Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.
On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported that Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, Senate president pro tempore, had appointed Republican activist Art Pope to the board of the Golden LEAF Foundation.
Pope is a deep-pockets Raleigh insider and former state representative whose money helped propel Republican candidates into office last year.
Three entities backed by Pope — Americans for Prosperity, Civitas Action and Real Jobs N.C. — “poured $2 million into 22 targeted N.C. statehouse races” in 2010, the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham reported late last year.
Pope’s own business gave $390,000 to a couple of groups that targeted Democratic lawmakers in legislative districts with ads and mailers, AP reported.
Now the conservative retail executive will have influence over a nonprofit some Republicans love to hate: Golden LEAF, which was formed by the Legislature in 1999 to distribute money derived from a settlement between the state and tobacco companies.
The GOP-crafted budget approved by the N.C. General Assembly, and vetoed Sunday by Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue, diverts more than $17.5 million away from Golden LEAF in each of the next two fiscal years.
This move ostensibly was made to help eliminate a budget shortfall, but it could result in stalled initiatives designed to get the east’s economy moving again.
What the Republicans in charge don’t seem to realize is that by punishing Golden LEAF, which they’re obviously looking to do, they’re hurting the rural, long-tobacco-dependent communities that have been helped by the nonprofit’s economic development grants.
If the new budget had been in place this year, would Golden LEAF have been able to contribute $500,000 to the new children’s hospital addition at Greenville’s Pitt County Memorial Hospital?
We don’t know the answer to that question, but we do know the answer to this one: Should leading Republicans in Raleigh stop trying to penalize an organization that is doing good things for the rural east? The answer is a resounding “yes,” and some local Republicans and Democrats alike might voice that answer.