Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Established	1987 (1987)
Tax ID no.	38-2701547
Headquarters	140 West Main Street, Midland, Michigan, U.S.
Coordinates	43°36′49″N 84°14′46″W / 43.6137°N 84.2460°W / 43.6137; -84.2460
President	Joseph G. Lehman
Chairman	Rodney M. Lockwood Jr.[1]
Budget	Revenue: $11 million Expenses: $12.6 million (FYE December 2023)[2]
Website	mackinac.org

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy (/ˈmækɪnɔː/) is a conservative think tank headquartered in Midland, Michigan.^[3][4][5][6] Through research and programs, the Mackinac Center supports lower taxes, reduced regulatory authority for state agencies, right-to-work laws, school choice, and property rights.^[7][6] It has been variously described as free market,^[8][9] conservative,^[10][11] and fiscally conservative^[12][13].

Joseph Overton (1960–2003), a senior vice president of the Mackinac Center, stated the political strategy that later became known as the Overton window. Overton said that politically unpopular, unacceptable policies must be changed into politically acceptable policies before they can be enacted into law.^[14][15]

The Mackinac Center is said to be the largest state-based conservative think tank.^[10][16] It was ranked among the top 5 percent of think tanks in the United States by the 2018 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report.^[17][18] The Center sponsors MichiganVotes.org, an online legislative voting record database which provides a non-partisan summary of every bill and vote in the Michigan legislature.^[19]

The organization was founded in 1987.^[17] In a 2011 interview, founder Joe Olson said that the Center was first conceived in a Lansing, Michigan bar at a meeting between Olson, fellow insurance company executive Tom Hoeg, Richard McLellan and then-Michigan Senate Republican majority leader John Engler, who would later become governor.^[20][16] Olson said the founders wanted an organization that would focus on research, writing, speaking, issuing press releases and looking at public policy from a free market point of view.^[20]

The Center began operations with no office or full-time staff. It formally opened offices in Midland in 1988 with its first president, Lawrence W. Reed, an economist, writer, and speaker who had chaired the economics department at Northwood University. The Lansing-based Cornerstone Foundation provided early direction and some funding.^[16] The Center's first annual budget under Reed was $80,000. In 1999, the Mackinac Center moved from rented offices to its current headquarters after having raised $2.4 million to renovate a former Woolworth's department store on Midland's Main Street.^[21]

The Mackinac Center is classified as a 501(c)(3) organization under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.^[22] It is a member of the State Policy Network of state-level conservative and libertarian think tanks.^[23][24]

When asked by Detroit's Metro Times in 1996, the Center's President Lawrence Reed said: "Our funding sources are primarily foundations ... with the rest coming from corporations and individuals," but that "... revealing our contributors would be a tremendous diversion..."^[16]

In November 2006 The New York Times published a two-part series about state-based "conservative" think tanks that described how the Mackinac Center trained think-tank executives from 42 countries and nearly every US state. The New York Times also reported that, "When the Mackinac Center was founded in 1987, there were just three other conservative state-level policy institutes. Now there are 48, in 42 states."^[10]

Reed served as president from the Center's founding until September 2008, when he assumed the title President Emeritus and also became the president of the Foundation for Economic Education. Former Chief Operating Officer Joseph G. Lehman was named the Mackinac Center's president on September 1, 2008.^[25]

In 2014, the organization released a mobile app, VoteSpotter.^[26][27][28] The app allows users to track votes by elected officials in the United States. It was originally an extension of the organization's MichiganVotes.org website but has since expanded to include other states.^[27]

The Mackinac Center in 2018 led several conservative groups urging teachers to leave unions with a national campaign called "My Pay, My Say".^[29]

In 2019, a satellite office was opened in Lansing, Michigan.^[17]

The Mackinac Center has criticized "sin taxes" like tobacco excise taxes, vaping regulations and a variety of alcohol rules.^[30][31][32] It received donations from Altria in the 2010s, according to a 2019 investigation by The Guardian about connections between the tobacco industry and free-market groups.^[30]

The Mackinac Center fought in court against the Biden administration's efforts to cancel some student loan payments and extend pandemic-related pauses on loans.^[33]

The Mackinac Center's director of energy and environmental policy was a contributor to the Project 2025 plan anticipating Donald Trump's second term as president of the United States. The Mackinac Center was removed from the Project 2025 credits after a request by the center. A Mackinac Center spokesperson said that it had "offered ideas on labor and energy policy" to the Heritage Foundation, which created Project 2025, but that "we do not endorse" some other ideas in the plan.^[3]

The concept of the "Overton window" was introduced in the 1990s by Joseph Overton, former senior vice president of the Mackinac Center. After his death in a plane crash in 2003, his colleague Joseph Lehman named the idea in a presentation about the power of consistent and persistent advocacy.^[34] The "Overton window" refers to the range of ideas which are considered culturally and politically fringe to mainstream, and when a subject matter moves along this spectrum it is considered to have changed its status along the "Overton window".^[15] The Mackinac Center defines the Overton Window as:

...a model for understanding how ideas in society change over time and influence politics. The core concept is that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support—they generally only pursue policies that are widely accepted throughout society as legitimate policy options. These policies lie inside the Overton Window. Other policy ideas exist, but politicians risk losing popular support if they champion these ideas. These policies lie outside the Overton Window.^[35]

The Center writes that its ideology is most accurately characterized as flowing from the "classical liberal tradition" of Milton Friedman and others: "socially tolerant, economically sophisticated, desiring little government intervention in either their personal or economic affairs."^[36] In a 2011 interview about the organization, one of its founders, Olson, said "Some will say the Mackinac Center is a Republican front" but that he disagreed.^[20]

The Mackinac Center was involved in the effort to pass a right-to-work law in Michigan and has supported efforts in other states to expand right to work laws and workers' rights to not pay dues to a union they do not support. The Center also launched the website MyPayMySay.com to alert union members to their rights.^{[37][17][29][38][39][40][41]}

In 2022, the foundation's total revenue was $11.5 million, and its expenditures were $11.5 million, according to ProPublica.^[42]

Between 2008 and 2013, the Mackinac Center received $2.4 million from DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund used by conservatives. Conservative foundations and individuals use Donors Trust to pass money along to support their ideology. Donor-advised funds allow individuals, foundations and charities to give money anonymously. DonorsTrust is used by the Koch family and other donors. The funding was for statehouse reporting and attendance at meetings of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).^[43]

In addition to policy studies, the Center publishes a number of periodicals including Michigan Education Report, Michigan Privatization Report, Michigan Science, Michigan Capitol Confidential, Impact, Michigan Education Digest and Michigan Context and Performance Report Card.^[44][45][46]

• Burton W. Folsom Jr., Senior Fellow in Economic Education
• Lawrence Reed, President Emeritus

Current members of the Mackinac Center's board of directors include:^[47]

• Rodney M. Lockwood Jr., Chairman of the Board; Chairman/CEO of the Lockwood Companies
• Joseph G. Lehman, President; Vice chairman of the National Taxpayers Union and a director of the Fairness Center
• Richard D. McLellan, Secretary; McLellan Law Offices; formerly Dykema Gossett Law Firm
• Clifford W. Taylor, Member; Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court from 2005 through 2009
• Richard Haworth, Member; Chairman of Haworth, an office furniture and architectural interior company based in Holland, Michigan
• Jim Barrett, Member; President & CEO of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce
• Daniel Graf, Member; Financial analyst at Amerisure Mutual Holdings
• J.C. Huizenga, Member; Chairman of and founder of Huizenga Group, Member of the Acton Institute board of trustees
• Edward C. Levy Jr., Member; President of Edw. C. Levy Co.
• Joseph P. Maguire, Treasurer; President of Wolverine Development Corporation
• Jennifer Panning, Member; President and founder of Artisan Tile Inc.

Former members of the organization's board include:

• Robert Teeter, Republican pollster and political campaign strategist^[48]
• Paul V. Gadola, United States District Judge^[49]
• Lawrence Reed, President Emeritus of the Mackinac Center and president of the Foundation for Economic Education
• Dulce Fuller, Member; Chairman of the Southeast Michigan Committee of The Heritage Foundation
• D. Joseph Olson, Member; retired from Amerisure
• Kent Herrick, Vice Chairman; President of Thermogy

• Mackinac Center's official website
• Organizational Profile, National Center for Charitable Statistics (Urban Institute)
• MichiganWorkerFreedom.org
• Michigan Capitol Confidential