group eventually takes over, it will be the dawn of a new era, one in which Snyder’s tumultuous reign comes to an end. (Johnson is already a part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers).
Snyder purchased the NFL franchise in May 1999 for $800 million, but he has won no Super Bowls during his ownership tenure, and in the last five years, the club has been investigated by attorney Beth Wilkinson and the Committee on Oversight and Reform. The latter probe produced a report that documented how the league and the team covered up years of sexual misconduct in the workplace.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianred/2023/04/15/billionaire-mitchell-rales-part-of-group-in-bid-to-purchase-nfl-washington-commanders/