Jane Mayer, State for Sale. The New Yorker, 10 October 2011. “A conservative multimillionaire [Art Pope] has taken control in North Carolina, one of 2012’s top battlegrounds…. For years, Pope, like several other farsighted conservative corporate activists, has been spending millions in an attempt to change the direction of American politics. According to an analysis of tax records by Democracy NC, a progressive government watchdog group, in the past decade Pope, his family, his family foundation, and his business have spent more than forty million dollars in this effort.”
Excerpts from story:
In an e-mail, Chris Kromm, the executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, said of the 2004 and 2006 efforts, “Pope began in earnest his quest to be kingmaker in the North Carolina G.O.P., spending big money to push out moderates and get farther-right Republicans elected.” In doing so, he sent a clear message to the remaining Republican moderates: if they didn’t heed him, he would not hesitate to go after them. “Pope created a climate of fear,” Kromm told me. “He has a whole network that can reward or punish Republicans. . . . That’s the strength of the Pope network. It enforces ideological conformity, and gets people in line. . . .
According to both conservative and liberal observers, Pope’s advocacy network has achieved its greatest influence over the new Republican majority in the North Carolina legislature. Hood, the head of the Locke Foundation, says of the General Assembly, “A significant number of our recommendations were adopted this year. We favored no new taxes, lifting the cap on charter schools, cutting spending, as well as dozens of small-ticket items.” Martin Nesbitt, the Democratic leader, said, “The John Locke and Civitas foundations put out road maps for how to change everything, and the legislature pretty much followed the script.”…
At the same time that Pope’s network has been fighting to get university budgets cut, Pope has offered to fund academic programs in subjects that he deems worthwhile, like Western civilization and free-market economics. Some faculty members have seen Pope’s offers as attempts to buy academic control….
The John Locke Foundation [a conservative think tank founded and largely funded by Pope’s family foundation]…is sponsoring what it calls the North Carolina History Project, an online teaching tool aimed at reorienting the study of the state’s history away from social movements and government and toward the celebration of the “personal creation of wealth.”…
Last year, Pope garnered national attention when North Carolina Democrats accused Pope of engineering, in 2009, the re-segregation of public schools in Wake County, which includes Raleigh. Conservative board members, elected with the support of Pope and Tea Party activists, overturned a program that used busing to achieve economic diversity in schools—a program that the Washington Post had called “one of the nation’s most celebrated integration efforts.” The new school board pledged, instead, to send more students to neighborhood schools….
Even some North Carolinians associated with Jesse Helms think that Pope has gone too far. Jim Goodmon, the president and C.E.O. of Capitol Broadcasting Company, which owns the CBS and Fox television affiliates in Raleigh, says, “I was a Republican, but I’m embarrassed to be one in North Carolina because of Art Pope.” Goodmon’s grandfather A. J. Fletcher was among Helms’s biggest backers, having launched him as a radio and television commentator. Goodmon describes Pope’s forces as “anti-community,” adding, “The way they’ve come to power is to say that government is bad. Their only answer is to cut taxes.” Goodmon believes that Pope’s agenda is not even good for business, because the education cuts he’s helped bring about will undermine the workforce. “If you want to create good jobs, you need good schools,” he says.