NOUVEAU GAUCHE: Billionaire Stewart Rahr’s big spending has gotten him a wall of party pics with the stars, but his pushy ways have also led to ugly scrapes, like one with married model Greice Santo (see next slide). (
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Not long after he bought the most expensive single-family home in the state, a $45 million mansion off Georgica Pond in Wainscott, celeb-loving billionaire Stewart Rahr set his sights on joining the ultra-exclusive Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton.
A links aficionado who plays with Bill Clinton and Arnold Palmer, Rahr figured he’d donate big bucks to the owner’s favorite charity.
“The guy was dying to get in there,” said security honcho Bo Dietl, a pal of club founder Michael Pascucci, whose course will host the 2013 US Women’s Open. “So he actually handed me a blank check for a million dollars for the owner to give to a charity of his choice. I told [Pascucci], ‘Don’t let this douchebag in.’
“I’ve known him for 20 years. He buys everybody.”
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Rahr, who became one of New York’s richest men at age 64 when he sold his drugstore supply company for $1.3 billion in 2010, concedes he was turned down but claims he walked away gracefully.
“What he’s not telling you,” Rahr said, “is that he came to me eight months later and wanted the check back. I said, ‘Forget it.’ ”
It’s the kind of story that seems to follow Rahr, perhaps the city’s wackiest mogul. Catapulted into New York’s elite late in life, Rahr is generous with his spending, thrilled to be rubbing elbows with the rich and famous — and known for bitter feuds with the likes of Tiger Woods and comic George Lopez, whom he’s ripped publicly.
In the last month he got banned from his favorite restaurant, Nobu, after cursing out a manager and lost his gun permit after allegedly threatening an elevator operator at Trump Tower, an allegation he denies and that ended without him being charged.
“There’s no other billionaire like him,” said a source who’s known Rahr for years. “He gives out all this money to good causes but gets into these ridiculous fights with people.”
Just who is this man with a fake tan who calls himself Stewie Rah Rah, wears bright yellow Ray-Bans and can’t stop boasting of his friendships with Mark Wahlberg, Andre Agassi and Alicia Keys?
His enemies cast him as a temperamental lout.
Professional gambler RJ Cipriani says Rahr acted inappropriately toward his wife after they all flew together from LA to Las Vegas on Nov. 7.
When Cipriani had to return to LA unexpectedly, Rahr promised to look after his wife, Greice Santo, a stunning 22-year-old Brazilian native.
But Cipriani says Rahr grew irate the next night after Santo declined to join him and a group of others for dinner at the Wynn hotel, where they were all staying as Rahr’s guests.
“He insisted she come down,” he said, then tried to force his way into her room using his own key, according to Cipriani. But Santo had bolted the door and wouldn’t let him in.
“I felt very threatened and uncomfortable,” said Santo, who declined to discuss the incident in detail.
Said Cipriani: “I called the metro police, and they came and escorted her out of the hotel.”
Las Vegas police confirmed they were called to the hotel for a “minor altercation.” No report was taken and no one was arrested, they said.
Rahr says Cipriani is not telling the truth and denies acting inappropriately toward his wife. “I tried to help the guy,” Rahr said. “I wish I’d never met him.”
Rahr’s attorney claims Cipriani’s allegations are a “shakedown,” a charge Cipriani denies.
Others revere Rahr.
“I have nothing but great things to say about him and his generosity,” said Mark Cuban. “Stewie Rah Rah has got a soft spot for those in need.”
Rahr claims he’s misunderstood. “People think I was born rich, but I didn’t have two f–king nickels to rub together,” he says.
He’s sitting in his office on the 24th floor of Trump Tower in jeans and a “Michigan Football” hoodie — he’d just returned from a trip to the university to give $7 million for prostate-cancer research — and explaining how he became a billionaire.
His father, Ray, ran a small drugstore on Troy Avenue and Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. When Ray’s partner retired, the store faced closure. “I said, ‘Dad, I think I can get the distribution business going. He said, ‘What’s that?’ ”
So Rahr dropped out of NYU Law to deliver Bayer aspirin and other supplies to mom-and-pop drugstores like his father’s. “We only sold to independents,” he said. The big plus: same-day delivery. He worked 20-hour days. “We never lost a store.”
When he was 45, he got an offer to sell the business, Kinray, for $15 million. “But I was so young, I thought, I can take this to the next level.”
So he bought a 400,000-square-foot warehouse in Whitestone. “Now I took in cosmetics. We had 30,000 items,” he said.
Stewie finally cashed out in 2010, selling Kinray and walking away with an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion, which makes him the 298th-richest American. He gave each of his top 10 employees a $1 million bonus.
He’s been giving away money ever since. His $100 million foundation lets him hand out five-figure checks like business cards, usually to the pet causes of Hollywood royalty, music and sports stars and other moguls.
In the last month alone, he’s given to Elizabeth Hurley’s favorite cancer charity, Joe Torre’s nonprofit and Eric Trump’s children’s foundation, along with $100,000 to Sandy victims, which he announced on Geraldo Rivera’s show.
Rahr has made a host of influential friends. Jay Leno, he says, recently showed up at his hotel in LA for a quick visit.
“He came to see me!” he said, and handed a reporter a phone with a video clip of the talk-show host relaxing.
Rahr has lined his office with hundreds of grip-and-grin shots of himself clutching the likes of Joaquin Phoenix, Taylor Swift and Prince Albert. “Look at these photos,” he says. “I know them all!”
Still, Rahr doesn’t worry too much about offending them, says a friend. “He sent one e-mail to Wahlberg, ‘Hey, Mark, that was worst episode of “Entourage” ever — it sucked!’ And he cc’s like a hundred people.”
Unlike other big donors, Rahr openly admits to wanting something back for his money — even if it’s just getting a guy at the next table to pipe down.
Michael Levine, a paint contractor, was lunching last year and telling friends his son Matthew was battling kidney disease.
“This guy at the next table yells, ‘Hey, I want to help your son. You’re talking very loudly. If you talk a little lower, I’ll write you a check for $100,000,’ ” Levine recalled. Rahr made good on the promise, overnighting a check for the NephCure Foundation. “He’s an angel — he’s trying to save my son’s life,” Levine said.
But the “No. 1 King of All Fun,” another name he calls himself, has been having less of it lately, with his fight with Nobu owner Drew Nieporent and the incident at Trump Tower on Nov. 1, when an elevator operator claimed Rahr threatened him with a gun and cops yanked his handgun license.
The Nobu ban spurred Rahr to plead with Nieporent to be let back in, then rage at him an e-mail he copied to scores of celebs, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, one of the restaurant’s owners.
“I just can’t help myself,” Rahr admitted. “But I’ve made up with Drew.”
Friends are at a loss to explain why Rahr — who vows to “change the world” with his charitable work — gets himself into these scrapes, often roping in his high-profile friends with puerile mass e-mails.
“My only complaint about Stewie is that he has never learned how to use bcc,” said Cuban.