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The MacIver Institute is a partisan political operation in a think tank’s clothing
Special Column by Dustin Beilke
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In the past several months, journalists who ought to know better at the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and dozens of other publications have quoted the staff at the Wisconsin-based John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy on policy issues important to Wisconsin’s future.
If you’re a MacIver staffer looking to spread your ideas to millions of readers without paying the high cost of advertising, that’s pretty nice for you. But for advocates of good journalism – and a public that counts on it to help understand and evaluate ideas – it’s very bad.
That’s because the MacIver Institute isn’t a public policy research “institution’’ by any reasonable definition. MacIver is a political campaign office. It’s that simple.
MacIver is staffed by veteran conservative Republican campaign operatives. It is run by a board that looks like a “Who’s Who’’ of past conservative Republican political campaigns.
MacIver has the right to advocate for any idea it chooses, but it does not have the right to claim to be an honest player in the exchange of public policy ideas. And journalists should not pretend that it is when they quote MacIver.
It is headed by Brett Healy, the former veteran chief of staff (and campaign manager several times over) for former Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen – the leader who was charged with several felonies for his role in using taxpayer-funded staff for political campaign operations.
Jensen, who led the GOP takeover of the Assembly in the early 1990s, is now a consultant to the institute. In fact, he’s so involved that he’s even written some of its press releases.
MacIver’s communications director, Brian Fraley, is a former national insurance industry lobbyist who was director of the Senate Republican caucus during part of the time it was found to have illegally used taxpayer-funded employees for campaigns. Fraley has been a campaign manager and consultant for dozens of conservative Republican campaigns.
Some of MacIver’s scholarly contributors are, well, not scholarly at all.
Its most prolific writer these days is James Wigderson, a self-identified right-wing blogger who boasts on his website such non-scholarly credentials as serving as campaign consultant for a host of conservatives, including former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, State Sen. Mary Lazich and former State Sen. George Petak.
One of Wigderson’s other qualifications is his incendiary and partisan political writing, which everyone knows is a key element in any partisan get-out-the-vote strategy. MacIver’s ties to the GOP campaign machine go still deeper. Its past and current board members include Mark Block, a GOP operative best known lately for his blundering work managing GOP candidate Herman Cain’s presidential campaign. Arch-conservative radio commentator Charles Sykes appears regularly in both its “issues’’ and “news’’ coverage.
Good journalists usually are careful to avoid phony think tanks. The MacIver Institute might have interesting, even credible ideas, but it doesn’t exist to help us wade through difficult issues and facts. Its job is precisely the opposite – to sway voters by stacking or manipulating facts and data.
The reading public should call upon Wisconsin’s editors, reporters, publishers and station managers to follow their professional standards and use sources that are honestly participating in the marketplace of public policy ideas -- and avoid groups like the MacIver Institute whose sole purpose is to manipulate it for partisan reasons.
Dustin Beilke is a freelance writer and essayist and has written for dozens of publications throughout the last 25 years.
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