Art Pope provided valuable service

by Rob Christensen, News and Observer, August 9, 2014.

Art Pope has been the indispensable man in the McCrory administration.

Pope, who announced last week he was stepping down as state budget director, had been a political lightning rod – the man who helped bankroll what House Speaker Thom Tillis called “the conservative revolution” in Raleigh.

This has made Pope the most famous state budget director in North Carolina history, and probably American history.

Beyond being a political symbol, Pope provided a valuable public service. When Gov. Pat McCrory took office in January 2013, he was a greenhorn when it came to state government, state budgets and the state legislature, while also lacking overall management experience.

Pope filled the vacuum. Pope was a noted budget expert during his four terms in the state House, he knew the legislature and its players, and he is an experienced businessman, running a regional chain of discount stores and other businesses.

Despite all of the problems in McCrory’s first 19 months in office, things would have been far worse without Pope. Pope provided an important level of stability and expertise. If there is a consensus among Republican and Democratic insiders in Raleigh it is that Pope was the glue that has held things together.

Pope’s brand of libertarian conservatism is not everyone’s cup of tea. But beyond ideology, Pope brought a skill set that the McCrory administration – and the state – needed.

He also works cheap as a $1-a-year man, although the $150,000 salary would have been pocket change for someone like Pope. (Whatever you think of Pope, it says something about the workings of his mind that he would rather spend his time trying to figure out the Medicaid mess than buying a chateau in the French countryside.)

Concentration of power

Among the criticisms of Pope is that he wields too much influence for one individual because he combines three roles in one person – deep-pockets political donor to candidates, creator and financier of a network of conservative think tanks and advocacy groups, and budget director. Any one of those roles would make him a powerful man.

That led The New Yorker magazine to portray him as trying to buy North Carolina, Democratic groups to launch a boycott effort against his stores, and others to portray him as a puppet master controlling McCrory with acolytes spread throughout the administration.

Belying the Daddy Warbucks image, Pope has operated with a certain level of transparency. He meets with critics and is responsive to questions from the news media. And, of course, he and his family are very involved in the community.

That Pope has had influence seems obvious. His fingerprints have shown up in a number of places, including the successful efforts to kill public financing of elections of appellate judges.

In other instances, Pope’s influence is murkier. Pope wrote McCrory’s budget that included incentives for movies. At the same time the conservative advocacy organizations that Pope either started or in which he held leadership positions waged high-profile public campaigns against the measure. Was Pope allowing the advocacy organizations to act independently or was he quietly sabotaging his boss’s position, or both?

There is also evidence that Pope has not been the behind-the-scenes string puller that some envisioned. If Pope was orchestrating things, he had an odd way of showing it as the budget negotiations turned into a public cream pie fight and the Senate threatened to subpoena Pope.

Hopefully, for the good of the state, the McCrory administration will find its sea legs. But regardless, Citizen Pope provided a valuable service for the state.

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