# Goldwater Institute Founded in 1988 with the blessing of Senator [[Barry Goldwater]], the Goldwater Institute is the flagship Arizona-based libertarian think tank within the [[State Policy Network]] constellation. It is widely credited as the birthplace of the **Education Savings Account (ESA)** — the next-generation school-choice model that has become the movement's most potent legislative vehicle. Annual budget approximately $10–12M. ## The ESA Invention The Goldwater Institute's most consequential contribution to the school-choice movement is the ESA concept itself. In 2011, Arizona enacted the nation's first ESA program, legally architected with substantial Goldwater Institute involvement. The model differed from traditional vouchers in a critical way: instead of a check sent to a school, families receive a state-funded account they can spend on tuition, tutoring, curricula, therapy, or other educational services — giving parents more flexibility and making the program harder to attack as a direct subsidy to religious schools. Arizona's ESA program became the prototype. In 2022, Governor Doug Ducey signed Arizona's universal ESA expansion, making every K-12 student eligible regardless of income — the first universal ESA in the country. By 2025, ESA or ESA-like programs had spread to 16+ states, with Arizona's model serving as the template. The program now serves over 100,000 Arizona students. ## Beyond School Choice The Goldwater Institute operates across several policy domains beyond education: **Right to Try** — The institute conceived and championed Right to Try legislation, which allows terminally ill patients to access experimental drugs that have passed Phase I FDA trials but have not completed the full approval process. The Goldwater Institute drafted the model legislation, which was adopted by 41 states before being signed into federal law by Trump in 2018. This is the institute's most visible national policy win outside education. **Regulatory reform** — Model legislation and litigation challenging occupational licensing, certificate-of-need laws, and other regulatory barriers. This work overlaps with the [[Institute for Justice]]'s economic liberty docket. **State constitutional litigation** — The institute's Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation brings cases in state courts challenging government overreach, including challenges to COVID-era emergency powers, public-sector union practices, and state regulatory agencies. **Transparency and accountability** — Challenges to government secrecy, public records access, and public-sector pension obligations. ## Personnel Pipeline [[Clint Bolick]] co-founded the [[Institute for Justice]] before serving at the Goldwater Institute as Vice President of Litigation from 2007 to 2016. Governor Doug Ducey elevated Bolick to the Arizona Supreme Court in 2016 — demonstrating the pipeline from libertarian think-tank litigation to the bench. The Goldwater-to-judiciary pipeline mirrors at the state level what the [[Federalist Society]] operates at the federal level. ## Funders The Goldwater Institute's donor base includes the standard libertarian-conservative funder network: the [[Koch Network]] (via DonorsTrust), the Searle Freedom Trust, the [[Bradley Foundation]], and Arizona-based donors. The institute does not publicly disclose its full donor list. ## KB Significance The Goldwater Institute's ESA innovation represents the school-choice movement's most important conceptual breakthrough since Friedman's original voucher proposal. By reframing public education funding as a parent-controlled account rather than a school subsidy, the ESA model sidestepped many of the political and legal objections that had stalled voucher programs for decades. The institute's name — invoking the Goldwater legacy of principled conservatism — also illustrates the tension between the older libertarian right (limited government, individual rights, institutional restraint) and the newer populist right (cultural warfare, institutional capture, executive power) that defines the KB's broader ideological landscape. ## See Also - [[State Policy Network]] — The national network of state-level think tanks - [[School Choice Ecosystem]] — The movement the ESA invention transformed - [[Clint Bolick]] — IJ co-founder → Goldwater VP of Litigation → Arizona Supreme Court - [[Institute for Justice]] — The litigation arm that defends programs the Goldwater Institute designs - [[Barry Goldwater]] — Namesake; the libertarian-conservative tradition the institute invokes - [[ALEC]] — Model legislation partner - [[School Choice]] — The concept