As Republicans struggle to make policy on Capitol Hill, the Heritage Foundation has wrestled with an ongoing personnel dilemma: Who should succeed Jim DeMint as permanent president? That office has remained vacant for 230 days.
But sources inside and outside the conservative think tank hope the wait will soon be over. A decision will come, they’ve been told, before Christmas.
Obviously finding a suitable replacement—someone capable of raising millions of dollars to keep the multi-million-dollar organization afloat, crafting a full menu of conservative policy, and pushing Congress to take up those proposals—hasn’t been easy. Back in August, according to an email sent to all Heritage staff and obtained by the Washington Examiner, the group was still “early in the process.”
The Heritage board has deliberated ever since, as tax reform floundered and Obamacare repeal burnt down in Congress just blocks from the conservative think tank’s sprawling Capitol Hill campus. Ed Feulner has returned from retirement to take the helm as interim president in the meantime, doing his best to capitalize on the organization’s political capital with the Trump administration.
Feulner and company might be disappointed though. There is a chance Heritage enters the New Year without making a pick. It might not be the first time Heritage misses its own deadline. According to multiple sources, employees were told the board had hoped to make a decision by Thanksgiving.
Heritage did not respond to request for comment, and that’s not surprising. Normally boring beltway chatter spilled into the national interest when Heritage unceremoniously axed DeMint last May in a dramatic power struggle punctuated by purges, perp-walks of senior employees, and accusations of an internal coup.
Staffers scrambled to Google last October to learn more about a preliminary list of four candidates obtained by the Washington Post that included Todd Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, and Marc Short, senior White House aide.
No doubt, Heritage staffers hope that the wait will finally be over this Christmas.
