Bradley Foundation & Bradley Impact Fund

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Bradley Impact Fund are the legacies of two brothers from Wisconsin who earned their wealth from pioneering electric motor technology in the early 1900s. Lynde died in 1942, and his brother Harry set up the Bradley Foundation the same year in his honor. 

Harry was a founding member of the far-right conspiracist group the John Birch Society, which influenced his political and philanthropic endeavors. Harry died in 1965, and in 1985 his company was sold for $1.65 billion, a large portion of which went to the Bradley Foundation. This turned the Foundation from a relatively small nonprofit into a major funding source for conservative issues and projects. 

The Bradley Impact Fund was created in 2012 as a donor-advised fund affiliated with the Bradley Foundation. Its creation allowed individuals to donate to the Impact Fund and then recommend where that money should go in the form of grants. The Impact Fund’s supporters include corporate donors such as ABC Supply Co., Boelter Companies, and Brandon Golf Courses. 

Harry Bradley, Founder, Bradley Foundation

Harry Bradley’s ascension in right-wing American politics began with his brother, Lynde. Milwaukee high school dropout Lynde Bradley invented the compression rheostat, which was able to control the speed of electrical motors without reducing a high electrical current. Lynde and Dr. Allen Bradley founded what would be called the Allen-Bradley Company in 1903 to produce industrial controls. Lynde’s brother, Harry, joined in 1904. The business was relatively small until World War I dramatically increased demand for the company’s products, helping turn it into a national powerhouse by the end of the 1920s. 

Lynde died in 1942, and Harry set up the Lynde Bradley Foundation that same year in his honor. Harry’s political journey began in 1939 with a strike at his company, the first the Allen-Bradley Company had ever experienced. The strike strained what the Bradley Brothers saw as a familial relationship between themselves and their workers. The company’s business boomed again due to government contracts during World War II, and labor actions increased in frequency and efficacy. According to Think Progress, one particularly bitter strike jump-started Harry’s descent into far-right beliefs, attacking labor organizers as communists while simultaneously studying Lennists beliefs to build an anti-leftist vanguard in America. (The Koch Brothers’ political network also studied Leninist vanguard politics in their early years to figure out how to combat the left). 

Harry’s political views crystalized as the company’s runaway success continued into the 1960s. Harry was a founding member of the John Birch Society, established in 1958. The Society was created by “11 of the nation’s richest businessmen” on the principle that an international communist conspiracy threatened the foundations of American society. The communist conspiracy had purportedly captured elements of the church, the government, the media, the education system – and wanted to turn America into “a human race of enslaved robots, in which every civilized trait has been destroyed,” according to the Society’s founding document. The United Nations, the civil rights movement, and even Republican President Dwight Eisenhower were all supposed pieces of the conspiracy.

Harry’s interpretation of Bircher’s ideals extended not just to unions and labor movements, which he considered part of the communist plot, but to women’s and minority rights. Harry fought to prevent women from being paid the same as their male counterparts at his company. His company, the last major employer in Milwaukee to racially integrate, only did so out of pressure from a federal judge.

Michael S. Joyce, Former President, Bradley Foundation

The Bradley Foundation’s first president after the cash infusion and rebrand in 1985 was Michael S. Joyce. Joyce previously worked at the Jon Olin Foundation, an early adopter of using charitable family foundations to fund right-wing causes. Joyce claimed that other family foundations were “fossilized in their opinions”. At the same time, Olin and Bradley, under his leadership, aimed to fight the “war of ideas” in support of right-wing ideology. 

The Jon Olin Foundation was one of the first funders of the influential Federalist Society and a major supporter of free market pro-business programs at major universities. Joyce was described by his friends and allies as the inventor of “modern conservative philanthropy.” His National Review obituary says Joyce was “responsible for tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of spending on conservative ideas and causes.”

Joyce also served on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 transition team, and Olin and Joyce also had an immense influence on the administration. Joyce was also an informal advisor to the George W. Bush administration’s implementation of programs to promote religion-based initiatives.

Joyce helped turn the Bradley Foundation into “Olin West,” the $290 million acquired in 1985 to fund right-wing intellectuals and thought. Joyce also made sure to invest heavily in local and state initiatives throughout Wisconsin, a tradition the Bradley Foundation honors to this day.

The Bradley Foundation under Joyce was immensely influential in creating the intellectual underpinnings of welfare reform of the 1990s and mainstreaming school choice ideology, both of which have drawn criticisms for furthering racial inequities in America. Academics have noted the intense racial characterization of the welfare reform push, which often employed racial stereotypes such as the ‘welfare queen.’ A study published by the University Of Cambridge found that the welfare reform reinforced racial inequities. The core principle behind school school ideology, “freedom of choice,” was originally a means of defying the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which required the desegregation of public schools, but not private ones. Groups interested in privatizing government services and resources later found common causes with those who wanted to perpetuate racial segregation.

It was also under Joyce that the Bradley Foundation funded Charles Murray’s academic research, which resulted in the infamous racist pseudoscience found in Murray’s book The Bell Curve, which argued women and non-whites were genetically inferior.

Richard Graber, President, Bradley Foundation

Former George W. Bush Administration Ambassador and Honeywell International executive Richard Graber became the head of the Bradley Foundation in 2016. Graber has served on the Bradley Foundation’s board since 2013. He is a former chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party and member of the Republican National Committee, as well as a former Republican congressional candidate from Wisconsin and executive at Honeywell International.

In addition to his role at the Bradley Foundation, Graber also serves on the boards of the Kern Family Foundation and Curt Joa, Inc. He is also a Wake Forest University Law School Board of Visitors member.

Cleta Mitchell, Secretary & Director, Bradley Foundation

Cleta Mitchell joined the board of directors at the Bradley Foundation In 2012. Mitchell is a long-time activist who has played a key role in right-wing circles for decades. She is known for her legal activism around election laws and her belief in rampant voter fraud, a claim that has been called “a myth” by legal experts. Her former colleagues characterized her as the “fringe of the fringe” and someone who told “clients what they wanted to hear, regardless of the law or reality.” She was a key Trump advisor during his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and currently serves on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. She is also a member of the Federalist Society.

Since Mitchell joined the Bradley Foundation, it is estimated the group has spent roughly $18 million on efforts to stoke conspiracies about election fraud and efforts to enact voter suppression. Mitchell has steered Bradley funds to voter suppression groups she is directly involved with such as Public Interest Legal Foundation and True The Vote, and has helped turn the Bradley Foundation into a leader in mainstreaming election fraud ideology in conservative circles.

Mitchell played a major role in driving American conservative politics into increasingly far-right and conspiratorial territory, particularly regarding election security and systematic voter fraud:

• Mitchell was a participant in Trump’s infamous phone call where he pressured Georgia election officials to “find” exactly enough votes for him to win the state in 2020. She also promoted unfounded evidence that the election was stolen from Trump. She has since been subpoenaed by the House Committee investigating January 6th for her role in the insurrection as well as by a Fulton County, Georgia special grand jury investigation concerning potential criminal interference in the election.

• Mitchell has since worked to defy the House Committee’s subpoena. She has taken on legal representation from lawyer John Rowley whose law firm, JPRowley Law, has received thousands of dollars from Trump’s Save America PAC since the creation of the January 6th committee. According to ABC News, Save America PAC did not pay JPRolwey Law prior to the creation of the committee.

• After Trump left office, Mitchell advised conservative leaders on how to craft policy to restrict voting access and to oppose efforts to expand it. She continues to promote the belief that Trump’s disproven allegations of voter fraud were never properly addressed by the courts.

• As The New Yorker notes, Mitchell and her allies “keep demanding that election officials prove a negative—that corruption didn’t happen—their requests to keep interrogating the results can be repeated almost indefinitely.”

• In 2013, The Atlantic called Mitchell “the Conservative Movement’s Anti-Gay Eminence Grise” for her role in boosting anti-LGBTQ politics in the GOP–alluding to her history of rallying against same-sex marriage and efforts to expel pro-LGBTQ groups from GOP coalitions.

• Mitchell led the charge to vilify the IRS after allegations emerged that the organization had unfairly targeted right-wing groups. Audits into the allegations revealed that the IRS broadly inappropriately targeted organizations that appeared to be political in nature, and one audit discovered that IRS targeted progressive groups as well. Mitchell dismissed such findings. Thanks to advocacy from the right and figures like Mitchell, the IRS’s ability to conduct oversight of nonprofit status was diminished due to the allegations.

• Mitchell has served as the longtime head of the Republican National Lawyers Association, which has focused on training its members to create barriers to voting since the contested 2000 election.

• Mitchell is a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute, where she works to coordinate right-wing efforts to undermine elections under the guise of ‘election integrity.’ At CPI summits, Mitchell aggressively trains right-wing activists, conspiracy theorists, and 2020 election deniers on how to “stake out election offices, file information requests, monitor voting, work at polling places, and keep detailed records of their work.” 

Michael Grebe, Former President, Bradley Foundation

Michael Grebe was the President of the Bradley Foundation from 2002 to 2016. Prior to joining the Bradley Foundation, Grebe was the longtime head and founder of Philanthropy Roundtable. Philanthropy Roundtable began as a “small, informal” network of advisors, foundations, and donors who want to fund conservative causes. It has been called “the leading institution shaping US philanthropy” by academic researchers for setting a blueprint for conservative philanthropic giving. One of its early executive directors said Philanthropy Roundtable was an answer to other philanthropic efforts that were “more animated by trendy notions of social justice than by donors’ unique preferences and interests.” 

Under Grebe’s leadership, the Bradley Foundation focused more on media and electoral campaigns. During his time at the Bradley Foundation, Grebe served as the president of former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s 2010 campaign and as counsel to the Republican National Committee.

Dan Schmidt, Former Vice President

Former Bradley Foundation Vice President Dan Schmidt was found to be close with Russian oligarchs following a leak of hacked emails from Russian authorities. Schmidt attended a gala that was targeted by Russian operatives who aimed to cultivate influence in the American religious right shortly after the 2014 invasion of Crimea. Right-wing opposition research firm Capital Research Center called Schmidt “A Hero of Conservative Philanthropy.”

The Bradley Foundation and Bradley Impact Fund have used their sizable endowment to influence the landscape of voting in America:

• According to The New Yorker, the Bradley Foundation and Impact fund have worked to normalize attacks and challenges to election laws that would benefit their preferred candidates, “a tactic once relegated to the far-right.”

• The New Yorker estimated that since 2012 the Bradley Foundation had spent roughly $18 million to push for voter suppression or spread conspiracies and disinformation that undermined public confidence in election security. 2012 was the year that key member of Trump’s election-denial braintrust Cleta Mitchell joined the Bradley Foundation’s board. Groups directly affiliated with Mitchell, such as True The Vote and the Public Interest Legal Foundation, have received funding from the Bradley Foundation since she joined the board.

• The Bradley Impact Fund was a major funder of groups that spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to The Intercept. They notably made a large donation to Project Veritas in 2020, a known disinformation group that released a slew of debunked content alleging ballot or election fraud in the days following the 2020 election. Following the 2020 election, Project Veritas has faced a lawsuit for spreading false information about the election.

Ties To The John Birch Society

Bradley Foundation founder Harry Bradley was also a founding member of the John Birch Society, established in 1958. The Society was created by “11 of the nation’s richest businessmen” on the principle that an international communist conspiracy threatened the foundations of American society. The communist conspiracy had purportedly captured elements of the church, the government, the media, the education system – and wanted to turn America into “a human race of enslaved robots, in which every civilized trait has been destroyed,” according to the Society’s founding document. The United Nations, the civil rights movement, and even Republican President Dwight Eisenhower were all supposed pieces of the conspiracy.

In the 1970s, the Birchers rallied behind opposition to abortion, taxes, and sex education—issues that were key to Reagan’s presidential run that are still central to the contemporary American conservative movement. The influence of the Birchers is evident in the anti-government extremism of the militia movement, the conspiratorial rhetoric of Alex Jones, and in QAnon’s belief in a secret left-wing cabal that aims to destroy America. During the Trump years, once dormant chapters of the John Birch Society exploded in popularity. It’s reasonable to argue that the Bradley Foundation, which has given away nearly $1 billion since its inception in the 40s, is at least partially responsible for animating the John Birch Society’s legacy. 

Climate Change Denial

The Bradley organizations have funded a large network of climate denial groups. The Foundation and Impact Fund gave $6.4 million to climate denial groups in 2019 alone, according to The Center For Media And Democracy. Some of these groups include the Capital Research Center, which called climate scientists “alamists, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which argued that climate change would create a “milder, greener, more prosperous world,”  The Cato Institute, which has advocated against the passage of any climate legislation, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which has written model legislation furthering climate denial–such as a 2021 model bill that bans states from divesting from fossil fuels. 

The Bradley Foundation has funded legal, research, and policy efforts that challenge civil rights and reinforce racial inequities.

• The Bradley Foundation bankrolled a lawsuit that successfully struck down “the heart” of the Civil Rights Act, according to the New York Times. The lawsuit allowed states to change their election laws without federal approval. Some states, such as Texas, immediately moved to enforce controversial regulations such as voter I.D. laws, which have been shown to disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters. According to the NAACP, since the lawsuit “many [sic] states and jurisdictions can attempt to pass discriminatory voting policies that erode the rights of voters of color, and we are left without federal oversight.”

• The Bradley Foundation funded an unsuccessful legal challenge to dismantle affirmative action.

• A 2011 Center For American Progress report called the Bradley Foundation one of the seven largest funders of Islamophobia in America, noting that it gave over $5 million to groups CAP considered Islamophobic.

• The Bradleys funded Charles Murray’s academic research that later became the controversial book The Bell Curve, which argued economic disparities between white men and women and non-whites were due to genetic inferiority.

• The Bradley Foundation “built the coalition” that pushed for the passage of welfare reform in 1996 according to Philanthropy Roundtable. Academics have noted the intense racial characterization of the welfare reform push, which often employed racial stereotypes such as the ‘welfare queen.’ A study published by the University Of Cambridge found that the welfare reform pushed by the Bradley Foundation reinforced racial inequities.

Anti-Union Activism

Bradley Foundation founder Harry considered labor unions a key part of a communist plot that aimed to destroy America and his Foundation has continued his anti-union crusade.

• In 2012 alone, the Bradley Foundation invested $200 million to set up a network of think tanks across 13 states that aimed to defund unions, with special emphasis on teachers’ unions.

• According to the Center For Media And Democracy, the Bradley Foundation spent $7.2 million in 2019 alone in support of anti-union efforts.

“School Choice” Activism

Michael Grebe, the Bradley Foundation’s long-time former president, said in a 2013 interview that school choice-driven education reform was always a key goal of the Bradley Foundation and Impact Fund. “Freedom of choice” in schooling was originally a means of defying the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which required the desegregation of public schools, but not private ones. Groups interested in privatizing government services and resources later found common causes with those who wanted to perpetuate racial segregation. 

• In 1990, The Bradley Foundation used its resources to influence the Wisconsin state legislature to implement the nation’s first “school choice” program in Milwaukee. The Foundation funded subsequent legal battles launched by teacher’s unions that ensured the practice remained legal.

• According to a former Bradley Foundation executive the organization spent an estimated $30 million between 1985 and 2003 to support “school choice” efforts. From 2001 to 2013, they spent more than $31 million, according to a report from One Wisconsin Now. By 2021 nearly 700,000 students in 32 states, Puerto Rico, and DC were enrolled in school choice programs.

• A 2022 study found that states that passed school choice legislation saw a degradation in their public school systems – not surprising considering that “school choice” programs almost always funnel resources away from public schools and toward non-public alternatives.

Ties To Scott Walker And His Anti-Union And School Choice Ideology

Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker had close ties to the Bradley Foundation during his administration, particularly through his 2010 campaign manager and top advisor Michael Grebe. A New York Times headline after Walker’s election claimed the Bradley Foundation and Walker were united by a common anti-union cause. 

Shortly after his 2012 election, a criminal probe was launched into Walker and members of Club For Growth Wisconsin for illegal campaign coordination. The matter eventually went before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but only after The Wisconsin Club For Growth had spent nearly $400,000 in Wisconsin Supreme Court elections – ensuring a conservative majority. The Bradley Foundation also funded groups that campaigned against a criminal probe of Walker. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled there was no instance of wrongdoing in 2015.

Historically, Wisconsin was seen as a stronghold of labor, but Governor Walker waged what has been characterized as a “war” on unions. As governor, Walker passed Act 10, which gutted the collective bargaining rights of labor unions and devastated the resources and membership rolls of the state teachers union” and made him a “conservative legend” according to Politico.

After breaking the teachers union, Walker began to pursue widespread education reform. Walker was a strong proponent of school vouchers, a “school choice” policy.

The American Legislative Exchange Council

The American Legislative Exchange Council is known as a corporate “bill mill” composed of state legislators and corporate stakeholders that draft and disseminate right-wing model legislation. ALEC’s model legislation has been introduced in every state in the country, and nearly a quarter of the country’s state legislators are members of the council. ALEC was formed in 1973 as the Conservative Caucus of State Legislatures in the wake of the influential Powell Memo, a document Greenpeace describes as a “blueprint for corporate domination of American Democracy.”

ALEC played a key role in incubating strategies to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. In a speech at the Council for National Policy months before the 2020 election, the leader of ALEC said that the group was working closely with Bradley Foundation board member Cleta Mitchell and election-fraud-conspiracist leader Hans von Spakovksy to explore means to challenge the validity of the election preemptively should Trump lose. Mitchell and ALEC also worked to develop the legal groundwork to allow state legislators to utilize the Electoral College to overturn the results of the popular vote in their state over fraud concerns.

The American Legislative Exchange Council received over $5.4 million from the Bradley Foundation and Impact Fund from 2011 to 2021.

Leonard Leo

Leonard Leo is an American lawyer and conservative activist who has been called “arguably the most powerful figure in the federal justice system.” Leo has been active in American politics since the early 1990s when he joined the Federalist Society, the United States’ most prominent law association for conservatives. Since then, Leo has operated a “network of interlocking nonprofits” that aggressively support conservative judges and champion right-wing causes through “dark money” media campaigns. 

• One of these nonprofits is the Federalist Society, which cultivates conservative judicial nominees in Leo’s fight to take over the courts.

• Leo’s shadow empire has allowed him to meet and “cultivate almost every important Republican lawyer in more than a generation.”

• In addition to the 85 Fund, Leo operates a series of nonprofits that can move money without public scrutiny, such as the BH Fund, America Engaged, and the Freedom and Opportunity Fund.

• Leo’s network executed successful advocacy campaigns to appoint and confirm John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and block Merrick Garland from the Court. 

According to internal documents, Leo coordinated with the Bradley Foundation in 2014 to provide funding to his Judicial Education Project (now known as the 85 Fund) to flood the Supreme Court with amicus briefs supporting right-wing causes. The 85 Fund has continued to receive funding from the Bradley Foundation after its rebranding. Leo and key Federalist Society members also received the 2009 Bradley Prize for their work.

  Melania Trump

In 2022, the Florida Department of Consumer Services announced it was investigating whether former First Lady Melania Trump violated the state regulations by failing to register her charitable organizations with the state. One event put on by Melania’s groups, a fundraising gala called “Tulips & Topiaries,” reportedly featured $50,000 V.I.P. tickets and did not disclose how much would be going to charity.

In response to the Department of Consumer Services investigation, Melania announced that the Bradley Impact Fund would select the charities that would receive the proceeds from tulips and topiaries high tea.

LYNDE AND HARRY BRADLEY FOUNDATION TOTAL CONTRIBUTIONS