Whither Heritage?

I served four years at the Heritage Foundation as a lawyer, a tenure that began under longtime president Ed Feulner and continued under former Senator Jim DeMint. I have spoken to many who have spent decades at the Foundation, which is one of the flagship institutions on the right. For years I have heard insider complaints and concerns about the direction of Heritage from top management and donors, all the way down to rank and file employees. Thus it was with great interest, although no real surprise, that I learned yesterday that Kay Cole James, the three-year president of the Heritage Foundation, has left, along with the senior vice president, the virulent Never Trumper, Kim Holmes.

So, whither Heritage? As someone who has served in nonprofit management and in the Trump White House helping select political appointees from the secretarial level on down, I can say that hiring is hard. It’s doubly difficult to determine what precisely the Board of Trustees was thinking in removing James and Holmes. Undoubtedly, a search committee will be convened to find a new president for the institution, but whether this will be a genuine effort or whether there is a replacement candidate already on deck remains to be seen.

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