# Peter Coors **Peter H. "Pete" Coors** (b. Sept 20, 1946, Golden, Colorado) is the son of [[Joseph Coors]] and [[Holly Coors]], and the great-grandson of [[Adolph Coors]]. For about two decades he was the public face of the **third generation** of the [[Coors Family]]. He ran the brewery through its transformation into a multinational, tried and failed to turn the family name into a Senate seat, and co-led the family's philanthropy, which has funded the conservative movement since the 1970s. ## The executive He earned a Cornell industrial-engineering degree (1969) and a University of Denver MBA (1970), and joined the family company. Sources differ on when he first became CEO of Coors Brewing (1987 or 1993). In May 2000 he became president and CEO of the parent Adolph Coors Company while his uncle [[William Coors]] remained chairman. Peter took the parent chairmanship in **2002**. After the 2005 merger that created [[Molson Coors]], the chairmanship rotated between the two families. Peter became **chairman of Molson Coors** at the end of 2008 and also chaired the [[MillerCoors]] joint venture. At the **May 2025** annual meeting he was not renominated and became **Director Emeritus**. His son **David S. Coors** became board chair, and another son, Peter J. Coors, joined the board. The family's control now passes to a fourth generation. Only the company's proxy statements report this. ## The candidate In **2004** he ran for the open U.S. Senate seat in Colorado as the Republican nominee and lost to Democrat Ken Salazar, **51.3% to 47.4%**, in a year George W. Bush carried the state. The race tested whether a famous conservative family name could carry a statewide race on its own. It could not. ## The philanthropist Peter is president and trustee of the **[[Adolph Coors Foundation]]** (established 1975), which he has co-led with his brother [[Jeffrey Coors]] for decades. He also led the **[[Castle Rock Foundation]]**, the family's movement-conservative grantmaker. Castle Rock was spun out with a $36.6 million endowment in 1993 and merged back into the parent foundation in 2011; its grantees included the [[Heritage Foundation]], which Joseph Coors had seeded in 1973. In 2024 the **Philanthropy Roundtable** gave Pete and Jeff Coors its **Simon-DeVos Prize for Philanthropic Leadership**, one of conservative philanthropy's leading honors, which carries $200,000 for a charity of their choice. ## Why he matters Peter Coors connects the family's two fortunes. One is corporate: a brewery that became a multinational, with the family still holding control through voting shares. The other is ideological: the foundations that helped build the conservative movement's institutions. His Senate loss marks the limit of the second: the family could fund a movement but could not get elected on its name. ## See Also - [[Coors Family]] · [[Joseph Coors]] · [[Jeffrey Coors]] · [[William Coors]] · [[Holly Coors]] - [[Molson Coors]] · [[MillerCoors]] · [[Adolph Coors Foundation]] · [[Castle Rock Foundation]] · [[Heritage Foundation]]