Bradley group fueling conservative agenda

Christian Century, Nov 15, 2003 by Mark O'Keefe

Name a conservative idea-whether it's school vouchers, favoring the private sector over government programs or the premise that there's a worldwide clash of civilizations--and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is apt to have its fingerprints on it. The Milwaukee-based foundation has quietly pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks, fellowships and public-policy experiments such as welfare reform.

Headed by a former Republican Party official and enjoying strong ties to the Bush administration, the foundation is credited with producing more than a decade of intellectual fuel for conservative lawmakers. Bradley and a cadre of smaller conservative foundations have channeled tax-exempt dollars through a national network of highly paid scholars and nonprofit groups, giving the ideological right, some contend, a sharper edge in the battle of political ideas.

To his dismay, Chip Berlet, senior analyst at the liberal Boston think tank Political Research Associates, has found the strategy shrewdly effective, especially in contrast to that of left-leaning foundations that he says tend to fired bureaucratic programs more than adventuresome ideas. Berlet says the conservative funding "has been significantly responsible for the shift of American polities to the right in the last 20 years."

And the Bradley Foundation, the kingpin, recently upped its ante. On October 7, at a ceremony in the Library of Congress, the first annual Bradley Prizes were presented to four "intellectual entrepreneurs" receiving $250,000 each. They were Harvard University law professor Mary Ann Glendon, University of Chicago bioethicist Leon B. Kass, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer and Hoover Institution scholar Thomas Sowell.

Moreover, Bradley Foundation President Michael Grebe plans to put new emphases on bolstering national defense, promoting "right-to-work" and other labor policies and reforming entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare so they rely less on the federal government and more on the private sector. "We think ideas are important," said Grebe, a former Republican National Committee member who surrendered his party titles when he joined the foundation in 2002. "One way to focus Oil ideas is to reward people who generate them."

Bradley has been doing that since 1985, the year the Allen Bradley Company, maker of assembly-line machinery, was purchased by Rockwell International for $1.65 billion. In accordance with the family estates of deceased brothers Lynde and Harry Bradley, who founded the company in 1901, a portion of the sale, $290 million, went to the company's foundation, which then went independent. The board decided to honor the legacy of the brothers by promoting national ideas consistent with their conservative beliefs in private enterprise.

Foundation are nonprofit organizations that award annual grants, presumably for the public good. Even in the philanthropic world, there's a common misperception that such organizations must steer away from all things political--though federal law bars them from lobbying for specific legislation. "In fact, foundation have a lot of latitude to fired work related to public policy," said Steven Lawrence, director of research for the Foundation Center in New York City.

The largest of conservative funders, Bradley is more unabashedly ideological than most foundation on the political left or at the center. In addition to Bradley, other major givers on the right include the Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation.

Bradley has leveraged its influence with an uncanny ability to spot, fund and cultivate political ideas just as they're incubating. "Bradley has been able to pick winners," said Capuchin Brother Bob Smith, a Bradley, board member, president of Messmer Catholic Schools and a national figure in the school voucher movement. "That's why some on the left are so angry."

One early pick was Bradley's $75,000 grant in 1986 to publish the book Politics, Markets and American's Schools, by John Chubb and Terry Moe. It argued for more competition and choice through privatization of education, and is touted as primary reading for the voucher movement. Some choices have been controversial, such as grants for Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, which tried to link intelligence, race and genes. Grebe says the foundation has given grants in excess of $500 million in the past 18 years.

Media Transparency, a liberal watchdog group, has compiled an online database that can calculate Bradley funding of specific groups over the period 1985-2001. It shows that Bradley recipients range from nonpolitical groups such as the Zoo logical Society of Milwaukee County ($1.7 million) to the Heritage Foundation ($14.3 million) and the American Enterprise Institute ($14.9 million), two of Washington's most influential conservative think tanks.