# John Locke Foundation The flagship of [[Art Pope]]'s North Carolina policy machine, and one of the most influential state-level think tanks in the country. Founded in 1990 with Pope as founding chairman, the John Locke Foundation (JLF) is a free-market think tank in Raleigh that produces policy research, polling, journalism, and advocacy in service of tax cuts, deregulation, school choice, and limited government. Its longtime tagline — working "for truth, for freedom, and for the future of North Carolina" — captures the project: not just to publish papers, but to set the terms of political debate in a single state and supply the intellectual scaffolding for a Republican legislature. ## Origins and the Heritage Blueprint JLF was born directly out of the national [[State Policy Network]] strategy. In the late 1980s the [[Heritage Foundation]] introduced Art Pope to the emerging effort to plant free-market think tanks in state capitals — replicating Heritage's national model at the state level. Pope has said that Heritage's drive to create state free-market think tanks "led to the birth of the John Locke Foundation." JLF became a charter exemplar of the SPN federation: a state node in a coordinated 50-state network sharing research, messaging, and donors, and aligned with national vehicles like [[ALEC]]. ## Funding JLF's primary patron is the [[John William Pope Foundation]], which has supplied the majority of its budget for its entire history — for example, $2.75 million of the Pope Foundation's 2020 grants went to JLF. This concentrated funding is the defining feature critics point to: JLF is frequently described less as an independent think tank than as the policy arm of a single donor's political program, a textbook node in North Carolina's [[Dark Money]] architecture. Defenders counter that its research and polling have earned credibility across three decades. ## The Civitas Merger (2021) In December 2020, JLF announced it would merge with the [[John W. Pope Civitas Institute]], the more campaign-adjacent polling-and-advocacy shop Pope had founded in 2005. Effective January 1, 2021, the two organizations combined staff and resources under the John Locke Foundation name, with former Civitas CEO Donald Bryson becoming JLF president. The merger consolidated Pope's entire North Carolina policy operation — research, polling, and advocacy — into a single "policy powerhouse," ending the division of labor between the two shops. John Hood, the longtime JLF leader, had by then moved to run the Pope Foundation. ## Reach and Influence JLF operates media outlets (including the Carolina Journal) that it claims reach well over 100,000 people, giving it a publishing footprint most state think tanks lack. Its influence peaked when Pope became state Budget Director under Governor [[Pat McCrory]] (2013–2014) and the legislature JLF had spent two decades cultivating enacted much of its agenda — deep tax cuts, unemployment-benefit reductions, and education changes. The think tank's research and the legislature's policy moved in close coordination, and the redistricting that followed the [[RedMap Project]]–era 2010 takeover entrenched the majorities that carried it out. ## See Also - [[Art Pope]] — Founding chairman and primary funder - [[John William Pope Foundation]] — Principal patron - [[John W. Pope Civitas Institute]] — Merged into JLF in 2021 - [[State Policy Network]] — National federation JLF anchors in North Carolina - [[Heritage Foundation]] — The national model JLF was built to replicate - [[Pat McCrory]] — Governor whose agenda tracked JLF's - [[RedMap Project]] — The redistricting operation that secured the majorities