SPN Founders, History, and Staff

SPN Founders, History, and Staff:

This article is a breakout from the main article on the State Policy Network (SPN).

Please see State Policy Network for more. Below is information about SPN's founders, history, and important personnel:

SPN History
SPN was founded in November 1991 and incorporated in March of 1992. The founding chairman of the board was Thomas A. Roe (1927-2000), and the founding executive director was Byron S. Lamm. It was formerly known as the Madison Group, which was founded in 1986, and was formed as an umbrella organization for what were intended to be "mini-Heritage Foundations at the state level."

The Madison Group was "launched by the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC . . . and housed in the Chicago-based Heartland Institute," according to a 1991 report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) found in the University of California-San Francisco's Legacy Tobacco Documents.

The case is strengthened by an October 1987 ALEC directory also available via the Tobacco Documents that says, "The Madison Group is chaired by Mrs. Constance Heckman [now Constance Campanella, founder of the lobbying firm Stateside Associates], Executive Director of ALEC . . ." A speakers list also available in the Tobacco Documents says in Constance Campanella's biography, "She was a co-founder and first President of The Madison Group, the first network of free-market state think tanks."

See SPN Ties to ALEC for SPN's more recent ties to the group.

There were 12 original think tanks when SPN was founded. As of 2013, there are 64 SPN member think tanks in all 50 states.

Founding and Ties to Reagan
According to the National Review and SPN's website, SPN was founded at the suggestion of President Ronald Reagan. In a conversation with Thomas Roe (a member of his "kitchen cabinet") in the 1980s, Reagan allegedly suggested Roe create "something like a Heritage Foundation in each of the states." So in 1986, Roe founded the South Carolina Policy Council. Similar groups -- state-based think tanks -- formed in Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, and elsewhere at around the same time. Representatives of those groups met at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C. and started to call themselves the "Madison Group." SPN was formally created as an "umbrella organization" to provide "advisory services" -- bankrolled by Roe and other conservative funders -- in 1992.

SPN's founding executive director was Byron Lamm, who held that position from 1992 until 2000. He was extremely influential in the development of the organization, as well as co-founding SPN member state think tank the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, just as Roe had founded the South Carolina Policy Council. He was succeeded by Tracie Sharp, who was the executive director and one of the founders of the Cascade Policy Institute. Sharp has also been quite influential. During her tenure, SPN has continued to grow at a rapid rate, expanding from 43 member state think tanks in 2002 to 63 member state think tanks in 2013. Sharp also co-founded member state think tank the Cascade Policy Institute.

Roe was chairman of SPN's board from its founding until October 1999. He was succeeded by Carl Helstrom, Executive Director of the JM and Milbank Foundations.

From 1992 to 1998, SPN operated in a relatively limited organizational capacity. Then, according to SPN, "SPN's Board of Directors realized the need for a stronger organization that would provide additional services. After extensive discussions, the existing Board took a bold and historic step in September 1998, dissolving itself and appointing a transitional Board to fulfill the broader role envisioned for the organization."

SPN was founded and headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana until 1999, when it moved to Richmond, California. As of April 2013, it is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

"Pioneers" of the state think tank movements, as Lamm called them in a 2002 newsletter, included "Joe and Diane Bast at Heartland, John Andrews, then at the Independence Institute [its founder], Larry Reed at Mackinac, Stan Marshall and John Cooper at the James Madison Institute, Fritz Steiger at Texas Public Policy Foundation, and Tom Roe."

Thomas A. Roe
Thomas Anderson Roe, Jr. (1927-2000, pictured at right) was a businessman and industrialist from Greenville, South Carolina. He was the founding chairman of the State Policy Network (SPN) as well as founder of the South Carolina Policy Council. In the mid-1980s, Roe allegedly told fellow wealthy conservative donor and Heritage Foundation trustee Robert Krieble, "You capture the Soviet Union -- I'm going to capture the states." He was an adviser to President Ronald Reagan and was called "an architect of the South Carolina Republican Party." He died in 2000, but his Roe Foundation "continues to provide financial support to free-market policy groups across the country."

Roe "accumulated his wealth as chairman of the board of Builder Marts of America Inc., which he transformed from a small building-materials supply company into an international corporation," according to The Greenville News. (The company had sales of $600 million in 1998.)

No "Collectivist World" or Organized Musicians: Strict Instructions for Endowment at Roe Foundation
According to the conservative "opposition research" think tank Capital Research Center (CRC), Roe believed in maintaining "donor intent," so the foundation his personal wealth endowed, the Roe Foundation, has explicit by-laws and requires grantees to "sign a document promising to uphold" the following principles:


 * "First, 'the maximum potential of a free people is achieved when they are free to control their own destiny'; second, 'the greatest threat to these freedoms is intrusive government'; and third, 'the Judeo-Christian tradition represents the underpinnings of a just society.' Furthermore, recipients of the foundation’s support must recognize 'the importance of state and local organizations functioning alongside national organizations in the pursuit of a free society.' Finally, they must 'educate the public at large and all public policy makers to a better understanding of these fundamental values and practical ways to achieve the goals of expanding human freedom.'"

A few grants can go to "nonprofit organizations in the metropolitan area of Greenville until such time as there are no descendents [sic] of Tom or Shirley Roe living there, but one such grant, to the Greenville Symphony Orchestra, "stipulates that its musicians cannot unionize. 'Tom didn’t like unions,' says [his widow] Shirley Roe."

Roe gave the Mont Pelerin Society and Philadelphia Society "standing to sue" the Roe Foundation if, after his death, the Roe Foundation makes a grant to an organization “whose activities or public statements reflect a belief in a collectivist world or any view inconsistent” with the foundation’s announced principles (emphasis added), according to Chicago lawyer Paul Rhoads, who has written for the Philanthropy Roundtable.

Political Influence
According to CRC, Roe was vice chairman and finance chairman of the Republican Party in South Carolina and a member of the Republican National Finance Committee. He was a delegate to the 1964 Republican National Convention, where he "enthusiastically supported the doomed candidacy of Barry Goldwater."

But according to Ed McMullen, president of the South Carolina Policy Council, "He became frustrated with going to meetings of Republicans and discovering that nobody else in the room had even heard of economists such as Ludwig von Mises or Friedrich Hayek." And, according to SPN's founding executive director, Byron Lamm, "He was also concerned that a lot of Republicans were country-club types who weren’t really committed to free-market ideas." As John J. Miller summarizes in his CRC article about Roe, "Too many of them simply hadn’t read their Hayek."

So he turned to conservative policy foundations and was an early funder of the Heritage Foundation, joining Joseph Coors, Samuel Roberts Noble, and Richard Mellon Scaife. He led Heritage's finance committee.

Early Life and Business Career
According to CRC, Roe grew up on his family's farm. He attended Furman University near Greenville, graduating in 1948. The school later gave him an honorary law degree in 1980. He did cancer research as an undergraduate there. In 1961, his father died and he inherited his business, Citizens Lumber Company.

In order for his and other family-owned building materials dealerships to be able to compete with chain stores, he created "Builder Marts of America" to supply "a variety of services to independent dealers, including advertising, security, accounting, and training." Meanwhile, a subsidiary, Builder Way, "moved to acquire" businesses that became available "when a client of Builder Marts would retire or die."

He also started a long-distance phone service to take advantage of the telephone industry deregulation. It was eventually taken over by MCI.

Builder Marts became a "Forbes 500" international company by 2000.

Please see Thomas A. Roe and the Roe Foundation for more.

Constance Campanella (formerly Heckman)
An October 1987 ALEC personnel directory available in the Tobacco Library says, "The Madison Group is chaired by Mrs. Constance Heckman, Executive Director of ALEC . . ." A speakers list also available in the Tobacco Documents says in Constance Campanella's biography, "She was a co-founder and first President of The Madison Group, the first network of free-market state think tanks."

Constance Heckman is now Constance Campanella, and she left ALEC in 1988 to found the lobbying firm Stateside Associates, which calls itself "the largest state and local government affairs firm." Campenella also formerly served on the Board of Directors of the Washington Area State Relations Group, a state-level lobbyist networking group, according to a report by DeSmog Blog. The report notes, "Her career move from serving as ALEC's executive director to setting up Stateside is another indicator ALEC and related groups facilitate lobbying."

Byron S. Lamm
Byron S. Lamm was the founding executive director of the State Policy Network (SPN), from 1992 until January 2000. According to a 1994 article in The Boston Globe, Lamm was a talk-radio show host, and he told the Globe that SPN often broadcast its messages via talk radio.

Lamm is a managing partner of Pin Oak Group, LLC, an investment firm in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He co-founded and is president of the board of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, an SPN-member think tank founded in 1989. He is on the board of directors of the Roe Foundation. He has previously been chairman of the board of the Center for Education Reform, a group committed to education privatization; and on the board of directors of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC, formerly the Political Economy Research Center), which describes itself as a “free market environmental” group committed to deregulation of industry and to the privatization of public assets; and the Center for Civic Renewal. He has funded the Heartland Institute.

Lamm has personally given $56,455 to Republican and Libertarian politicians and PACS from 1998 to September 2012, including $1,500 to the influential right-wing political group Club for Growth and its PAC.

Please see Byron S. Lamm for more.

Tracie Sharp
Tracie Sharp, president of the State Policy Network (SPN) since January 2000, had previously served on its board of directors for 14 years. She was the executive director and one of the founders of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon's market-oriented think tank, from 1991 to 1999. She worked in the areas of education and social security privatization.

In 2012, a list of 2010 funders of an SPN member think tank in Texas, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), that was disclosed to the IRS was inadvertently made public. The list of funders revealed is an important case study in how SPN's member think tanks are funded, and by whom. Koch Industries, for example, gave $159,834 directly to TPPF, in addition to $69,788.61 from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation, which is a Koch Family Foundation. SPN itself gave TPPF $49,306.90, but what's more, Tracie Sharp, SPN's executive director, was the contact person for an additional $495,000. These two grants, for $300,000 and $195,000, were listed as being received from the "State Think Tank Fund" and the "Government Transparency Fund," respectively -- two funds about which virtually nothing is known.

Sharp represents SPN as a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). She is a member of ALEC's Education Task Force and Health and Human Services Task Force. She was the recipient of ALEC's 2009 Private Sector Member of the Year Award.

Sharp is also a trustee to the Roe Foundation and to the Special Hope Foundation, a "family foundation supporting innovative projects to assist the causes of the physically, emotionally, and developmentally disabled," a biographical note states. In 1993, Sharp founded HOPE-Oregon, a Portland, Oregon-based "private volunteer effort to provide health care education services to low-income families."

"Previously, Ms. Sharp worked with Washington State radio commentator and Republican Party leader John Carlson as director of programs at the Washington Institute for Policy Studies in Seattle." Please see Tracie Sharp for more.

Board of Directors
As of June 2013:


 * Carl Helstrom, Chairman (The JM Foundation), board member since at least 1997
 * Tracie Sharp, President (former executive director and co-founder, Cascade Policy Institute), board member since at least 1997
 * Stanford D. Swim, Secretary (The GFC Foundation), board member since 2007
 * Thomas Willcox (The Roe Foundation), Treasurer, board member since 2007, son-in-law of Tom and Shirley Roe


 * Theodore D. Abram (American Institute for Full Employment), board member since 1998
 * Whitney Ball (Donors Trust), board member since 2005
 * John Jackson (Adolph Coors Foundation and Castle Rock Foundation)
 * Adam Meyerson (Philanthropy Roundtable), board member since 2007
 * Bridgett Wagner (The Heritage Foundation), board member since 2005
 * Barbara Wells Kenney (Freedom Foundation), board member since 2005

Former Board Members

 * Gisele Huff, former Treasurer (Jaquelin Hume Foundation), board member from 2004 to 2012
 * Byron S. Lamm, founding Executive Director and former boardmember from at least 1997 to 2006 (Pin Oak Group, LLC) (became president in September 1998)
 * Robert W. Poole, Jr. (Reason Foundation), from at least 1997 to 2006
 * Lawrence Reed (Mackinac Center for Public Policy), from at least 1997 to 2006
 * Gary Palmer (Alabama Family Alliance), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * C.C. Guy, Assistant Treasurer, from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Bob Williams (Evergreen Freedom Foundation), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Thomas A. Roe (Roe Foundation), from 1992 to October 1999
 * Thomas C. Atwood (Heritage Foundation), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Judy M. Cresanta (Nevada Policy Research Institute), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Rep. Jeff Flake (former executive director, Goldwater Institute, now represents Arizona's 6th district in the U.S. House of Representatives), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Jeff Judson (Texas Public Policy Foundation), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Jo Kwong (Atlas Economic Research Foundation), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Mitchell B. Pearlstein (Center of the American Experiment), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Fred Smith (Competitive Enterprise Institute), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Michael W. Watson (Arkansas Policy Foundation), from at least 1997 to 1998
 * Alejandro A. Chafuen, from 1999 to 2004
 * Derwood S. Chase Jr., from 1999 to 2004
 * Gaylord K. Swim (Sutherland Institute), from 2000 to 2004

Principal Staff
As of April 2013:


 * Tracie Sharp, President and CEO
 * Tony Woodlief, Executive Vice President since 2013
 * Jennifer Butler, Vice President of External Relations (Executive Vice President from 2006-2013)
 * Lynn Harsh, Vice President of Strategy
 * Daniel J. Erspamer, Vice President for Strategic Partnerships
 * Teresa Brown, Director of Strategic Operations
 * Becky Helland, Leadership Development Initiative Operations & Tactical Officer
 * Meredith Turney, Director of Strategic Communications
 * Kurt T. Weber, Senior Advisor, Contractor with Total Consulting Strategies
 * Nicole Williams, Senior Communications Advisor - President, Spark Freedom
 * Alexis Baker, Manager of Donor Relations
 * Rebecca Bruchhauser, Director of Donor Relations
 * Rebecca Feldman, Manager of Foundation Relations
 * Rebecca Gaetz, Donor Relations Manager
 * Jerry Krause, Manager of Donor Relations
 * Brad Gruber, Operations Director
 * Rachel Kopec, Coalitions Coordinator
 * Kathleen O'Hearn, Director of Coalitions

Former Staff
Former staff (in 2006) include:


 * Kate Doner of Doner Fundraising, Fundraising
 * Tonya R. Barr, Outreach Coordinator
 * Patrick McDougal, Program Coordinator
 * Kurt T. Weber, Senior Advisor

Contact Details
State Policy Network 1655 N. Fort Myer Dr., Suite 360 Arlington, VA 22209 Phone: (703) 243-1655 Fax: (703) 740-0314 Email: info@spn.org Web: http://www.spn.org/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StatePolicy Twitter: @StatePolicy