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as Donald Trump begins his first criminal trial this week, while facing three other indictments and 88 felony counts, several far-right groups are working tirelessly to ensure MAGA lives on no matter what comes of the ex-president's legal troubles, according to a Tuesday, April 16 report published by The Guardian.

Two of the MAGA hopeful's allies — America First Legal Foundation founder Stephen Miller, and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk — were the beneficiaries of "six- and seven-figure checks" from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Bradley Impact Fund's in 2022, as well as "other Trump-friendly bastions such as the Heritage Foundation and Michael Flynn’s America’s Future," the news outlet reports

"The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Bradley Impact Fund have emerged as major forces in Maga circles," Michael Beckel, of the bipartisan political reform organization Issue One told the news outlet.

READ MORE:[Journalist exposes how 'mastermind' Trump adviser Stephen Miller was 'radicalized'

Furthermore, The Guardian reports the nonprofit pair "poured about $165m into dozens of groups including quite a few Trump-allied thinktanks, legal outfits and other advocacy outfits."

Beckel noted, however, "Donor-advised funds like the Bradley Impact Fund allow mega-donors to support organizations while keeping their names out of the spotlight."

The Issue One research director emphasized The Bradley Impact Fund, offers "wealthy mega-donors additional anonymity and help keep donors’ names out of the limelight, even as these individuals contribute large sums to influence elections and policy debates."

Referring to the Bradley Foundation, Lisa Graves, the executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North, said: “It has nearly $1bn in assets. Its board includes the multimillionaire Art Pope, whose personal ambition is to change the political landscape of North Carolina and more to suit his regressive agenda. Mitchell has been playing a significant role in efforts to make it harder for Americans to vote, and harder for Americans to have fair representation through fair maps.”

READ MORE:[Trump ally’s stunning request: 'If this election doesn’t go our way the next day we fight'

She emphasized, "These are substantial investments that are furthering extremists at the forefront of Trump’s agenda."

*The Guardian's full report is available here

guk

Two powerful conservative non-profits have donated millions of dollars to a number of pro-Trump groups led by the key far-right allies Stephen Miller, Charlie Kirk and others that have promoted election denialism, extremist anti-immigrant policies and legal challenges to bolster the Maga movement.

Based in Wisconsin, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Bradley Impact Fund in 2022 separately doled out six- and seven-figure checks to groups such as Miller’s America First Legal and Kirk’s Turning Point USA, and other Trump-friendly bastions such as the Heritage Foundation and Michael Flynn’s America’s Future.

Watchdog groups that track money in politics say the Bradley Foundation and the closely tied Bradley Impact Fund have become increasingly influential in funding the Maga ecosystem in recent years as Trump is all but certain to be the Republican 2024 presidential nominee.

“The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Bradley Impact Fund have emerged as major forces in Maga circles,” said Michael Beckel, the research director for Issue One, a bipartisan political reform group.

The biggest checks in 2022 were written to Trump-allied groups by the dark-money Bradley Impact Fund: America First Legal received about $27.1m, Turning Point USA roped in close to $8m, and the Conservative Partnership Institute pulled in $712,310. America’s Future also received $500,000.

Meanwhile, the Bradley Foundation ponied up $425,000 to the Heritage Foundation, which has worked with many other pro-Trump groups to assemble a 1,000-page plan for a new Trump presidency with an authoritarian agenda to expand executive-branch powers and curb key agencies such as the US justice department.

The Bradley Foundation in 2022 also doled out $750,000 to the pro-Maga FreedomWorks Foundation and $2.9m to the Bradley Impact Fund.

While the larger and older Bradley Foundation launched in 1942 and has almost $1bn in assets, the newer and smaller Bradley Impact Fund has grown fast and handed out especially large sums to far-right groups close to Trump.

The Impact Fund, which was started in 2012 and shares at least two board members with the foundation, has witnessed explosive growth in recent years, with revenues from undisclosed donors hitting $108m in 2022 versus just $7m in 2017, according to tax records.

By contrast, the Bradley Foundation doled out $56.6m in 2022.

The Bradley foundation’s board includes the well-known rightwinger Art Pope, a North Carolina multimillionaire who used to chair its board and is also a director of the Bradley Impact Fund. Pope has deep ties to other conservative bastions such as the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, where he has been a board member too.

The board of the Bradley Foundation also boasts the rightwing lawyer and Trump ally Cleta Mitchell, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Mitchell founded CPI’s self-styled “election integrity network” in 2021 after participating with Trump on his 2 January call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who Trump beseeched to “find” 11,780 votes to help overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state.

Mitchell has been a driving force in mobilizing other Trump-allied election denialist groups to expand poll-watching and other measures to guard against potential voting fraud, while she has continued to promote bogus claims of election fraud in 2020.

Serendipitously, the rightwing Public Interest Legal Foundation that Mitchell chairs received $750,000 from the two Bradley non-profits combined, according to the liberal-leaning Center for Media and Democracy, which tracks money in politics.

Although not as well-known as the sprawling network of conservative groups funded by the oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch, experts say the two Bradley non-profits have become instrumental in funding major political players on the right.

“Through their extensive grant-making, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Bradley Impact Fund are shaping politics and policymaking in ways that will be felt for years to come,” said Beckel.

Other experts who follow influential donors on the right, including the two Bradley non-profits, agree that their hefty donations are supporting major players and groups backing Trump.

“These are substantial investments that are furthering extremists at the forefront of Trump’s agenda,” said Lisa Graves, the executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North.

Speaking about the older Bradley Foundation, Graves said: “It has nearly $1bn in assets. Its board includes the multimillionaire Art Pope, whose personal ambition is to change the political landscape of North Carolina and more to suit his regressive agenda.”

She added: “Mitchell has been playing a significant role in efforts to make it harder for Americans to vote, and harder for Americans to have fair representation through fair maps.”

The Bradley Foundation board boasts other big-name conservative lawyers too, including Paul Clement, a former US solicitor general who has done substantial legal work for pro-gun interests, and Eugene Scalia, a secretary of labor during the Trump administration and the son of the late supreme court justice Antonin Scalia.

In total, the two Bradley non-profits in 2022 poured about $165m into dozens of groups including quite a few Trump-allied thinktanks, legal outfits and other advocacy outfits.

Other rightwing recipients who received checks from both Bradley non-profits include the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which pulled in a total of $1.1m, and the National Center for Public Policy Research, which received just over $1m.

Similarly, the two Bradley non-profits gave a total of $700,000 to Flynn’s America’s Future, almost $530,000 to the Heritage Foundation, and $510,050 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

In the case of Flynn’s America’s Future, the Bradley non-profits were crucial to sustaining its operations in 2022, according to tax records. America’s Future only raised about $1.1m in 2022.

Flynn, who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser and who Trump pardoned in late 2020 after he was convicted of lying to the FBI about contacts he had with the Russian ambassador in 2016, was a key pusher of false claims the 2020 election was rigged. He is now urging a “guard the vote” drive against potential fraud, a ploy Trump has touted too.

The rapid growth of the Bradley Impact Fund, which bills itself as a “donor-advised fund” and keeps donor names secret, underscores how many big conservative check-writers want to hide their identities, say experts.

“Donor-advised funds like the Bradley Impact Fund allow mega-donors to support organizations while keeping their names out of the spotlight,” said Beckel.

The Bradley Impact Fund, he said, gives “wealthy mega-donors additional anonymity and help keep donors’ names out of the limelight, even as these individuals contribute large sums to influence elections and policy debates”.

More broadly, Graves said: “Though the two Bradley non-profits are not as well known as Koch’s non-profit empire or Leonard Leo’s money operation to capture key levers of power, they have become increasingly important to the growth of the Maga ecosystem.”

===

Two of the professors under investigation have a CU Boulder connection: Pielke, a professor in the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, and Steven F. Hayward, who now teaches at Pepperdine University but spent the 2013-14 academic year as CU’s first Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy.

===

IHE sorta

...beckwith Francis J. Beckwith is professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University. This piece was originally published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.

So, in the fall I brought George Yancey (University of North Texas) and Patrick Deneen (University of Notre Dame) to campus. Yancey spoke on “Conservatives in Academia: Is There Bias Against Them?” while Deneen gave a talk on “The End of Liberalism: Why the World Is Falling Apart.”

In the spring, the university hosted lectures by Elizabeth Corey (Baylor University), who spoke on “Can Conservatives Support Diversity?” and author Rod Dreher, who discussed his New York Times best-seller, *The Benedict Option*.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/James_G._Martin_Center_for_Academic_Renewal

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, formerly the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, is a right-wing 501(c)3 nonprofit and associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN).^[1] The organization along with the John William Pope Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization that provides funding to many SPN and other right wing organizations, is underwritten by Art Pope.

The James Martin Center was founded by the John Locke Foundation in 2003 as the Pope Center, changing its name at the beginning of 2017. The organization aims to add conservatives to the faculty of public universities. Its vision for "improving" universities is:^[2]

Increase the diversity of ideas taught, debated, and discussed on campus;
Encourage respect for the institutions that underlie economic prosperity and freedom of action and conscience;
Increase the quality of teaching and students’ commitment to learning so that they graduate with strong literacy and fundamental knowledge;
Encourage cost-effective administration and governance.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/**2011/09/**koch-brothers-million-dollar-donor-club/

mojo

Exclusive: The Koch Brothers’ Million-Dollar Donor Club

GAVIN ARONSEN

Read our inside account of the Koch brothers’ Vail seminar, and listen to the exclusive audio.

Twice a year, the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch host secretive retreats for an exclusive list of corporate America’s rich and powerful to strategize and raise money for their right-wing political agenda. Mother Jones has obtained exclusive audio recordings that shed some light on the brothers’ latest retreat, held at a resort near Vail, Colorado, in late June.

In a speech that is part of these recordings, Charles Koch thanks donors who gave more than $1 million to the cause. We checked the audio against a list of participants at the Kochs’ 2010 seminar in Aspen that was obtained by ThinkProgress.org and did additional research on these individuals. Below are the names Koch read that appeared on the previous guest list.

John Childs: Childs is the founder and CEO of private equity firm JW Childs Associates. In 2006, Boston Magazine placed the “notoriously media-shy” magnate—a.k.a. “the Republican ATM”—among the city’s wealthiest residents, reportedly worth $1.2 billion. Childs donated $750,000 to outside political expenditure groups in 2010. He’s also been involved in Florida wetlands conservation efforts.

The Cortopassis: Dean “Dino” Cortopassi and his wife, Joan, hail from Stockton, California. This article, which identifies the pair as philanthroposts, calls Dino a “wealthy self-made agribusinessman who is Stocktonian of the Year for 2005.” He is suing the state of California for its failure to dredge streams in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Joe Craft: Joseph Craft is president, CEO, and chairman of Alliance Resource Partners, a coal company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that gave $2.4 million to outside political expenditure groups in 2010. His family is reportedly worth $1.9 billion.

Richard DeVos

The DeVoses: Rich and Helen DeVos hail from Michigan. The cofounder of Amway and owner of the NBA’s Orlando Magic, Rich DeVos is reportedly worth in the ballpark of $4.2 billion. The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation funds conservative Christian groups such as Focus on the Family. The DeVoses are big enough political donors to have their own profile at OpenSecrets.org.

The Farmers: Dick Farmer is from Ohio. The founder and former CEO of the Cintas Corporation, his story is literally rags-to-riches: He turned his father’s Depression-era rag-cleaning business into a $3.5 billion enterprise. Farmer and his wife, Joyce, are longtime Republican boosters; during the 2002 election cycle the couple gave about $1 million to the party.

The Friesses: Foster Friess founded the investment firm Friess Associates in 1974 with his wife, Lynn; in 2001, he sold a majority share for $247 million. Friess is a champion of conservative Christian causes and one of Wyoming’s richest men. His son, Steve Friess, helps him run the family’s philanthropic foundation. (Steve’s wife, Polly, was also on the list of Aspen Koch participants.)

The Fullinwiders: Jerry and Leah Fullinwider hail from Dallas. Jerry has pursued oil exploration and development in the United States, Canada, and Russia. He now serves under Ross Perot’s son as vice chairman of Hillwood International Energy, which has operations in Iraq and Jordan as well as the United States and Russia. He also has ties to Hilarion Alfeyev, an anti-abortion Russian Orthodox bishop.

The Gilliams: Richard Gilliam and wife, Leslie, are natives of southwest Virginia. Richard founded the Cumberland Resources Corporation, which was one of the nation’s largest private coal mining companies when Massey Energy bought it for nearly $1 billion in March 2010. He’s now a director with the Vancouver-based mining corporation Endurance Gold.

The Griffins: Ken and Anne Dias Griffin are a hedge fund power couple from Chicago who wed in 2003. Ken is the founder and CEO of Citadel and is reportedly worth $2.3 billion. Anne founded one of the nation’s largest woman-run hedge funds, Aragon Global Management. Ken bundled money for both President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain during the 2008 election.

The Haworths: Richard “Dick” Haworth is the former CEO and chairman emeritus of Haworth, an international office-interiors manufacturer based in Holland, Michigan, that he took over from his father in 1975. The company reported sales of $1.4 billion in 2005, the year he retired. He is married to Ethie Haworth and has donated more than $100,000 to Republican causes, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Diane Hendricks

Diane Hendricks: Hendricks is the billionaire former head of the ABC Supply roofing company, which she took over from her husband Kenneth after he died in a construction site accident in 2007. Reportedly worth $2.2 billion, she is the richest businesswoman in Wisconsin and a big Republican Party donor. She recently gave her state’s embattled Republican governor, Scott Walker, $10,000 in advance of a potential recall vote next year.

The Humphreys family: Ethelmae Humphreys is the chair of the board of Tamko Building Products, one of the country’s largest independent roofing manufacturers. She also serves on the board of directors of the Cato Institute, a Koch-funded think tank. Her son David is Tamko’s CEO. The two have doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates. That includes David’s $25,000 donation to the successful recount effort this year of conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, who came under fire recently for allegations that he choked a fellow justice. (He wasn’t charged.)

The Levys: Kenneth Levy of Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, cofounded the Jacobs Levy equity management firm and has donated about $85,000 to conservative causes, according to FEC records. His wife, Frayda Levin, is a national director at the Koch brothers’ advocacy group Americans for Prosperity and sits on the board of the Club for Growth. She also cofounded the Motion Picture Institute, which “promotes liberty through film,” according to her AFP bio. FEC records show that she has given well over $100,000 to conservative causes.

The Marshall family: Elaine Marshall of Dallas is the widow of E. Pierce Marshall, a son of oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall who served on the board of Koch Industries before his death. Elaine was involved in a successful effort to prevent the late Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith, who married Howard when he was 89, from inheriting the family’s wealth. Before Smith’s death, she was investigated by the FBI but never prosecuted in a murder-for-hire plot against Pierce. In the end, Pierce inherited the bulk of his father’s wealth because he and his father had previously helped Charles and David Koch thwart a takeover of Koch Industries; Howard’s eldest son—also named Howard—sided against his father and was disinherited as a result. Meanwhile, Elaine’s son, E. Pierce Marshall Jr., is senior vice president and general counsel at oil exploration company MarOpCo. Another son, Preston Marshall of Houston, is the president of MarOpCo.

The Popes: Art Pope is a millionaire Republican booster from Raleigh, North Carolina, who inherited his retail fortune from a family business. According to this article, he’s “one of the most trusted members of the Koch’s elite circle” and a regular at the Kochs’ secret seminars, as well as a “valuable junior partner in many key Koch operations.” He’s another national director at Americans for Prosperity and is married to Kathy Pope. According to this October 2011 New Yorker profile by Jane Mayer, who has also profiled the Koch brothers, Pope has dumped millions into sculpting the political landscape in North Carolina, a swing state—including giving money to outside groups that fund malicious attack ads.

The Robertsons: Corbin Robertson is CEO and chairman of the board of Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based fossil fuels company. He’s also been involved with a number of other energy organizations and was listed as the richest US small-business owner in 2007 by CNNMoney. He and wife Barbara have donated to the Baylor College of Medicine and both Democratic and Republican politicians.

Karen Wright: Wright is the founder and CEO of the Ariel Foundation, a private philanthropy group based in Mount Vernon, Ohio. She’s also CEO of the Ariel Corporation, a natural-gas compression company, and on the American Petroleum Institute’s board of directors. She has donated more than $100,000 to Republican causes, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Tom Rastin: Rastin shares a Mount Vernon, Ohio, address with Karen Wright. He serves on the board of directors at the Ariel Foundation and is vice president of marketing and engineering at the Ariel Corporation. Last year, he gave $2,400 to the failed congressional campaign of former Democratic Louisiana House Speaker Hunt Downer, who switched to the Republican Party after endorsing the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2000.

The principals with the Services Group of America: SGA is a billion-dollar food services wholesaler; its CEO, Peter Smith of Scottsdale, Arizona, appears on the list of 2010 Koch attendees. Smith took over as CEO last year after its former head, GOP heavyweight Thomas J. Stewart, died in a helicopter crash. According to FEC records, Smith has donated $12,500 to Republican congressional candidates. SGA’s political action committee donates heavily to Republicans.

At the event, Charles Koch also read off names that did not appear on the 2010 attendees list, but that mirrored those of well-known GOP donors for whom giving $1 million or more to the Kochs would not seem out of character. You’ll find these names below. We chose not to offer any details on the handful of names for which we could find no association with Koch business interests or conservative political giving. (Listen to Charles Koch reading the donor list.)

The Camerons: Ron Cameron of Little Rock, Arkansas, runs agribusiness giant Mountaire Corporation, which generated $1.22 billion in revenue in 2009. He has donated at least $175,000 to Republicans in recent years, including $5,000 to Sarah Palin’s PAC, according to FEC records. The company itself has given at least $125,000 to outside spending groups over the past decade, according to OpenSecrets.org.

The Hamms: Self-made magnate Harold Hamm of Oklahoma City is reportedly worth $8.2 billion. The son of sharecroppers, Hamm soared up the corporate ladder from gas station attendant to CEO of “America’s Oil Champion,” Oklahoma-based Continental Resources. According to OpenSecrets.org, he’s doled out more than $100,000 to political causes and candidates, mostly Republican. Stricken with diabetes, he and wife Sue Ann founded a center at the Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center to help combat the disease.

The Haydens: Jerry and Marilyn Hayden of Barrington, Illinois, doled out $400,000 to conservative-leaning outside spending groups in 2010 and about $250,000 to Republicans in 2008. Before retirement, Jerry ran Peacock Engineering, a packaging company. As of September 2008, he served on the board of directors at the United Republican Fund of Illinois. The Haydens recently donated $2.5 million toward an alumni center at their alma matter, Bradley University.

Virginia James: James is an investor from New Jersey. She has donated handsomely to right-wing causes, including a $750,000 gift to the Club for Growth in 2008 and another $350,000 last year. This year, she donated $25,000 to the successful recount of Wisconsin’s Justice Prosser.

The Menards: John Menard of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is the founder of Menards, the country’s third-largest hardware company. He’s worth a reported $5.2 billion and has donated about $80,000 to his state’s Republican Party and federal candidates, mostly Republicans, according to FEC records. His company backed a recent anti-union program that was linked to the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity and supported by Gov. Scott Walker.

John Moran: Hailing from Palm Springs, Florida, Moran is the former chairman of the Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corporation, an international holding company based in New York City. He also chaired the Republican National Finance Committee from 1993 to 1995. Moran has given more than $900,000 to Republican causes since 1991, according to OpenSecrets.org, and he bundled between $250,000 and $500,000 more for McCain’s 2008 presidential bid. In 1997, he warned that the religious right was putting his party’s future “in jeopardy.”

Charles Schwab

The Schwabs: Charles Schwab of San Francisco is founder and chairman of the Charles Schwab Corporation, the country’s largest independent brokerage firm. He is reportedly worth $4.7 billion. Since 1989, Schwab has donated more than $1.6 million to political causes, mostly Republican, according to OpenSecrets.org. Part of that went to his company’s lobbying arm, which has given away millions more.

Paul Singer: While Singer is not on the list of Aspen participants, the New York Times noted that “Annie Dickerson, who also runs a foundation for Paul Singer, a hedge fund executive who like the Kochs is active in promoting libertarian causes,” showed up at that seminar. Singer founded the $17 billion hedge fund Elliott Management and recently issued an economic manifesto slamming the Federal Reserve as a “group of inbred academics.”

The Templetons: John “Jack” Templeton Jr. and his wife, Josephine, of Pennsylvania, gave $50,000 apiece to Wisconsin Justice Prosser’s recount effort this year. Jack, an evangelical Christian, has donated more than $1 million to Republicans, according to state and federal records. He heads the John Templeton Foundation, an organization whose critics—including prominent scientists—say it aims to apply scientific legitimacy to matters of faith. The foundation was started by Jack’s late father, Sir John the mutual fund billionaire, and in 2009 reportedly had $1.7 billion in assets.

Be sure to Read Part 1 of our two-part series: “Exclusive: The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes.”

And check back tomorrow for Part 2, on the GOP superstar who rocked the Koch crowd on opening night.

MAIN CAPT

artpope320

tag 9/14 john locke

runs N caro; candidate for 3rd Koch bro

capt bak 320

cfg seems very interested in both carolinas?

dk $ mayer:

13: The States : gaining ground ;

Redmap worked great, got seats, help house despite big dem vote; Hofeller gop; NC judge Paul Newby huge outside $ 2.3M$ koch, pop etc upheld redistrict right ager elected 336;

ART POPE

2010 2014 dems lost 900 seats and 11 govs. Pope head of budget, followed plans by Locke and Civitas 338; rev dr gop, ctt, AFp 339; cut tax on rich and slashed safety net, env, abortion...nixed medicaid expansion under ACA, 500-100kia/year; gutted education p340, up tuition, then $ for classes in western civ and free market econ 341

NV History project downplay social movement and govt , play up “personal creation of wealth” 341

? Naacp moral monday protests

Pope credits cato summer phgm for his conversion

Reports that poor doing fine; UNC program pointed out ? kids poor got shut down 344

Pope ran for office, dad give 330K$ (½ mil today), lost

Roe SPH 1992

Politics

In N.C., conservative donor Art

Pope sits at heart of

government he helped

transform

Outside InA new era of influence

By Matea Gold July 19, 2014

RALEIGH, N.C. — Art Pope is one of the most generous donors to the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill, having lavished millions on his alma mater.

The retail magnate is also one of the university’s staunchest critics — so much so that he

has directed millions into creating a think tank that has blasted UNC as being wasteful

and a bastion of political correctness.

But when Pope sent university leaders a letter this year chastising their state funding

request, it was in yet another capacity entirely: as Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s budget

director.

There is no one in North Carolina, or likely in all of American politics, quite like Art Pope.

He is not just a wealthy donor seeking to influence politics from the outside, nor just a

government official shaping it from within. He is doing both at the same time — the

culmination of a quarter century

spent building a sphere of influence that has put him at the epicenter of North

Carolina government and moved his state closer to the conservative vision he has long

imagined.

“There are not many people as influential, because few people have invested the time and

the money that he has on behalf of his state,” said Republican former governor James G.

Martin, who tapped Pope, then 28, to be a lawyer in his administration in the 1980s.

From the outside, Pope’s family foundation has put more than $55 million into a robust

network of conservative think tanks and advocacy groups, building a state version of what

his friends Charles and David Koch have helped create on a national level.

On the inside, the budget director and his GOP allies — who took over the legislature in

2010 and the governor’s mansion two years later with the backing of Pope and other big

donors — have passed numerous laws overhauling taxes, social services and voting rights.

McCrory has also eliminated a public financing program for judicial races — opening

those contests to greater influence by wealthy donors — and has sought to cut funding for

the state’s university system. Both are pet causes of Pope’s.

Pope, 58, oversees the action from his fifthfloor corner office overlooking the colonnaded

State Legislative Building. He serves as a top adviser to McCrory with some familiar faces;

at least four of the governor’s staffers worked at Popebacked groups, including the chief

of staff, Thomas Stith, and the policy director, Chloe Gossage.

For all of his pull, the revolution Pope helped set in motion is not going quite as planned.

The tax overhaul, styled in part off ideas promoted by Popebacked groups, has

contributed to tight finances in North Carolina at a time when other states are flush with

cash. Cuts to education have spawned widespread discontent among parents and teachers.

And what was supposed to be a brief legislative session this spring to approve a new

budget broke down into a contentious power struggle between the newly ascendant

Republican officials, with powerful Senate leaders squaring off against McCrory and his

allies in the House. Relations grew so fraught that at one point Senate leaders threatened

to subpoena Pope to answer questions about contradictory budget projections.

Softspoken, with a drawl that shows his roots in the town now called FuquayVarina,

about 30 minutes south of Raleigh, Pope portrays his government work as a service to the

state he loves.

“I believe in trying to make North Carolina a better place for its citizens,” he said during a

recent interview in his state office. Pope describes himself as an advocate of “rightsized”

government, in favor of a freemarket economy and prudent fiscal practices.

Pope waved off questions about the extent of his influence. But he clearly relishes his role

at the seat of power after spending years trying to push conservative measures in the

Democratdominated General Assembly.

“I know what it’s like to be in the minority, because that’s where I was for most of my life,”

said Pope, who served four terms in the House, in two separate stints. “We were the

underdogs.”

The man widely viewed as one of the most influential people in Raleigh has an owlish,

slightly rumpled demeanor, resembling a state bureaucrat more than a wealthy power

broker.

“He’s very unassuming,” said Francis X. De Luca, president of the Civitas Institute, a

conservative think tank backed by the John William Pope Foundation, which is named for

Art Pope’s father. “If you put him in a room full of people, you wouldn’t pick him out as

the guy who causes all the problems.”

But some in Raleigh view Pope as the force behind many of the governor’s decisions.

“He drives the budgetary policy goals of the administration,” said one Republican lobbyist

in town who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order not to anger either man. “The

governor yields to Art. His real power, his influence in state government, is really having

that turf all to himself.”

Pope vigorously rejects such characterizations.

“My job, my role, my goal is not to influence and direct the governor,” Pope said

emphatically. “My job is to analyze, to provide advice, facts, what the alternatives are. I

present the information, and the governor decides.”

McCrory said Pope defers to him, while often catching mistakes in the calculations made

by state departments and legislative staffers. “We need more nerds like him in state

government,” McCrory said.

Pope’s familiarity with the minute details of state finances was on full display on a muggy

afternoon in May, when he spent 25 minutes standing at a lectern, methodically

explaining the details of the governor’s new budget to the news media.

McCrory sat on a chair behind his budget director, nodding along. When Pope was done,

the governor stood up with a grin.

“I wish I could’ve had a camera, from this angle, watching the reporters’ faces while Art

explained the budget, because now y’all know how I felt during hour after hour after

hour,” McCrory said with a chuckle.

The governor took some questions. On most, he deferred to Pope.

“I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to have Art kind of explain the details of that

number that you just presented, so you can hear all sides of that argument,” McCrory told

a reporter who asked about whether cuts to the university system would lead to tuition

hikes. “Art, if you don’t mind? Because he can present it much better than I can.”

McCrory surprised many in Raleigh when he appointed the conservative benefactor to

oversee the state’s fiscal activities.

In taking the post, Pope had to step back from his daily duties as chief executive of Variety

Wholesalers, a retail empire built by his father that stretches from Ohio to Florida. He also

gave up his position on the board of Americans for Prosperity, the national conservative

advocacy group backed by the Kochs.

But to those who have long known Pope — who made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant

governor between his staggered legislative terms — the move made perfect sense.

Pope “has been working all of his life to get in a position of influence in North Carolina,”

said state Rep. Robert Brawley (R), a 20year veteran of the General Assembly.

When he heard the news of Pope’s appointment, Brawley recalled, he thought to himself,

“Oh boy, my buddy Art is in position.”

UNC budget

Pope’s relationship with the University of North Carolina, a storied institution in the state,

shows how he wields influence through several roles simultaneously.

In late February, Pope fired off an unusual memo to the UNC leadership. In his threepage

letter, he chided the university system for not providing a “realistic” budget request for the

coming year, saying it would require cutting into money for courts, public schools and

health care.

To critics, the episode showed Pope using his clout to carry out a longstanding personal

agenda. As a legislator, he repeatedly pounced on what he viewed as wasteful UNC

spending, complaining that administrative funds were spent on Palm Pilots and gourmet

pizza. Since then, think tanks backed by his family foundation — particularly the John

William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy — have regularly criticized the

management of the university.

Chris Fitzsimon, founder and executive director of NC Policy Watch, a liberal think tank,

called Pope’s memo to UNC “extraordinary,” adding, “No budget director before Art Pope

would have done that on their own.”

Pope said his actions were not personal, adding that the memo had been approved by the

governor and had the backing of legislative leaders.

The university said it was seeking to retain some cost savings and restore some previous

cuts, and it offered to set aside a request for new construction funds.

That, however, still was not enough. McCrory’s new budget proposed reducing UNC’s net

funding by $47 million, roughly 2 percent of its budget. Among the suggested cuts were

research centers deemed “not central to the educational mission.”

McCrory said that while Pope had raised some questions about UNC’s budget, the

reductions were his call. “I made the final decision,” the governor said.

At the same time he has weighed in on UNC’s state funding, Pope and his family have

given the flagship Chapel Hill campus millions of dollars through their foundation to

support athletics and underwrite classes in politics, economics and Western civilization.

Most recently, the Pope Foundation donated $1.3 million in April to endow a

professorship and grant program at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“Your giving makes a real difference in our work and in the lives of others,” UNCChapel

Hill Chancellor Carol L. Folt wrote to Pope after the gift.

Two months earlier, the recently arrived chancellor had an introductory meeting with

Pope in his capacity as budget director in which they discussed the university’s finances,

according to correspondence obtained through a publicrecords request.

In a followup letter to Pope, Folt wrote that she was “committed to regularly assessing

university operations to ensure that Carolina remains as efficient and effective as

possible.”

Pope’s presence is felt acutely on the Chapel Hill campus, where some faculty members

say school officials are fearful of antagonizing a longtime critic who now holds sway over

the university’s funding.

They point to an incident last fall, when UNC took steps to distance itself from a professor

at its law school, Gene Nichol, after he drew fire from Popebacked think tanks for a

newspaper column in which he compared McCrory to Southern segregationist governors.

The heads of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy and the Civitas Institute

responded with their own piece, saying Nichol’s “nastiness and increasingly unhinged

partisanship ... reflects an arrogance and radicalism that have been building for years.”

Civitas also filed a publicrecords request for six weeks’ worth of Nichol’s emails, phone

records and calendars, eventually obtaining more than 1,000 pages of materials.

Amid the controversy, UNC officials exchanged alarmed emails noting how much

Nichol’s piece had angered the governor and his supporters, according to documents first

reported on by the Raleigh News & Observer.

The university now requires Nichol, director of UNCChapel Hill’s Center on Poverty,

Work and Opportunity, to include a disclaimer at the bottom of his columns reading, “He

doesn’t speak for UNC.”

Nichol said in an interview that the disclaimer was “a continual reminder that we have a

provost and chancellor more fearful of Art Pope than they are of protecting freedom of

speech.”

In a statement, James W. Dean Jr., UNCChapel Hill’s executive vice chancellor and

provost, said the university vigorously protects First Amendment rights and called the

disclaimer consistent with UNC’s academicfreedom policies.

Still, Dean hinted at the careful political tightrope being walked by the university.

“We have a very close and collaborative working relationship with many state government

officials, including Mr. Pope in his role as State Budget Director,” Dean said. “We have

worked hard to demonstrate the critical role our public universities play in securing North

Carolina’s economic future and will continue to do so.”

Judicial races

The heated policy battles that have cleaved North Carolina are now playing out in the

courts. The state Supreme Court, which has a slight conservative majority, is slated to

weigh in on several highprofile measures pushed through by the Republicanled

legislature, including redistricting and school vouchers.

That has made a major target out of Robin Hudson, a Democratic justice on the court who

is up for reelection this year and has faced a barrage of attacks.

Wealthy outside groups have a greater ability to affect such races than in recent years,

thanks to the demise of a program that Pope opposed as a state lawmaker and helped end

as budget director.

More than a decade ago, Pope strongly objected when the legislature passed created a

pioneering campaign financing system for Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judicial

elections.

“Candidate welfare,” he said at the time.

The voluntary program was celebrated by advocates of stricter campaign finance rules as a

national model for limiting the ability of special interests to influence judges, by providing

them with access to public funding.

“While other states were having just outrageous sums being spent on these statewide

judicial races, North Carolina’s races stayed relatively inexpensive,” said Bob Phillips,

executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, a government watchdog group.

When McCrory introduced his first budget in 2013, the program had been eliminated.

Supporters scrambled to find a way to salvage it, enlisting state Rep. Jonathan Jordan (R)

to sponsor an amendment that would allow it to continue in a scaleddown form.

The day the issue was set to be discussed in the House, Pope took Jordan aside in a

hallway outside the chamber, arguing that the amendment was unconstitutional.

Jordan shelved his measure. The lawmaker, who received $16,000 in campaign

contributions from the Pope family when he ran in 2010, did not return requests for

comment.

Pope said it was appropriate for him to make the case about the merits of the governor’s

budget to a state lawmaker, acknowledging that he has long personally been opposed to

such public campaign finance programs.

Asked if he played a role in McCrory’s thinking, Pope said, “I gave my analysis and advice

to the governor.”

This year, outside money has targeted North Carolina judicial races, including an

$800,000 campaign that accused Hudson of being soft on child molesters. One of

Hudson’s challengers was Jeanette Doran, former executive director of the Popebacked

North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law. She placed third in the May primary, but

Hudson was forced into a runoff with another Republican.

Pope said he did not know Doran was going to run and has not put money into the

campaign.

“I had no knowledge of what was going to happen,” he said. “It was no grand plot.”

Building a network

Pope’s quarter century long effort to build a conservative publicpolicy infrastructure was

inspired in part by his father, John William Pope, a savvy and frugal entrepreneur who

took a handful of family dime stores and turned them into a multi-milliondollar

corporation.

“I don’t have any doubt that Mr. Pope’s business philosophy, political philosophy, played a

substantial role in shaping Art’s role in politics and business,” said former North Carolina

Supreme Court justice Bob Orr, a longtime friend of Art Pope’s who served as the first

head of the Institute for Constitutional Law.

After practicing law for a few years, Art Pope jumped into politics, working as director of

operations for Martin’s 1984 gubernatorial campaign, using his early Apple IIe computer

to model voter turnout.

Pope said that when he joined the Martin administration as a special counsel, he saw the

imbalance in North Carolina’s political environment. The state had been dominated by

Democrats for so long that the newly elected Republican governor had to turn to

neighboring Tennessee for conservative approaches to education.

Soon afterward, Pope went to work building a network of groups to generate conservative

policy prescriptions, modeled in part on national groups such as the Heritage Foundation

and Cato Institute.

In 1990, Pope and his father launched the John Locke Foundation, a think tank that is

now the state’s premier idea generator on the right. They followed it with the Pope Center

on Higher Education Policy, a passion of Pope’s father, who had served on UNCChapel

Hill’s board of trustees. The constitutionallaw center was created to focus on legal issues,

while the Civitas Institute took on the task of holding elected officials accountable to

conservative principles.

Pope was also instrumental in launching the North Carolina chapter of Americans for

Prosperity, which worked to mobilize grassroots support for freemarket policies.

The financial muscle behind the groups is the Pope Foundation, which funds a range of

arts, humanitarian and educational groups. But half of its total giving through June 2013

— $55 million — went to the four policy groups and the national foundation arm of

Americans for Prosperity, according to records provided by the Pope Foundation.

For much of their existence, the Popebacked groups served as a “conservative

government in exile,” said GOP political consultant Dee Stewart. “Those think tanks

generated the ideas that conservative candidates ran on for many, many election cycles.”

The opportunity to put the policies into practice finally came when the GOP won control

of the legislature and then captured the governor’s office — the first time since 1870 that

Republicans controlled the two branches of North Carolina government.

Pope and his family played a significant role, donating more than $500,000 to state

candidates and party committees in 2010 and 2012, according to an analysis of state

campaign finance data by the Institute for Southern Studies, a liberal research group. His

company, Variety Wholesalers, gave almost $1 million more to outside groups that ran

independent campaigns.

Last year, the General Assembly approved a torrent of conservative measures that

resembled ideas touted by Pope’s think tanks. Among them were bills that cut

unemployment benefits, blocked the expansion of Medicaid, restricted access to abortions

and ushered in new restrictions on voting.

In response, thousands of people descended on the capitol last summer as part of

demonstrations dubbed “Moral Mondays.”

The Civitas Institute sought to puncture the demonstrations’ impact by creating an online

database of those arrested in the protests. Along with mug shots, the database included

names, race, age, arrest record, employer’s name and voting history. The site featured a

“Pick the Protester” game that allowed readers to match mug shots with demographic

characteristics.

De Luca, the institute’s president, said the project was aimed at showing that the

protesters were whiter and wealthier than the communities they said they were

representing. “It was not this mass movement,” said De Luca, who added that Civitas

plans to update the database with arrests from demonstrations this year.

Pope, he said, does not dictate the group’s activities. He calls occasionally to ask for policy

information — or if the group has done something controversial, De Luca said.

“Usually when he calls, I’ll say, ‘Okay, what did we do?’ ” he said.

GOP infighting

The budget standoff in Raleigh this summer has illustrated a complicated truth about

Pope’s role: Now that he is inside the system, he is penned in by the limits of the

governor’s influence.

The state Senate — led by the powerful Phil Berger (R) — rolled over McCrory’s suggested

budget and passed a version very different from the one in the House, whose

appropriations chairman, Rep. Nelson Dollar (R), is a close Pope ally.

Budget talks stalled over a heated dispute about Medicaid projections. After Senate

leaders threatened to subpoena Pope to explain the numbers, the budget director showed

up for a hearing in which a senator sniped at him for trying to “dictate” the budget. Pope,

for his part, scolded the lawmakers for trying to cut teacher assistants and programs to

help the poor and elderly.

Still, Pope is finding ways to shape the political environment from the outside, even as he

sits on the inside.

When this year’s legislative session opened, hundreds of demonstrators again gathered in

front of the State Legislative Building to protest the policies enacted by the Republican

majority. But the Moral Mondays protesters were met by a new player on the scene:

Carolina Rising, a nonprofit group that touted gains made under the GOP leadership and

handed out sunshaped stress balls that proclaimed cheerfully, “Jobs Up Unemployment

Down.”

Last month, the organization — run by Dallas Woodhouse, former state director for

Americans for Prosperity — ventured into harderedged politics, running an ad that took a

shot at Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat expected to challenge McCrory in 2016.

Similar hits against Cooper are expected to follow.

On its Web site, Carolina Rising says it “relies on the generosity of private funding and the

dedicated enthusiasm of the citizens of North Carolina.”

One of those enthusiastic citizens, according to people familiar with his role, is Art Pope.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-nc-conservative-donor-art-pope-sits-at-heart-of-government-he-helped-transform/2014/07/19/

===

facing so

droz et al anti wind

http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/12/climate-science-deniers-join-forces-against-nc-renewable-energy-program.html

John Droz, David Schnare and Daren Bakst (from left to right) speak at an anti-wind energy forum in North Carolina in December 2011. (Photo by Sue Sturgis.)

Climate-science deniers join forces against NC renewable-energy program

Climate-science deniers with ties to the fossil-fuel industry have joined forces in an assault on North Carolina's renewable energy program and particularly wind power, which has beenmaking big gains in the U.S. in recent years.

Representatives of the American Legislative Exchange Council, American Tradition Instituteand the John Locke Foundation held forums this week in the N.C. coastal communities of Wilmington and Morehead City titled "The Truth About Wind Power on the Coasts of North Carolina." Facing South attended the Wilmington presentation, which was heavy on emotion and shaky on the facts.

"The picking and choosing of information and the way it was presented was misleading and troublesome," said N.C. Sierra Club communications chief Dustin Chicurel-Bayard, who also attended the Wilmington event. The Sierra Club has taken a nuanced position on wind power in North Carolina; it has generally supported the industry's development but joined other environmental groups in fighting one commercial wind farm proposed for the northeastern corner of the state over concerns about wildlife impacts.

The speakers at this week's forums included Daren Bakst (right in photo), director of legal and regulatory studies for the John Locke Foundation, a free-market think tank that has been the leading voice of climate-science denial in North Carolina public-policy circles. JLF gets most of its funding from the family foundation of ArtPope -- a discount-retail mogul, conservative benefactor and one of four national directors of Americans for Prosperity, a tea party group founded and funded by the billionaire Koch brothers who own and operate the Koch Industries oil conglomerate.

Bakst also chairs the energy and natural resources subcommittee of the American Legislative Exchange Council,an unusually powerful corporate interest group that works to discredit state-level efforts to cut global-warming pollution. ALEC has received over $1.4 million from ExxonMobil since 1998 as well as extensive funding from Koch Industries and the Koch family foundations, according to a PR Watch investigation. Additionally, Bakst chairs the energy and natural resources subcommittee of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that's dismissed the scientific consensus around global warming as "nothing more than an educated guess" while receiving over $165,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

===

http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/08/after-tumultuous-reign-art-pope-steps-down-as-nc-b.html

===

ART POPE, NC FEATURED IN NATIONAL DEBATE ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM: The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing this week on the corrupting influence of money in politics, and a North Carolina state lawmaker testified about the role of conservative political money man Art Pope. (6/6/2014)

new moyers doc: RealJobsNC hit/dark$ led to both houses 1st x n 100 yrs 2010

===

Art Pope: A Backroom Bully Goes Public

In North Carolina these days, few people think Francis first when they hear “Pope.” A different Pope has been dominating headlines here, an exceedingly deep pocket who owes his fortune to a discount store chain his daddy built.

In the run-up to the 2012 elections, this Art Pope invested [20] over $40 million of his personal wealth to gerrymander how North Carolinians cast their votes.

The gerrymandering worked. This year opened with the state sporting — for the first time ever — a conservative GOP governor, Supreme Court majority, and legislature all at the same time. The state budget director? Pope himself.

Pope’s budget priorities would soon start wreaking havoc with the lives of North Carolina’s most vulnerable. In a state with America’s fifth-highest jobless rate, lawmakers indebted to Pope and his millions slashed [21] top weekly jobless benefits and denied 170,000 long-term jobless special federal aid [22].

North Carolina’s conservatives didn’t stop there. They put in place, notes [23] one Duke University analyst, an agenda that cuts education and social programs, shifts the tax burden “toward the less affluent,” and restricts voting rights.

North Carolinians have responded to this rich people-friendly legislative onslaught with spirited demonstrations. The latest protest: an “educational picket campaign [24]” outside the discount stores the Pope family owns.

Art Pope, notes [25] state NAACP president William Barber, has brought a “cynical and sinister form of wealth and power manipulation” to North Carolina.

Pope has put his stores “deliberately and publicly in communities of low wealth,” exploited people in these communities with low wages, and then employed his resulting wealth “to push and promote policies,” sums up Reverend Barber, that undercut the quality of average people’s lives. alternet

Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality / By Sam Pizzigati

10 Greediest People in America

The worst of the worst.

December 17, 2013 |

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/4/grassroots_leader_rev_dr_william_barber

reconstruction bl-wh fusion destroyed by Wilmington riots, model for others. Each progressive period countered by backlash, latest pope (little koch bro)

BO won by only 1400 votes b/c voter ID beat

===

gerrymandering

The carefully drawn maps worked. In this year's elections, Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in North Carolina won 50.6 percent of the total vote. But the state's House delegation now has nine Republicans and just four Democrats. One of the Democrats won by just a few hundred voters, despite the fact that his newly drawn district skewed heavily Republican and that his own home had been drawn out of it. North Carolina's delegation before the election had seven Democrats and six Republicans

In addition to his pay from national Republican groups, invoices show Hofeller billed North Carolina taxpayers $77,000 for his services.

The Republican maps are still under threat by suits filed by Democrats and the NAACP. The lawsuits are headed to the state Supreme Court. But a flood of contributions tied to the RSLC have lowered the risk of the maps' being overturned.

While judicial elections in North Carolina are nominally nonpartisan, it was common knowledge that Republicans held a 4-3 majority on the court. One of those Republican incumbents was facing a tough challenge in 2012, potentially throwing the whole redistricting result in jeopardy.

Justice Paul Newby was running for re-election against appellate judge Sam Ervin IV, grandson of the famous North Carolina senator who investigated Watergate. With a few weeks left until the November election, Newby was trailing Ervin.

But then, in the final stretch, Newby was the beneficiary of a flood of late spending that can be traced back to the Republican State Leadership Committee.

Once again the contributions were funneled through homegrown groups. With only a few weeks to go, the RSLC gave more than $1.1 million to a group called Justice for All NC. Campaign finance filings show Justice for All NC in turn gave nearly $1.5 million to a super PAC running pro-Newby ads, the NC Judicial Coalition.

Most of the money spent by the super PAC went to pay for hundreds of airings of a jingle ad featuring lines like, "Paul Newby / Justice tough but fair / Paul Newby / Criminals best beware" set to infectious banjo music.

The spending didn't end there: and Pope's fingerprints were also on the race. Two dark money groups affiliated with Pope — the state-based Civitas Action and Americans for Prosperity — spent another $300,000 on radio ads and mailers supporting Newby. Pope's company also gave to the RSLC in the run-up to this fall's elections.

Pope says he gave money to Americans for Prosperity for years before the judicial race even came up, and that he was not involved in the decision to run pro-Newby ads.

"I'm Republican, I support Republican groups," Pope said. "But just because you support something doesn't mean you're responsible for all they do."

It was an unusually large amount of outside spending for a judicial race. The outside pro-Newby groups had spent more on the race than the two campaigns combined.

In the end, Newby eked out a 52-48 victory, preserving the court's Republican majority.

When the groups contesting the maps called for Newby to recuse himself from redistricting litigation, lawyers for Republican legislators argued that because the campaign ads were paid for by "independent" groups, they did not jeopardize Newby's impartiality.

On Monday, the state Supreme Court rejected the motion for Newby to recuse himself.

"I've got no control over who contributes to an ad. I have no control over who endorses me," Newby — who did not respond to a request for comment — told a local TV station on the eve of the election. "You've got to put your blinders on like lady justice."

Art Pope

James “Art” Pope, a founding board member of the Kochs’ conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, took the brothers’ brand of charitable devastation and concentrated it at the state level. He is, as the New Yorker’s Jane Meyer put it [12], the “conservative multimillionaire [who] has taken control in North Carolina,” a discount retail baron that has used his unrivaled influence as the state’ssingle largest political donor [13] to literally buy his way into office [14]. While his network of conservative foundations continues steering the debate rightward, Pope puts policies in motion as the state’s deputy budget director.

The Institute for Southern Studies [13] has extensively documented how Pope uses his family nonprofit — the John William Pope Foundation, worth nearly $150 million [15] — to pour tax-exempt donations into thinly veiled conservative advocacy groups like the John W. Pope Civitas Institute, the John Locke Foundation and the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. Over the years, these groups have worked closely with Tea Party organizers [16], attacked climate science [17] (and scientists [18]) and generally championed free market principles.

Pope’s is an impressive empire of shell charities: his foundation spends more than two-thirds of its money providing some 90% [19] of the funding for North Carolina’s leading conservative organizations, at most of which he enjoys a leadership role. In 2010, three of these groups — Civitas Action, Real Jobs NC and Americans for Prosperity — banded together with Pope and his family to flood [20] North Carolina’s legislative races and stage the first Republican takeover of the state since 1896 [21].

Since then, Pope’s puppeteering has pushed North Carolina into free-fall, galvanizing the grassroots, Moral Monday [22] opposition that’sspreading across the country [23]. Policies long advocated by Pope foundations are now proposed and enacted on a daily basis, seeking to eliminate corporate and income taxes [24], shrink healthcare coverage [25], gut environmental regulations [26], remove early education opportunities [27], oppose public transit [28] and defund public schools [29] and higher education [30].

It’s this last foray that student groups like the North Carolina Student Power Union [31] are fiercely resisting, mounting a statewide campaign against Art Pope’s involvement in the University of North Carolina system. In exchange for his foundation’s more than two dozen grants over the past 15 years, last year Pope was rewarded [32] with a seat on UNC’s “blue ribbon” panel to craft a five-year strategic plan for the 16-campus system. Students claim the move defies UNC’s mandate for public accountability, reeking of blatant corruption.

Pope is hardly an educator, and his gifts [33] demonstrate a Koch-like determination to indoctrinate college students at any cost, bidding to bring them into the fold while they’re young. His past contributions include $900,000 for pro-free market political science program [34]at North Carolina State University; an attempted $10 million [35] for a UNC program in “Western civilization,” later diverted to football coaches’ salaries after widespread outcry; and a similarly ill-fated $600,000 attempt to launch a constitutional law center [36] led by the director of a Pope-funded nonprofit at North Carolina Central University....http://www.alternet.org/print/economy/philanthropy-trouble

===

Art Pope is the president and vice-chairman of the board of directors for Variety Wholesalers Inc., and a director of the right-wing group Americans for Prosperity, which organized the Tax Day Tea Parties across the country, and which organized "town hall" opposition to health care reform in 2009. He is a member of the board of directors of the John Locke Foundation, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and the North Carolina Retail Merchants Association.[1]

An investigation by Facing South / Institute for Southern Studies also found that Pope has close ties to the Koch Brothers, as one of four national directors of the Koch-founded political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity. In addition, Pope is a director and board chair of a family foundation, the Pope Foundation, which has steered millions to conservative thinks tanks in North Carolina and nationally that have worked closely with the Koch network to manufacture doubt about global warming, including his own John Locke Foundation.[2]

Overall, a 2010 Facing South / Institute for Southern Studies analysis of tax records found that a foundation chaired by Art Pope supplies about 90 percent of the income of leading conservative nonprofits in North Carolina.[3]

A New Yorker expose explains that Pope invests not only in conservative non-profits, but in state-level political elections designed to make his takeover of the North Carolina GOP complete. Marc Farinella, an adviser to North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue, commented that "The Republican agenda in North Carolina is really Art Pope’s agenda. He sets it, he funds it, and he directs the efforts to achieve it. The candidates are just fronting for him. There are so many people in North Carolina beholden to Art Pope—it undermines the democratic process.”[4]

Contents

[hide]

1 Funding campaigns against moderate Republicans & Democrats

1.1 New Yorker Expose

1.1.1 John Snow

1.1.2 Margaret Dickson

1.1.3 Chris Heagarty

1.2 2006

2 Background

3 Climate change denial

4 Tea Party Funding

5 Funding campaigns against moderate Republicans

6 Connections to Koch Brothers

7 Articles and resources

7.1 Related SourceWatch articles

7.2 References

7.3 External resources

7.4 External articles

Funding campaigns against moderate Republicans & Democrats

New Yorker Expose

An expose in the New Yorker detailed the workings of several outside spending groups active in the 2010 State Legislative elections in North Carolina that were financially backed by Art Pope. In the article, several moderate Democrats described the attacks they had endured funded by Pope.

John Snow

State Senator John Snow, a retired judge and moderate Democratic State Senator "who often voted with the Republicans and was considered one of the most conservative Democrats in the General Assembly" described a direct mail campaign which eventually mailed 20 attacks to voters, including an attack for his vote in favor of funding for an aquarium that had passed the Senate unanimously and depicted him as a cartoon pig. Another mailing was "reminiscent of the Willie Horton ad that became notorious during the 1988 Presidential campaign", with a picture of an African-American man on death row convicted of the brutal killing an 11 year old girl, saying that the man could soon be released thanks to Snow's support for a law which would have enabled judges to reconsider the death sentence in the event a jury's verdict was effected by race. The bill was designed to address the racial disparity in North Carolina's death sentencing. Snow supported capitol punishment and, as a judge, had even sentenced it.[5]

Margaret Dickson

Margaret Dickson was defeated in her bid for a fourth term in the North Carolina State Senate in 2010. She "considered herself a centrist, pro-business Democrat", but was victimized by what she called "the hooker ad" in which she was played by "an actress with dark hair who was fair, like me. She was putting on mascara and red lipstick. She had on a big ring and bracelet." The ad showed the actress grabbing cash and accused Dickson of promoting her own interests in the legislature without making any direct accusation. Another ad compared her tax record to Nancy Pelosi, though her record was shown to be far more conservative, and not comparable due to the two women's service in two different legislative bodies.[6]

Chris Heagarty

Chris Heagarty was a non-incumbent State Senate candidate in 2010 who was subjected to Pope-funded advertising accusing him of voting to support a billion dollars in tax increases, despite his non-incumbency. He is Caucasian but was depicted as Hispanic in other ads, which said ‘Mucho Taxo! Adios, Señor!’ beneath pictures of him wearing a sombrero.[7]

2006

In 2006, the Raleigh News and Observer reported that Pope "has created other organizations to sway public opinion, monitor the legislature, develop grass-roots political efforts and bring court challenges" and that he had spent "millions of dollars on a network whose purpose is to move North Carolina to the political right." His goal was to purge the North Carolina state House of Representatives of Republican moderates. According to journalist Rob Christensen, Pope "created two new tax-exempt organizations. The Republican Legislative Majority of North Carolina was bankrolled with $260,000 in contributions from Variety Wholesalers. A Pope-formed state chapter of a national group, Americans for Prosperity, contributed more than $200,000 ... The Pope effort helped defeat Republican Reps. Rex Baker of King, Keith Williams of Jacksonville, Michael Gorman of New Bern and Michael Decker of Forsyth County. Pope came within a whisker of knocking off Morgan and Rep. Rick Eddins of Raleigh."[8]

Pope started out by financing a network of conservative think tanks, but in latter years has expanded his role to that of a conservative political enforcer, spending hundreds of thousands of his own money to unseat moderate Republican legislators.[9]

Background

Pope, a graduate of Duke University School of Law, is a member of the North Carolina Bar Association. He has worked as "special counsel to the governor in 1985, running for the lieutenant governorship in 1992, and being chosen as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1992 and 1996."[1]

Pope was also the founder of the right-wing, free market John Locke Foundation, which accepts money from the tobacco industry.[10]

Climate change denial

A 2010 investigation by the Institute for Southern Studies found that Pope had begun funneling money to ostensibly nonpartisan nonprofits that use it to run attack ads, primarily directed at politicians who have played a key role in addressing climate change in the state. Facing South's analysis of tax return data found that Art Pope's family foundation, the Pope Foundation, had made large contributions to the same network of climate skeptic groups as the Koch Brothers from 1997 to 2008 -- more than $24.1 million in all. Many of the funds went to the John Locke Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank based in Raleigh, N.C. that was created in 1990 to promote the idea of limited government. Pope provides 80 percent of the organization's funding -- $16.9 million from 1997 to 2008 -- and sits on its board of directors. The John Locke Foundation has been one of the most outspoken voices of climate denial, particularly in North Carolina - in 2007, North Carolina passed Senate Bill 3 to adopt a minimum requirement for the use of renewable energy sources by investor-owned electric utilities. The bill requires that 12.5 percent of all electricity sold in the state by 2020 must come from renewable sources or improved efficiency. The John Locke Foundation would like to do away with it altogether, according to the group's 2010 climate agenda.[2]

Pope's foundation is also a backer of the Civitas Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its 501(c)(4) sister group, Civitas Action. Between 2005 and 2009, the Pope Foundation has accounted for about 99 percent of the Civitas Institute's foundation income. Pope was also a founder of Civitas Action, which has raised nearly $265,000 since August -- more than 70 percent of that directly from Pope's company. In October 2010, Civitas Action spent $5,750 on mailers targeting North Carolina House Speaker Joe Hackney and Senate leader Marc Basnight, Democrats who have been supportive of efforts to address global warming. Hackney led the state's climate change commission for a time before appointing in his place Rep. Pricey Harrison (D), one of the legislature's strongest environmental advocates. Basnight has talked about his concern that global warming and associated sea rise could inundate the region and supports a move to clean energy sources. Frances De Luca, president of the Civitas Institute and the former state director of the North Carolina chapter of Americans for Prosperity, has said more mailers are planned.[2]

Running against 15-term Hackney is Cathy Wright, a nursing instructor who's also worked as a lobbyist for medical groups. Her campaign manager did not respond to Facing South's request for information about her position on climate change. But Wright does say she's a member of the Conservative Womens Forum, which promotes a book calling global warming a "scam" and is critical of clean energy solutions from cap-and trade legislation to wind power to the promotion of compact-fluorescent light bulbs. Additionally, her campaign website links directly to both the John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Institute. Basnight's opponent is Hood Richardson, a retired minerals geologist and commissioner for Beaufort County, N.C. Richardson calls global warming a "problem that has since been debunked as based on faulty science." He also criticizes Basnight for helping create the state climate change commission, saying it will "severely harm businesses." He cites the John Locke Foundation for his assertions.[2]

Tea Party Funding

A 2010 Facing South / Institute for Southern Studies analysis found that a family foundation led by Art Pope has given the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) over $1.3 million since 2004, making it the group's second-largest institutional backer. Pope also sits on AFP's four-person board of directors. Americans for Prosperity has key leadership roles in the Tea Party Patriots movement. AFP delivered "Home Organizing" kits to Tea Party activists and sponsored dozens of trainings at local and national Tea Party events. Americans for Prosperity also works closely with the Tea Party Express. AFP called for a national Tax Day Tea Party in Washington, D.C. in October 2009 to channel the movement's energy. The N.C. branch of Americans for Prosperity is behind N.C. Tax Day Tea Party 2010, an effort to coordinate Tea Party protests across the state.[11]

Since spring 2009, staff of the Pope's Civitas Institute, which receives nearly all of its funding from Pope's family foundation, and the John Locke Foundation, which receives over 80 percent of its funding from Pope's foundation, have spoken at dozens of Tea Party rallies. Together with the N.C. chapter of Americans for Prosperity, in May 2010 the Civitas Institute organized two "Tea Party Summits" -- one in Hickory ("Tea Party Summit West"), and another in Wilmington ("East"). According to the website, the events aimed to "channel the tea party energy" towards the groups' favorite conservatives causes, like "forced annexation" and cutting taxes. Both the East and West Tea Party summits in North Carolina featured a "State of the People Luncheon" led by the Civitas Institute. They also included a Citizen Watchdog/Investigative Journalism training led by Civitas staff.[11]

There questions about whether Pope's organizations are overstepping its legal bounds with these activites. The Civitas Institute and Locke Foundation are classified as 501(c)(3) nonprofits by the Internal Revenue Service, which forbids partisan political engagement and electioneering. Americans for Prosperity is a 501(c)(4) group, which can support or oppose candidates, as long as that's not its primary purpose.[11]

Funding campaigns against moderate Republicans

Connections to Koch Brothers

Pope was acknowledged at the Koch seminar in June 2011 in Vail, Colorado for donating at least $1 million to Koch-related causes. [14]

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

Americans for Prosperity

Astroturf

Grassroots

John Locke Foundation

Patients First

References

? 1.0 1.1 "Art Pope", Americans for Prosperity website, accessed September 2009.

? 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Sue Sturgis, "A Pope of climate denial" Facing South, October 26, 2010.

? Chris Kromm, "North Carolina's Art Pope: Staying in control" Facing South, Oct. 19, 2010.

? 5.0 5.1 5.2 Chris Kromm, "Art Pope: Still dancing at the Tea Party?" Facing South, Oct. 21, 2010.

? Rob Christensen, "Advocate to some, bully to others, Pope brews discord", News & Observer (Raleigh), February 2, 2006.

External resources

External articles

John Grooms, "Unhealthy lies and the truth about healthcare reform", Creative Loafing, August 18, 2009.

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Art_Pope"

===

James Arthur Pope

Nickname: Art

Gender: Male

James Arthur Pope lives and/or works in

Raleigh, NC.

Areas of interest:

business

politics & government

nonprofits

James Arthur Pope current relationships:

Americans for Prosperity - director

Americans for Prosperity Foundation - vice chairman

John Locke Foundation - director

John William Pope Civitas Institute - director

Pope Political Inc. - owner

Muckety map information sources include:

News & Observer

Muckety draws information from thousands of sources. For a list of primary government and news sites, see our Sources page.

James Arthur Pope campaign contributions:

(Federal donations of $3,000 or more)

McCain Victory 2008 - $12,700 on 5/21/2008

James Arthur Pope connections, once removed:

James Arthur Pope is connected to ...

Richard H. Fink >> through Americans for Prosperity Foundation >> Map it!

Debra G. Humphreys >> through Americans for Prosperity Foundation >> Map it!

David H. Koch >> through Americans for Prosperity Foundation >> Map it!

Walter E. Williams >> through Americans for Prosperity Foundation >> Map it!

---

Investigative Series: How Pope Reigns

Although not well known, North Carolina millionaire Art Pope is one of the most influential benefactors of conservative causes and Republican politics in North Carolina -- and increasingly, the country.

Beginning in October 2010, Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies launched an investigative series looking at the scope and nature of Pope's political empire -- one of the most in-depth looks at a state-level political donor and operative to date. Among the findings of our investigation:

* Art Pope exerts an unusual level of influence over North Carolina's conservative establishment. According to Facing South's analysis, about 90 percent of the funding of the state's leading conservative think tanks and advocacy groups comes from Pope's family foundation, which he runs. Pope is also installed on the board of directors of most of these groups.

* Pope was key to fueling the Republican Party's historic takeover of the North Carolina legislature in 2010. Facing South showed how three groups backed by Pope -- Americans for Prosperity, Civitas Action and Real Jobs NC -- joined with Pope family members to spent over $2.2 million targeting two dozen key state races last November. Republicans won nearly 80 percent of those constests. (Here's an updated analysis we did of Pope's election spending.)

* While staying out of the spotlight, Pope backs some of the right wing's most controversial causes. Pope's groups have worked closely with the Tea Party Express, whose leaders have been widely condemned for making racially-charged statements, and Pope's foundation has funded many groups that deny the scientific consensus about global climate change (and more recently, attacks on climate scientists themselves.)

Pieces of our investigation have been covered by The Raleigh News & Observer, WRAL TV and other major media outlets; in the wake of our series, some even called for a boycott of the discount retail stores owned by Pope's Variety Wholesalers chain, which includes Roses and Maxway.

In March 2011, Facing South/the Institute teamed up with The Independent Weekly to produce a widely-circulated investigative package looking at Pope's empire. In October 2011, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker drew heavily on Facing South's and The Independent Weekly's coverage for her in-depth profile of Pope, which was later featured on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," NPR's "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, and other leading national media.

Also in October 2011, Facing South/the Institute launched a special investigative project, ArtPopeExposed.com, tracking the money, people and agenda driving Pope's empire, which generated more media coverage.

Most importantly, our series has helped shine a spotlight on the growing influence of money in shaping politics at the state level, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. We plan to continue reporting on this critical issue and its implications for our democracy.

Here are some the key stories in our investigative series on Art Pope and money in North Carolina and national politics:

POPE THE VOTE (10/8/10): Little-known outside North Carolina, Republican retail magnate Art Pope is silently rising as a national player in the 2010 elections. But many say his strategy of funneling money for political attack ads through nonprofits pushes the limits of the law.

BLESSED TO HAVE A POPE (10/14/10): 90 cents out of every dollar received by North Carolina's leading conservative organizations come from one foundation, led by conservative donor Art Pope. But the benefactor's generosity may come with strings attached. Plus see this response (10/19/10) to Pope-funded groups who criticized Facing South's series.

ART POPE: STILL DANCING AT THE TEA PARTY? (10/21/10): While some conservatives have distanced themselves from controversial elements of the Tea Party movement, groups in North Carolina backed by influential donor Art Pope continue to embrace them.

A POPE OF CLIMATE DENIAL (10/26/10): Art Pope, North Carolina's leading conservative benefactor, has worked closely with the Koch oil barons and spent millions of his own discount retail fortune to sow doubt about the scientific consensus on global warming. Now he's hoping to reap the political benefits.

POPE BANKROLLS DUBIOUS 'VOTER FRAUD' CRUSADE (10/28/10): North Carolina's conservative benefactor Art Pope has taken a leading role in the right's crusade against "voter fraud." But the groups he supports still can't prove it's a real problem.

POPE'S BIG DAY: REPUBLICAN BENEFACTOR FUELED GOP CAPTURE OF NC LEGISLATURE (11/9/10): In 2010, three conservative groups and a Republican benefactor's family spent over $2.2 million targeting key races to take over the North Carolina legislature. Here's what they got for their record-shattering investment. Also see Pope's response: I didn't "buy the North Carolina legislature."

GOP DONOR POPE: I DIDN'T 'BUY THE NORTH CAROLINA LEGISLATURE' (VIDEO): Art Pope responds to the Facing South/Institute investigation looking at his role in fueling the GOP's historic takeover of the North Carolina legislature in 2010.

NC SCHOOL BOARD ENGINEERED BY CONSERVATIVE BENEFACTOR DRAWS CIVIL RIGHTS SCRUTINY (12/16/10): Prominent conservative funder Art Pope was the mastermind behind the Republican school board majority in Wake County, N.C. that's now under federal investigation for scrapping a lauded desegregation policy.

NC GROUPS BACKED BY TOP POLITICAL BENEFACTOR PUSH TO KILL STATE CAMPAIGN FINANCE PROGRAM (1/4/11): North Carolina conservative groups founded and largely funded by Republican benefactor Art Pope are calling for an end to the state's widely-used 'clean elections' program. Maybe it's because Pope's record-shattering spending in 2010 was so successful in fueling the GOP's capture of the state legislature.

WHAT IS ART POPE'S AGENDA FOR NORTH CAROLINA? (1/24/11): The agenda promoted by North Carolina's new GOP legislative majority bears an uncanny resemblance to that promoted by advocacy groups largely funded by Art Pope, whose money was also instrumental to GOP victories in 2010.

THE ART POPE EMPIRE (3/9/2011): The combination of Pope's media outlets, think tanks and election machine give him singular power in North Carolina. Published in partnership with The Independent Weekly (see the entire special Indy/Facing South issue on Art Pope here).

CIVITAS POLLSTER FINED $10,000 FOR BREAKING NC ROBO-CALL LAW AFTER COMPLAINT BY FACING SOUTH EDITOR (5/26/11): A complaint filed by a Facing South editor in 2009 results in a fine against the Civitas Institute, a conservative think tank largely funded by GOP benefactor Art Pope.

GOP DONOR PUT ON BOARD OF FOUNDATION HIS GROUPS WANT TO ABOLISH (6/15/11): Groups funded by conservative benefactor have long called for eliminating the Golden Leaf Foundation. But now that Republicans control the state legislature -- in part due to Pope's support -- he's been appointed to the board of the part-public charity.

KOCH JR.: ART POPE AND THE RIGHT'S MILLION DOLLAR CLUB (9/8/11): Art Pope isn't just a big money player in North Carolina. He's also a key junior lieutenant to the billionaire Koch brothers, funding and leading the same right-wing advocacy groups.

NORTH CAROLINA FOR SALE? NEW YORKER PROFILE THRUSTS POPE INTO NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT (10/4/11): A profile of North Carolina power broker Art Pope by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker brings national attention to the conservative benefactor's growing advocacy and electoral empire.

ART POPE BANKROLLS CANDIDATES DISMANTLING DESEGREGATION POLICY IN NC SCHOOL SYSTEM (10/5/11): After working behind the scenes during the pivotal 2009 school board election in Wake County, N.C., the conservative benefactor, Americans for Prosperity director and ally of the Koch brothers is now directly funding candidates opposed to the public school system's nationally-recognized diversity policy.

EXPLAINER: HOW MUCH DID ART POPE'S NETWORK SPEND ON NORTH CAROLINA'S 2010 LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS? (10/7/11): Art Pope tries to downplay the money he spent to help fuel the historic GOP victories in North Carolina's state legislature. Here's a run-down on the different ways Pope injects money into politics -- and why he's so influential.

POPE PREACHES SELF-RELIANCE, TOOK $330,000 FAMILY LOAN TO RUN FOR OFFICE (10/11/11): Conservative benefactor Art Pope uses his money to promote a philosophy of self-reliance. But when he needed help to run for office, he took $330,000 in loans from his parents that he never paid back.

HOW ART POPE HELPED BRING YOU HERMAN CAIN (10/17/11): A big part of Tea Party darling Herman Cain's media image is about being a political outsider. But a new Associated Press report shows how the conservative activist group Americans for Prosperity, led by the Koch brothers and Art Pope, has been a critical springboard for the 2012 Republican presidential hopeful.

THREE REASONS ART POPE DESERVES SPECIAL MEDIA SCRUTINY (10/21/11): In the face of growing national attention, Art Pope and his defenders insist he's merely the victim of personal attacks and not any different then other political benefactors. But Art Pope's influence in North Carolina is unique -- and uniquely deserving of scrutiny.

BIG LOSS FOR POPE IN SCHOOL RESEGREGATION FIGHT (11/9/11): Voters in Wake County, N.C. have shifted power on the local school board back to Democrats who support a student assignment policy that values diversity -- but it wasn't for a lack of spending on the conservative benefactor's part.

ART POPE'S MONEY KEY TO ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE PUSH (11/10/11): Pope's family foundation has given nearly $1 million to anti-gay marriage groups, most of it to the N.C. Family Policy Council, which has been leading the effort to pass a constitutional amendment against gay marriage in N.C. since 2004.

TEACHERS CALL FOR BOYCOTT OF POPE STORES (12/2/11): The North Carolina Association of Educators has called for shoppers to boycott stores owned by Raleigh multimillionaire and conservative operative Art Pope for his "anti-public education" policies.

GIVE ME SOME OF THAT OLD TIME SECESSION (12/8/11): At a major conference in North Carolina next March, the Art Pope-funded Civitas Institute has invited a lead speaker best known for pushing a constitutional amendment making it easier for states to secede from the U.S.A.

CLIMATE SCIENCE DENIERS JOIN FORCES AGAINST NC'S RENEWABLE ENERGY PROGRAM (12/9/11): The American Legislative Exchange Council, American Tradition Institute and the John Locke Foundation are preaching against wind energy and renewable mandates in presentations that play fast and loose with the facts.

ART POPE'S MONEY DRIVES NC LEGISLATURE'S ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL TURN (1/11/12): North Carolina lawmakers have racked up the lowest conservation scores ever in a newly released report card - and those supported by the conservative benefactor and his family members scored far below the record low average.

ART POPE TURNS UP IN CLIMATE DISINFORMATION EXPOSÉ (2/16/12): Internal documents obtained from the Heartland Institute, a leading player in the climate disinformation campaign, show that the group is counting on continuing support from the North Carolina conservative benefactor and retail magnate.

For more Facing South/Institute coverage of Art Pope and his political empire, visit ArtPopeExposed.com or follow on Twitter at @ArtPopeExposed.

wiki

James Arthur "Art" Pope (born May 5, 1956)[1] is a North Carolina politician, businessman, attorney and philanthropist. In January 2013, he became Budget Director for North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (who officially calls Pope his "deputy budget director" because, he said, the governor himself is the state's budget director).[2] At the time, he was serving as CEO and board chairman of Variety Wholesalers and president and chairman of the John William Pope Foundation.

According to the News and Observer, Pope "has invested millions in a network of foundations and think tanks, and advocacy groups, both in North Carolina and nationally, that are designed to further conservative and free market ideas."[3] He has supported organizations including Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, of whose board he is a member; the John Locke Foundation (which he co-founded); and the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.[4]

Contents

1 Early life and education

2 Professional life

3 Public service

4 Donations to conservative causes

5 Donations and philanthropy through the John William Pope Foundation

6 References

Early life and education

Pope was born May 5, 1956 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to John W. and Joyce Wilkins Pope. He spent his early childhood in the town of Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. He moved with his family to the capital city of Raleigh, North Carolina in the early 1960s. Pope graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1978 with a B.A. with honors in political science, and went on to earn his J.D. from the Duke University School of Law in 1981.[1]

Professional life

Pope was engaged in a general law practice as an associate attorney with the firm of Skvarla, Boles, Wyrick and From in Raleigh, from 1982 through 1984.

In 1984, Pope took a leave of absence from the firm to work as the director of organization for the North Carolina gubernatorial campaign of Jim Martin. Pope served as special counsel to Governor Jim Martin in 1985.[1] In 1986, Pope joined the family business, the retail discount chain Variety Wholesalers. Pope has held several positions with Variety Wholesalers Inc., first as general counsel, then vice-president of administration and information systems, chief financial officer, executive vice-president. Beginning in 2006, Pope began serving as president, CEO, and chairman of the board.[citation needed]

Public service

Pope co-founded the Libertarian Party of North Carolina as a college student in 1976.[4] He has been active with the Republican Party since the late 1970s, serving in a variety of roles ranging from precinct chairman to chairman of the North Carolina GOP State Convention. Pope has also served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention on three occasions. Pope was appointed to serve on the North Carolina State Goals and Policy Board from 1985-1989. He also served on the North Carolina Capital Planning Commission.

Pope was first elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1988 to represent House District 61. He served four complete or partial terms in office, winning elections in 1988 and 1990, being appointed to fill a vacancy in 1999,[4] and winning another election in 2000.[1] He was elected Republican Joint Caucus Leader during the 1991-1992 session.[5] Pope was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the state's most prestigious award for public service, in 1992 at age 36.[citation needed]

Pope vacated his House seat to run for the office of Lieutenant Governor in 1992. After winning a three-way Republican primary in May 1992, Pope lost the general election to Democrat Dennis Wicker.

In June 2011, Pope was appointed to the board of directors for Golden LEAF (Long-term Economic Advancement Foundation), a nonprofit grant-making organization whose mission is to spur economic development in tobacco-dependent areas of North Carolina. Pope had previously criticized some Golden LEAF funding decisions.[6]

Pope was among several business leaders appointed in September 2012 to serve on a UNC system advisory group tasked with helping to shape the future of the state's public universities.[7] Pope was also a member of the Electoral College in 2012, casting one of North Carolina's electoral votes for Mitt Romney.[8]

In November 2012, it was announced that Pope would serve as a co-chair on North Carolina Governor-Elect Pat McCrory's transition team, and in December Pope was announced as the state's chief budget writer in the McCrory administration.[9][10]

Donations to conservative causes

In 2005, Pope was a founding member of the NC Coalition for Lobbying & Government Reform.[11] He joined former Democratic state Senator Wib Gulley from Durham, NC, in calling for reform of the state’s lobbying laws.[12]

Pope co-founded Real Jobs NC,[13] a 527 organization that ran attack ads against 20 state Democratic legislators in the North Carolina 2010 general elections.[13][14][15][16] Real Jobs NC is funded primarily by the Republican State Leadership Committee, though Pope provided it with an initial $200,000 donation.[16][17]

Civitas Action Inc, a 501(c)(4) non-profit organized by the John W. Pope Civitas Institute think tank, also sent out mailings against Democratic candidates in the North Carolina 2010 general elections, and is funded primarily by Variety Stores, which is owned by Pope.[13]

Pope also played an active role in the 2010 redistricting of North Carolina's electoral map as a pro bono legal adviser during the process. The redistricting effort assisted in shifting the state's U.S. House delegation from 7-6 Democratic to 9-4 in favor of Republicans.[16] He has advocated doing away with the public financing of judicial elections in North Carolina,[18] and he has been a major donor to state legislative races.[4]

Through personal campaign donations and corporate donations to independent expenditure efforts, Pope supported Republican candidates in the 2010 elections for the North Carolina General Assembly in 2010.[13] Of the $30 million spent on North Carolina legislative races during the 2010 election,[19] it was reported that Art Pope’s company donated approximately $425,000 as independent expenditures that favored Republicans, and groups tied to Pope spent $2.1 million to influence the campaign.[13]

After his selection as Governor Pat McCrory's budget director, Pope resigned his positions as co-director of Americans for Prosperity and as a board member of Civitas Institute and Civitas Action in North Carolina.[20]

Donations and philanthropy through the John William Pope Foundation

Pope is chairman and president of the John William Pope Foundation, which he founded with his father, John W. Pope, in 1986.[21]

As of June 30, 2010, the Pope Foundation had nearly $136.8 million in assets. It has made over $89 million in grants since 1986, including over $9 million in grants made during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010. Over the last 25 years, half of the Pope Foundation’s grants have gone to support public policy, conservative organizations and think tanks in North Carolina, with the largest single recipient being the John Locke Foundation. The Pope foundation has donated more than $28.7 million to the think tanks, including $17 million to the John Locke Foundation,[13] for which Art Pope was the founding chairman.[22] Eighteen percent of the grants went to support higher education, including Campbell University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Seventeen percent has supported national conservative and libertarian public policy groups, including The Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. Ten percent of the Pope Foundation’s grants support community philanthropy, including the Habitat for Humanity in Wake County and Food Bank of Eastern & Central North Carolina. The Foundation’s support for the arts includes grants to the North Carolina Symphony, Carolina Ballet, North Carolina Theater and North Carolina Opera.[23]

In 2011 Indy Week reported that the Pope Foundation failed to file tax returns for the years 1996-2004 until 2005. The foundation reported to the IRS that they were unable to file timely returns due to complications from a hurricane, lack of staff, and personal circumstances of Art Pope.[24]

In 2005, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill asked the John William Pope Foundation for a $4.8 million grant to enhance its curriculum in Western civilization. In 2006, after wrangling between the university administration and some faculty and students who opposed the proposal,[25] the Pope Foundation declined to fund the proposal. Instead, the Pope Foundation donated $100,000 a year for a visiting scholars program and student fellowships for the study of Western civilization, as well as $2 million for an endowment for salary enhancements for assistant football coaches.[26] In 2011, the Pope Foundation gave the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill $3 million for its Student-Athlete Academic Support Center.[27][28]

In December 2012, the Pope Foundation announced $810,500 in grants to community charities, schools, churches, and the arts.[29] To counter the effects of the federal government shutdown in October 2013, the Pope Foundation gave $185,000 in grants to "13 food bank-type groups" in central, eastern, and western North Carolina.,[30] including three charities in Vance County.[31]

References

^ Jump up to: a b c d Cheney, John L., Jr. (ed.). North Carolina Manual 2001-2002. Raleigh, NC: Secretary of State of North Carolina. p. 570. Retrieved November 27, 2011.

Jump up ^ WRAL: Pope, Shanahan find place in McCrory cabinet

Jump up ^ Art Pope subject of New Yorker profile | newsobserver.com projects

^ Jump up to: a b c d http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer

Jump up ^ Cheney, John L., Jr. (ed.). North Carolina Manual 1991-1992. Raleigh, NC: Secretary of State of North Carolina. p. 313. Retrieved November 27, 2011.

Jump up ^ Art Pope will have say in agency he criticized. The News and Observer, June 15, 2011, by Lynn Bonner, Rob Christensen and Eden Stiffman.

Jump up ^ "Key legislators, business leaders on UNC strategic planning group". News and Observer. September 13, 2012.

Jump up ^ News & Observer: Romney awarded NC's 15 electoral college votes

Jump up ^ "McCrory unveils transition team, defends selection of conservative-activist Art Pope". Winston-Salem Journal. November 8, 2012. Retrieved November 10, 2012.

Jump up ^ "McCrory names Art Pope to be his chief budget writer". News & Observer. December 20, 2012. Retrieved December 21, 2012.

Jump up ^ http://www.nclobbyreform.org/about/members.php NC Coalition for Lobbying & Government Reform: Coalition Members

Jump up ^ "Lobbyist and legislators: How N.C. can do better". News & Observer, March 22, 2005, by Art Pope and Wib Gulley.

^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Rob Christensen (October 27, 2010). "Art Pope: a one-man Republican equalizer". The News and Observer.

Jump up ^ Two outside groups aid N.C. Republican wins - Local - TheSunNews.com

Jump up ^ Republicans take control in historic election - Basnight's 18-year reign as Senate leader ends; Cornelius Rep. Tillis may seek House speaker role. Charlotte Observer, The (NC) - Wednesday, November 3, 2010 Author: Lynn Bonner and Michael Biesecker

^ Jump up to: a b c Pierce, Olga; Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer (December 21, 2012). "How Dark Money Helped Republicans Hold the House and Hurt Voters". ProPublica. Retrieved December 22, 2012.

Jump up ^ Two outside groups aid N.C. Republican wins - Local - TheSunNews.com

Jump up ^ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/state-supreme-court-election-spending

Jump up ^ Rob Christensen (October 9, 2011). "N.C. isn’t in Pope’s pocket". The News and Observer.

Jump up ^ Thursday, Posted:; Dec 20, 2012. "McCrory names Art Pope to be his chief budget writer". Retrieved 2013-11-12.

Jump up ^ John J. Miller (December 21, 2009). "The Fisherman’s Friend". National Review.

Jump up ^ Board Of Directors | The North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law

Jump up ^ Todd Cohen (November 21, 2011). "Poverty, free markets focus of Pope Foundation". Philanthropy Journal.

Jump up ^ Khanna, Samiha. "Pope Foundation failed to file tax returns on time". Indy Week. Retrieved 2013-11-14.

Jump up ^ The Daily Tar Heel :: Pope funds prompt uproar

Jump up ^ "Pope Family Gives $2.3 Million for Western Civ, Football Coaches". UNC Alumni Review. October 8, 2006.

Jump up ^ "Pope Foundation gives $3 million to UNC". Philanthropy Journal. April 12, 2011.

Jump up ^ "Gifts totaling $10.5 Million will support the University’s student-athletes in Kenan". University Gazette. April 27, 2011.

Jump up ^ "Foundation announces $800k in December donations". News & Observer. December 13, 2012.

Jump up ^ "Pope Foundation gives money to ease government shutdown". Retrieved 2013-11-14.

Jump up ^ SARAH MANSUR (2013-10-23). "Pope Foundation steps up, helps three in Vance County". The Daily Dispatch.

Categories:

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