By Kathy Barks Hoffman
July 15, 2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) -- Rick Snyder is a workaholic, a man who considers a four-hour round of golf a waste of time and who crammed nine years' worth of college degrees into just over six.

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A political newcomer, Snyder has held dozens of town hall meetings to explain his plan to make state government more customer-friendly and "reinvent" the state's struggling economy. He also has used his personal wealth to put up more ads than any other candidate, promoting his image as "one tough nerd."

Unlike the other four Republicans in the race Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, Attorney General Mike Cox, U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra and state Sen. Tom George Snyder hasn't courted tea partiers and routinely skips GOP debates.

His background has earned him support from voters who want to see politicians work together rather than engaging in partisan politics, but he has had a harder time getting the nod from social conservatives who don't like his support for looser restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.

Despite his lack of elected experience, Snyder's not intimidated by the prospect of fighting to remold state government.

"We were in tooth-and-nail competition with IBM, Compaq, Dell," he says of his days at Gateway negotiating intellectual property licenses with other computer makers. "You try and negotiate with a company that just wants to put you out of business. That's pretty tough."

That underlying steeliness is apparent in Snyder's piercing blue-eyed gaze and the drive he has shown. He earned his undergraduate, business administration graduate and law degrees at the University of Michigan by age 23, taught at his alma mater for a short time and then went to work as an accountant at Coopers & Lybrand in Detroit, now PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Childhood friend Greg Dunn recalls that Snyder was only 24 or 25 when he was handed the Ford Motor Co. account. When his future wife met Snyder, she was impressed with his intelligence but tried constantly to get him to add some fun to his nose-to-the-grindstone lifestyle. At one point, she signed them up for couples golf.

"That didn't go very well," Sue Snyder says wryly. Instead of relaxing, Rick Snyder found it "an inefficient allocation of resources."

Snyder says the one thing guaranteed to get him to have fun is family. He frequently attends his children's school events and enjoys time with them at Gun Lake. Jeff, 21, an Albion College graduate, works on the campaign. Thirteen-year-old Kelsey, heading into 9th grade, starred in a campaign ad. Nineteen-year-old Melissa will start her sophomore year at the University of Michigan this fall.

When Sue Snyder was diagnosed with breast cancer, she says her husband was "my rock."

"He's always, 'The glass is half full, not half empty.' ... He's such a strong person," says Sue Snyder, now cancer-free for seven years.

The Snyders could have moved to Silicon Valley in 1997, when Gateway's founder wanted to move the company to California from South Dakota. Instead, they headed back to Michigan.

They lived temporarily in Dearborn, Sue Snyder's hometown, before spending $920,000 on a spacious brick home in a gated subdivision in Washtenaw County's Superior Township.

Snyder started Avalon Investments Inc., raising $100 million to help grow a number of startup companies. In 2000, he raised $100 million more to start a second venture capital company, Ardesta, with offices overlooking Ann Arbor's busy downtown. He estimates companies he has helped have added more than 400 Michigan jobs and 1,200 nationally.

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He's also still working toward the three goals he set as a teenager: "Make money, help people, have fun."

He definitely has fun water skiing though the workaholic side remains.

"He'd probably rather read a book on economic theory" for relaxation, says Dunn, his childhood friend. "How nerdy is that?"

The entire article is avaialble on the USA Today website, here.