Bradley Foundation says it has spent $3 million on election work since 2012
Last week, the New Yorker shined the light on the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation and how it is funding some of the various nonprofits trying to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“These disparate nonprofits have one thing in common: they have all received funding from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation,” said the story. “Based in Milwaukee, the private, tax-exempt organization has become an extraordinary force in persuading mainstream Republicans to support radical challenges to election rules — a tactic once relegated to the far right.”
The story, written by investigative reporter Jane Mayer, said the Bradley Foundation has spent $18 million supporting 11 conservative groups “involved in election issues” since 2012.
That figure covers a much longer period than that mentioned in the headline on the story, “The Big Money behind the Big Lie.” The Big Lie is the conspiracy theory peddled by former President Donald Trump and others that there was massive voter fraud in the November election and that he actually beat President Joe Biden.
But this was the magazine’s point: Bradley and one of its longtime board members, Cleta Mitchell, has been interested in election issues, even if the fight over the 2020 election is a recent development.
Asked to respond to the New Yorker story, Bradley officials attacked the $18 million figure and suggested the story is, in short, a Big Stretch.
“Jane Mayer’s piece is filled with inaccuracies and distortions about the Bradley Foundation’s history, mission, directors and partners and as typical of her work, lacks journalistic integrity,” the foundation said in a nearly 300word statement.
It went on to say that the Bradley has long been a supporter of fair elections. The foundation said it has funded efforts to “encourage voter participation and give Americans the confidence that their vote matters.”
But in response to changes in election law because of the coronavirus pandemic, the statement said, it is “reasonable and prudent” to look back at last year’s elections and see if any changes are needed. The foundation has assets of more than $900 million and must give away at least 5% of its
“We stand by our story, which documents a history of funding going back to 2012. The Bradley Foundation is clearly trying to minimize its role in funding falsehoods about the security of American elections, including the 2020 Presidential election.” New Yorker spokeswoman
holdings annually.
“In 2020, Bradley made only $500,000 in grants to groups doing election integrity work, all of which is routinely disclosed. It’s a significant sum, but nowhere near Mayer’s invented figure,” the statement said. “It is also very small compared to the $10 million we contributed to state and local arts, education, and community groups during that same period.”
And who got the $500,000? The
Public Interest Legal Foundation, $300,000; the Heritage Foundation’s election law initiative, $175,000; and the Election Integrity Project, $25,000.
Since 2012, the foundation said it has given a total of $3 million — not $18 million — to groups focused on “election integrity.”
Of course, one person’s election integrity is another’s voter suppression — a point the New Yorker acknowledges but Bradley does not.
Bradley is headed by Rick Graber,a Milwaukee attorney who was U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic under Republican President George W. Bush and former chairman of the state Republican Party.
New Yorker backs story
Officials with the New Yorker dismissed the criticism.
“We stand by our story, which documents a history of funding going back to 2012,” said the New Yorker spokeswoman. “The Bradley Foundation is clearly trying to minimize its role in funding falsehoods about the security of American elections, including the 2020 Presidential election.”
Mayer, the veteran reporter, had her own point to make. Mayer has written about Bradley’s spending previously in her book “Dark Money” and was largely responsible for drawing attention to the right-wing network funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.
Mayer said the Bradley officials didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment, so she still had one unanswered question:
“Is it appropriate for a tax-exempt nonprofit foundation to keep funding a group such as the Public Interest Legal Foundation when two of its directors resigned from positions, under pressure, because of their involvement in trying to delegitimize the election of Joe Biden?”
Mayer is referring to, first, John Eastman, a former law professor at Chapman University in California who met with Trump in early January to discuss ways to overturn the election and spoke at Trump’s “Save America” rally hours before the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Mayer reported that Eastman was forced to retire from Chapman and was stripped of his public duties at the University of Colorado.
The second individual described by Mayer is Mitchell, the secretary of the Bradley board.
Mitchell resigned from the Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner law firm in January, just days after it came out that she joined Trump on a phone call aimed at overturning the results of the Georgia presidential election. Biden narrowly edged Trump in that contest.
Mitchell had been a senior partner at the firm for nearly 20 years.
In her article, Mayer documented Mitchell’s long-standing claims of voter fraud, even though there is little evidence that the problem is widespread.
Mitchell told the New Yorker that it is still not clear who won the Georgia presidential election. She argued that liberals had used the pandemic to change the rules so they could more easily win elections. In an email, she told Mayer that Democrats are “using black voters as a prop to accomplish their political objectives.”
“I actually think your readers need to hear from people like me — believe it or not, there are tens of millions of us,” Mitchell told the New Yorker.
Bradley officials said they did direct Mayer to an op-ed written by Graber when she contacted the foundation earlier this year. The foundation also pointed the magazine’s fact checkers to its website and strategic plan for details on the nonprofit’s history, mission, board and grant making.
Asked if Bradley ever considered bouncing Mitchell from the board, a foundation spokeswoman declined to comment, saying Bradley does not discuss internal matters.
The spokeswoman demurred again when asked if Graber believes the 2020 election was fair and that the right person is president: “As a 501(c)(3), the Bradley Foundation cannot be involved in and does not comment on politics.”
Just to be clear: Under IRS rules, such nonprofits can’t participate in campaigns or favor political candidates. But Bradley has played a major role in funding the nation’s conservative political and cultural infrastructure over the last 35 years.
And it’s done it mostly out of the national spotlight.