The Heritage Foundation has decided it is better to be feared than loved.
The conservative think tank conducted private market research on Capitol Hill between 2008 and 2009, asking respondents whether they were ever worried about being on the wrong side of Heritage’s position.
“Overwhelmingly, nobody cared,” said Tim Chapman, now the chief operating officer of Heritage Action, the organization’s three-year-old advocacy arm.
To combat this, the think tank created Heritage Action to knock some skulls around. But by doing so, Heritage upset the traditionally cozy relationship the Heritage Foundation had with congressional Republicans.
It was along this strategic arc – a conscious decision to be more combative – that the think tank chose Sen. Jim DeMint, 62, a polarizing, conservative firebrand, to lead it.
But DeMint wasn’t the board’s original choice for the post of president.
Heritage’s Board of Trustees initially had doubts about whether choosing a politician would be the right move for a think tank that had for decades been led by a former Hill staffer with a Ph.D., outgoing president Ed Feulner.
“There was a great debate over whether Jim DeMint was the right guy, because he was political. The Heritage Foundation is not political,” one board member told the Washington Examiner.
In the first half of 2012, Heritage offered the presidency to Larry Arnn, the president of conservative Hillsdale College and a member of the board. After considering it, Arnn declined the job, deciding instead to remain in academia.
Arnn did not respond to requests for comment.
The search to replace Feulner took the better part of three years, during which 18 candidates were interviewed. Academics, “two or three” politicians, staff from other think tanks, and even media figures were considered for the position, Heritage Executive Vice President Philip Truluck said.
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