Think tank goes to college; Conservative group has many ties with Republican leaders.

August 10, 2005, Wednesday, Metro Edition

Dane Smith; Staff Writer

Liberal professors, gird for battle.

When classes resume at Minnesota colleges in September, the Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota's newly recharged 15-year-old conservative think tank, will roll out an ambitious project called Foundations for Active Conservative Thinking (FACT), an assault against the perceived leftist domination inside the ivy walls.

The primary weapon will be a website called Intellectual Takeout, an arsenal of policy arguments designed to help conservative students challenge the alleged liberal orthodoxy in academia on issues ranging from global warming to globalization to the global war on terror.

The FACT project is the latest crusade for the center, which is retooling under new management and preparing to play a more aggressive role in influencing policy in Minnesota than ever.

"We are more assertive," said Annette Meeks, recently named chief executive officer of the center and a former top-level aide to ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the conservative Georgian who led the Republican takeover of the U.S. House in 1994. "We're not going to be Taxpayers League Lite," she said, referring to a more pugnacious conservative antitax group that has somewhat upstaged the center in recent years.

Like many of the center's leaders and writers in recent years, Meeks is steeped in Republican politics. Her husband, Jack, was until recently the state's representative on the Republican National Committee. The center's new management team recently hired as its communications director Randy Wanke, a savvy operative who did the same job for the Minnesota Republican Party.

Almost all its directors and advisers are Republicans, and three of the last four state GOP chairmen have been deeply involved in the center.

Peddling dogma?

The center has its share of moderate and liberal critics, but few have been as doggedly watchful as Rob Levine, a Twin Cities writer and founder of the media watchdog website cursor.org. Levine has written several detailed critiques arguing that the center is a poorly disguised arm of the Republican Party and that it is improperly functioning as a 501(c)(3) organization, which allows donors to get tax deductions.

"The center is part of a huge, well-funded national movement pursuing the interests of corporations and inherited wealth, and they have a natural bottomless pool of capital to draw from," Levine said.

The center was one of the first state-based conservative think tanks and it has been a model for others. Now all but a half-dozen states have think tanks linked to a national group called the State Policy Network, based in Virginia.

The center purports to be a serious nonpartisan policy analyst but invariably supports conservative dogma ranging from school choice to privatizing Social Security, Levine contends, and says the media too often parrot the center's propaganda because it's packaged in a sophisticated wrapper.

"The CAE has played its role perfectly by inviting dozens of the [conservative] movement's political, ideological and media figures to speak. Often, these speakers have their voices amplified, without rebuttal, by media outlets such as public television and radio, and local newspapers," Levine wrote on the website mediatransparency .org.

Mitch Pearlstein, the founder of the center and a former editorial writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, hotly disputes Levine's characterization of the center as a puppet of the rich. Pearlstein, who is described by John Brandl, a Humphrey Institute fellow and former DFL state senator, as "the most amiable partisan in the state," has stepped aside as the center's top official but continues there as a writer and president emeritus. Pearlstein said he hasn't attended a Republican precinct caucus in 20 years and seldom shows up at party conventions or functions.

"This was my idea," he said. "It has nothing whatsoever to do with running errands for the wealthiest people in the United States." Much of the center's work over the last 10 years - primarily essays, op-ed pieces and research - has focused on social, cultural and education issues, which are not typically a high priority for business interests, Pearlstein said.

The group gets a good share of its $1.4 million annual budget from wealthy donors and conservative foundations, but it also has 2,300 contributing members. About a fourth of its revenue comes from an annual fundraising dinner, which usually features a very big conservative star.

A DFLer on the board of advisers, A.M. (Sandy) Keith, a former Minnesota Supreme Court chief justice, also disputes the charge that the center is purely partisan. Keith, former Congressman Tim Penny and a handful of other DFLers have been on the center's board or participated in its events or publications.

"They are willing to take on Republican governors and officials," Keith said, noting that the center recently issued a strong critique of gambling expansion, a policy sought by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Keith, who practices family law, said he got involved because he liked the group's attention to serious problems such as fatherless families.

It's effective

Neither friend nor foe questions the center's effectiveness.

"When we look at what has helped move Minnesota from blue to purple, the first step was the establishment of the center," said David Strom, president of the Taxpayers League. The league's more open and aggressive advocacy of tax cuts and downsizing of state and local government tended to "eclipse" the center, Strom said, and he said he's glad that it's going to be more assertive in selling its agenda.

"The knock on the center until the last couple of years was that it got a little tired," Strom said. "[Pearlstein] deserves tremendous credit for conceiving it and getting it off the ground. But his passion always has been the thinking and the writing, and Annette's passion is on the active side of politics."

Even DFLers such as state Sen. John Hottinger, DFL-Mankato, acknowledge that Republicans in Minnesota and nationally are dominating the think tank game. "I wish we had something like this on our side," he said.

Penny, a former DFL congressman and the Independence Party's candidate for governor in 2002, said he agrees that the center has done high-quality work and made a positive contribution in Minnesota, but he also worries that it might be getting too partisan and too political.

"I've always found their programs to be fairly balanced and intellectually worthwhile," said Penny, who has been a speaker or participant or a writer in many seminars or publications. "But I am concerned about the latest direction." In order to retain its credibility and a reputation as an educational source, the center needs to continue providing at least some balance, Penny said.

Dane Smith is at rdsmith@startribune.com.