At the beginning, try to teach your founder essential skills like law and disguise and ?theft(picking locks) in the most legal way possible. I usually steal cars, give up when the cops see me, and defend myself in court about 10 or 15 times until law skill is about 5. Stealing 50 cars will get you just as much time as 1 car - a few months. To train disguise, get a suit and hang out at the club in front of conservatives.
Once your law is up really high, just surrender to the police whenever you get in trouble and defend yourself in court, and always wear the clothes that fit the location you're at. Training persuasion with donation soliciting helps too...
If you're really stuck, you can recruit bunches of people and try to make them a liberal death squad of doom while your founder hides somewhere and sells art for funding. Eventually luck will give you a squad of really powerful liberals, and your founder can tag along with them until he's good as well.
Usually, I give a squad of liberals guns and cars and go to the cable news station. Shoot someone, Hang out near the entrance and instead of cops, rednecks and hicks will come in with torches and pitchforks. They're relatively easy to kill, and when you leave they'll chase you - But if you have cars, you can shoot at them, but they can't shoot back (unless gun laws are red...gun laws bad D=)
If I feel like cheating, I go on lots of very short crime raids and exit the game if someone gets crippled or killed. Starting up the game will bring you right back to the beginning of the raid.