He shared  a skybox with Sen. John McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis. He had a hospitality suite all to himself. These are just a few of the perks that Robert Wood Johnson IV, heir of the Johnson & Johnson fortune and a major donor to the GOP enjoyed this week in Minneapolis/St. Paul, according to this report by  Michael Luo of the New York Times.

Here’s what it took to earn such perks:

Mr. Johnson has long been a player in Republican politics — he was a Bush Ranger in 2000 and 2004, raising more than $200,000 in each election. He has personally given more than $1 million to Republican candidates and committees over the years.

But this year, he emerged as perhaps the party’s most coveted donor. In May, after turning his office into a war room for more than a month and making sometimes 50 calls a day, he orchestrated a fund-raiser in New York City that brought in $7 million in a single evening for Mr. McCain, by far the largest amount collected up to that point by a campaign that had been struggling to raise money.

More recently, Mr. Johnson rode to the rescue of the Minneapolis-St. Paul convention host committee, helping it close a more than $10 million budget shortfall in a matter of weeks by writing a sizable check himself, getting his mother, who hails from Minneapolis, to do so as well, but also soliciting numerous large contributions from his circle of wealthy friends.

On a soggy Minneapolis morning, we ventured into an “issue briefing” continental breakfast sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry at the Hotel Ivy, hosted by Astellas, Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis. It was a rather intimate gathering of perhaps about 20 people.

The food: coffee, danish, slices of honeydew, grapes, and other continental breakfast fare.

At the podium: Phrma lobbyists, checking their blackberries. We saw: Brian Burns of Johnson and Johnson; Jim Elkin, of Novartis; and Michael Ruggiero, of Astellas.

We were just settling in with our cup of decaf coffee for the issue briefing itself, when a party representative asked us to leave. “This is a private event,” she said. As we headed for the door, we believe we heard the name of Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) mentioned, as in, “We’re going to start without Rep. Rogers.” It would be a logical choice of speakers, as Rogers’ top contributing industry is the pharmaceutical industry.