The billionaires financing union-busting in Florida

A constellation of conservative groups just pushed a union-busting bill through the Florida Legislature. Federal tax records show they have a lot more in common than ideology.

Photo credit: A Disappearing Act

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Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional information on Oct. 23, 2023.

About a week after Florida lawmakers gaveled open their 2023 legislative session, the state House of Representatives held its first public hearing on a bill meant to make it harder for tens of thousands of Florida workers to organize into unions and bargain for better pay and benefits.

Lawmakers heard from dozens of workers and union organizers bitterly opposed to the bill. But they also heard from a constellation of conservative nonprofits who loved it.

A vice president at the James Madison Institute, a think tank in Tallahassee, called the legislation reasonable and sensible. A lobbyist for Americans for Prosperity, the national grassroots group headquartered in Virginia, insisted it would help workers rather than hurt them.

People associated with the Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Wash.; the Mackinac Center in Midland, Mich.; the Foundation for Government Accountability in Naples, Fla.; and the Foundation for Excellence in Education in Tallahassee all expressed their support, too.  

The parade of praise, from half a dozen far-flung and seemingly disconnected research and advocacy organizations, gave off the impression that the anti-union legislation had support from an array of intellectual scholars and on-the-ground activists.

But a review of federal tax records shows that those organizations were bound together by more than ideology. They are, to a large extent, funded by the very same donors, taking in millions of dollars a year from a relatively small network of superrich families and their private foundations.

The display worked. Less than two months after that first hearing, the legislation was signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who has himself raised millions of dollars from many of the same billionaires and multimillionaires. (Lobbying by some of Florida’s biggest corporations helped pass this bill, too.)

This was an enormous victory for people opposed to labor unions. Among other things, Senate Bill 256 makes it more difficult for workers to pay dues to their union — while simultaneously requiring more workers to pay dues overall or else risk losing their union altogether.

The changes directly impact most public employees across Florida, from teachers and nurses to garbage collectors and clerks. But it does not touch all public workers: Ron DeSantis and Republicans in the Florida Legislature made sure to exempt police officers, firefighters, state troopers and prison guards — whose unions have provided political support to Ron DeSantis and Republicans in the Florida Legislature.

But who, ultimately, is behind those conservative nonprofits that collectively pushed Senate Bill 256?

Now, nonprofits don’t have to disclose their donors. That’s why nonprofits that are politically active are often referred to as “dark money” operations.

But they do have to reveal the grants they give to other organizations. And the nonprofits that lobbied for Senate Bill 256 get much of their funding from other nonprofits — usually family foundations or charitable trusts that have been set up by wealthy benefactors, as way to fund favored causes while minimizing income taxes.

And, happily for all involved, journalists at ProPublica have spent years gathering nonprofit tax returns and assembling them into a text-searchable electronic database.

(Side note: ProPublica is a national treasure.)

The union-busters

What’s about to follow will, admittedly, be something of a mess of names and numbers. So before we start that, let’s just walk through the main nonprofits that are the subject of this analysis.

They are:

• The Freedom Foundation: Based on in Olympia, Wash., the Freedom Foundation focuses primarily on weakening public employee unions through legislation, litigation and “opt out” campaigns that try to persuade workers to stop paying dues to their unions or to leave them entirely. They sometimes get involved in other issues, too; for instance, the Freedom Foundation is currently trying to overturn a new Washington state tax on investors who pocket more than $250,000 in profits when selling stock.

• The Foundation for Government Accountability: This is a Naples-based think tank that opposes expanding Medicaid health insurance but supports cutting food stamps and rolling back child labor laws. The foundation has a separate advocacy arm that is known in public as the Opportunity Solutions Project and in tax returns as FGA Action.

• The James Madison Institute: Based in Tallahassee, the James Madison Institute has promoted a variety of proposals in the Florida Legislature, including tax cuts for people who buy private planes and penalties for banks that refuse to do business with companies involved in industries such as fossil fuel production or for-profit prisons.

• The Mackinac Center for Public Policy: This is a research and litigation center in Midland, Mich., that is is currently fighting to stop the Biden administration from forgiving student debt and to save Republican income tax cuts in Michigan. Like the Foundation for Government Accountability, the Mackinac Center has a related advocacy organization, which is called the Center for Worker Progress Action.

• The Foundation for Excellence in Education: Also known as ExcelinEd, this is the larger of two organizations led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush that support the privatization of public education through programs such as private school vouchers and privately managed charter schools. It shares key employees and directors with the smaller Foundation for Florida’s Future.

• Americans for Prosperity: By far the biggest and best known of these groups, Americans for Prosperity lobbies in state legislatures across the country. AFP has become a significant force in Florida, where a former state House speaker is now a top advisor to the group and the current state House speaker employs a former AFP communications director as his official spokesperson. AFP has been lobbying in recent years to reduce the power of local communities to regulate businesses.

As you’ll see, there are extensive ties that bind all these groups together. But here’s one simple and easy way to see it: All six are part of a nationwide consortium of conservative groups known as the State Policy Network that are working together to influence laws in all 50 states. The State Policy Network itself is yet another nonprofit that also raises money from many of the same donors.

Okay, so who are those donors?  

The Bradley Foundation

If there’s a single funder most responsible for Senate Bill 256, it’s probably the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, which has for years been one of the largest financiers of conservative causes in the country.

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation appears to have been the largest publicly reported donor to both the Freedom Foundation ($610,000) and the James Madison Institute ($275,000) in 2021, which is the most recent year for which comprehensive records are available. It was also a top donor that year to the Foundation for Government Accountability ($500,000) and the Mackinac Center ($425,000).

What’s more, much of the money the Bradley Foundation gave these groups appears to have been specifically ticketed for anti-union campaigns. Tax records show that most of the money it gave to the Freedom Foundation was for “workplace freedom efforts.” So was most of the money it gave to the Mackinac Center.

In addition, the Bradley Foundation also coordinates a separate fund — the Bradley Impact Fund — which is financed by outside donors and was also a big contributor in 2021 to the Freedom Foundation ($164,572), the Foundation for Government Accountability ($194,500) and Americans for Prosperity ($55,100).

And who is the Bradley Foundation? Well, the foundation itself was seeded from the fortune of the Allen-Bradley Company, a Milwaukee-based electronics manufacturer and defense contractor that was co-founded by Lynde Bradley and sold in 1985 to Rockwell International for $1.65 billion.

Today, it is run by a CEO who is a former corporate lobbyist, chairperson of the Wisconsin Republican Party, and ambassador under President George W. Bush. It is overseen by a board whose members include Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who was part of former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Meanwhile, major donors to the Bradley Impact Fund include foundations led by billionaires such as Charles Johnson, the former investment manager who now owns the San Francisco Giants baseball team, and Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of The Home Depot. Records show Johnson’s foundation gave $1 million to the Bradley Impact Fund in 2021; Marcus’ foundation gave $200,000.

Johnson’s foundation has been an important supporter of Jeb Bush’s school-privatization groups, too: Records show his foundation gave $110,000 in 2020 to the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

Charles Koch

This was the name you probably expected to read first.

Charles Koch is the billionaire chairman and co-CEO of the industrial conglomerate Koch Industries, which refines oil, runs pulp mills and makes real-estate investments, among many other things. It’s one of the largest privately held companies in the world. Koch is also the main person behind a complex web of politically active nonprofits that are often referred to simply as the “Koch network.” (His brother, David Koch, who also deeply involved, passed away in 2019.)

Americans for Prosperity is a centerpiece of that network. Records show that nearly all of AFP’s funding in 2021 came from the Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, which is led by a longtime Koch advisor and oversees most of Koch’s advocacy operations.

But Charles Koch’s funding isn’t limited to AFP and his direct network. Another nonprofit that Koch himself chairs — which used to be known as the Charles Koch Institute and is now called Stand Together Fellowships — was also one of the largest donors in 2021 to the Mackinac Center ($500,000), the Foundation for Excellence in Education ($150,000), and the James Madison Institute ($70,000).

And yet another entity — the Charles Koch Foundation — has previously been a major donor to the Freedom Foundation ($250,000 in 2018).

The Walmart heirs

The offspring of Walmart Inc. founder Sam Walton — led by Jim, Rob and Alice, his surviving children — are the richest family in the world, according to Bloomberg, with an estimated net worth of $224.5 billion.

They also appear to be the primary funders of Jeb Bush’s school-privatization program.

Tax records show the Walton Family Foundation gave $3 million in 2021 to Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education — about half of all the money it raised that year.

The Walton Family Foundation was also a major donor to the State Policy Network — and some of its money appears earmarked for anti-union efforts. For instance, records show the Walton Family Foundation gave $1.1 million to the State Policy Network in 2020, with some portion of that money designated for “workplace freedom” programs.

The cardboard-box billionaire

Billionaire Richard “Dick” Uihlein, an heir to the Schlitz beer brewing fortune and the founder of the shipping supply company Uline, has in recent years become one of the very biggest right-wing donors in American politics. The New York Times once called he and his wife, Elizabeth “Liz” Uihlein, “The most powerful conservative couple you’ve never heard of.”

Dick Uihlein is also the largest donor to the Foundation for Government Accountability. Records show the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation — which is named after Dick Uihlein’s dad and entirely funded by Dick Uihlein — gave $3.6 million to the FGA in 2021.

In fact, the FGA raised just over $49 million between 2017 and 2021, according to its tax returns. Nearly a third of that funding — $15.3 million — came from Uihlein’s foundation.

But Dick Uihlein is also a big donor to other conservative groups, too — including the Freedom Foundation, which got $60,000 from his foundation in 2021.

A Gilded Age dynasty, the scions of a beer brewer, drugmakers, commodity traders and more

One of America’s oldest billionaire dynasties, the Mellon family made its fortune in banking, oil and aluminum. And a great-grandson of the family patriarch eventually turned one of the family’s main charitable foundations into an enormous underwriter of right-wing institutions.

That great-grandson, Richard Mellon Scaife, died in 2014. But the Sarah Scaife Foundation continues to be one of the biggest conservative financiers in the country. That includes both the Foundation for Government Accountability, which received $800,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2021 and the Freedom Foundation, which got $350,000.

Meanwhile, Daniel C. Searle inherited his family’s pharmaceutical company, G.D. Searle & Co., which he was presiding over as chairman when it was sold to agri-chemical giant Monsanto for $2.7 billion. He used some of that windfall to start the Searle Freedom Trust, with a mission of funding conservative policy efforts long after he was gone.

Searle died in 2007. But his trust, which is today chaired by his son, continues to hand out money. It gave $800,000 in 2021 to the Foundation for Government Accountability; $350,000 to the Mackinac Center; and $250,000 to the Freedom Foundation.

Then there’s the billionaire Coors family of Colorado, the descendants of the famous beer brewer. The family’s Adolph Coors Foundation gave $45,000 to the Freedom Foundation in 2018; $25,000 to the James Madison Institute in 2020; $60,000 to the Foundation for Government Accountability in 2021; and $35,000 to the Mackinac Center in 2022.

Closer to home here in Florida, commodities trader Bill Dunn, the founder of Stuart, Fla.-based Dunn Capital, created the Dunn Foundation, which in 2021 gave $325,000 to the Foundation for Government Accountability; $100,000 to the James Madison Institute; and $50,000 to the Mackinac Center.

One of the Dunn Foundation’s trustees is Tom Beach, a Pennsylvania wealth manager. He also runs the Beach Foundation, which in 2021 gave $50,000 to the Foundation for Government Accountability; $10,000 to the Freedom Foundation; $5,000 to the Mackinac Center; and $5,000 to an organization in the Americans for Prosperity network.

And back in Florida, the Sutton Family Foundation — whose trustees include Kermit Sutton, a substantial Republican Party donor from Naples — gave $10,000 in 2022 to the Foundation for Government Accountability; $10,000 to the James Madison Institute; and $3,000 to the Mackinac Center.

The judge whisperer

If anyone has replaced the Koch brothers as the face of dark money in American politics, it’s Leonard Leo, the conservative legal scholar and former Federalist society executive who helped orchestrate the conservative capture of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Leo has advised Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on his state court picks, too.)

Over the last few years, Leo has helped build a network of politically active nonprofits that collectively spent more than $500 million between 2015 and 2021, according to a New York Times analysis last year.

Two of the key nonprofits in Leo’s network are The 85 Fund and The Concord Fund (which used to be known as the Judicial Education Project and the Judicial Crisis Network, respectively).

They are also among the very largest donors to the Foundation for Government Accountability: Records show The 85 Fund and The Concord Fund gave a combined $2.84 million in 2020 to the foundation and its lobbying arm (FGA Action/Opportunity Solutions Project). The Concord Fund gave FGA Action another $750,000 in 2021.

Leo’s financing likely extends far beyond that, though it is difficult to say for certain. One example: One of the primary donors to most of the nonprofits that advocated for Senate Bill 256 is an organization called Donors Trust. It’s a “donor-advised fund,” which means funders give money to Donors Trust and then “recommend” charitable entities to which Donors Trust will then give.

It's basically a way to take dark money and darken it even more.

Donors Trust has become an enormous conservative funding vehicle in recent years; Mother Jones magazine once labeled it “the dark money ATM of the conservative movement.” It was among the largest donors in 2021 to the Mackinac Center (about $2.8 million), the Foundation for Government Accountability (about $2.7 million), the Freedom Foundation ($282,500) and the James Madison Institute ($195,200).  Some of the money Donors Trust gave to the Mackinac Center was specifically for “opt out projects.”

Tax filings show that at least one-fifth of the money Donors Trust received in 2021 — and likely more — came from nonprofits in the Leonard Leo network.

And where does Leonard Leo’s network get its money from? His biggest backer is Barre Seid, a Chicago billionaire who made his money building surge protectors and equipment for data centers.

These donors don’t just give to think tanks

Okay, I know that was a long list of names and numbers that can sometimes run together. But at the risk of overwhelming things even more, there’s another important point to remember: Many of the donors funding the nonprofits that lobbied for Senate Bill 256 have also helped finance the rise of Ron DeSantis from back-bench member of Congress to candidate for U.S. president.

The same Ron DeSantis who made it a personal priority to push the union-busting bill through the Florida Legislature just before he launched his presidential campaign. And the same Ron DeSantis who has assiduously cultivated these donors, with perks like private receptions at the Governor’s Mansion.

Rob Walton, one of the Walmart heirs, gave $25,000 to a state-level fundraising committee that DeSantis used to control. Koch industries and the Koch family gave $50,000.

One of the Leonard Leo nonprofits — The Concord Fund — gave $500,000 to DeSantis. Charles Johnson, the San Francisco Giants owner and Bradley Impact Fund donor, gave the governor more than $850,000.

Dick Uihlein has given DeSantis more than $2.4 million — including $1.4 million to DeSantis’ former state political committee and another $1 million to a federal super PAC now financing his campaign for president.

There are many other examples. But here are just three more, highlighting people who haven’t already been mentioned:

• One of the single biggest donors to the James Madison Institute is the Durden Foundation. The chairperson of the Durden Foundation is Michael Durden, a Panama City investor whose father was a short-line railroad magnate. Michael Durden gave at least $85,000 to DeSantis’ former political committee.

• A major funder of the Foundation for Government Accountability is the Thomas W. Smith Foundation. It’s led by Thomas Smith, a hedge fund investor in Boca Raton. Smith donated at least $250,000 to DeSantis’ former state committee — and another $200,000 to Never Back Down, DeSantis’ federal Super PAC.

• Private foundations controlled by members of the DeVos family — the billionaires who own the Orlando Magic basketball team — have been big donors to the Mackinac Center, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, and the Americans for Prosperity network. DeVos family members have also given DeSantis more than $460,000. The Orlando Magic gave $50,000 to Neve Back Down, too.

The final front group

Time to bring this in for a landing.

I focused this analysis on the conservative nonprofits that led the charge in Tallahassee on the effort to defund, ultimately destroy, labor unions. That was partly because this is an issue that directly impacts workers, wages and economic equality. But it was also partly an effort to keep this exercise somewhat focused.

But you’d find something very similar with any number of hot-button, right-wing causes that Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have decided to take on over the last couple of years — like the efforts to silence conversations about systemic racism and gender inequality; to make it more difficult to vote; to turn public universities into explicitly conservative institutions; and to stop investors from factoring social and environmental impacts into their investment decisions.

Many of the conservative nonprofits driving those efforts — entities like the Manhattan Institute, the Claremont Institute, Hillsdale College and Consumers’ Research — are subsidized by this same network of billionaires, multimillionaires and dynastic families.

In fact, you could make a pretty compelling case that Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have themselves become just another front group for these same superrich special interests.