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FreedomWorks is an influential conservative advocacy organization that has been a key backer of the Tea Party movement.[1] Although the group claims on its website to have originally been created in 1984, the current manifestation of FreedomWorks appears to have emerged in 2004 as part of a merger between Citizens for a Sound Economy, a rightist pro-free market organization, and Empower America, which was founded in 1993 by William Bennett, secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan and a rightist pundit on issues from defense policy to family values.[2]

As of 2012, FreedomWorks was led by former Rep. Dick Armey (board chairman) and Matt Kibbe (president). During his tenure in the House, Armey was among the more conservative members. A right-wing Republican from Texas, Armey worked with Newt Gingrich to help draft the 1994 “Contract with America.” Freedomworks board members as of 2012 included Ted Abram, James Burnley, Steve Forbes, C. Boyden Gray, Thomas Knudsen, Robert T.E. Lansing, Frank M. Sands, and Richard Stephenson.[3]

A purported champion of small government conservatism, FreedomWorks claims to drive “policy change by training and mobilizing grassroots Americans to engage their fellow citizens and encourage their political representatives to act in defense of individual freedom and economic opportunity.”[4]

During the 2012 election cycle, FreedomWorks’ “super PAC,” FreedomWorks for America, spent millions of dollars boosting the campaigns of right-wing Republican candidates. Notably, the super PAC worked to oust longstanding “mainstream” Republican Party officials, including Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN).[5]

After losing his primary bid to a Tea Party-backed candidate during the Indiana primary in May 2012, Lugar—who was well known for his bipartisan leadership on U.S. foreign policy matters during his several decades in the Senate—cited the influence of FreedomWorks in helping orchestrate his defeat, stating: “I knew that I would face an extremely strong anti-incumbent mood following a recession. I knew that my work with then-Senator Barack Obama would be used against me, even if our relationship were overhyped. I also knew from the races in 2010 that I was a likely target of Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and other Super Pacs dedicated to defeating at least one Republican as a purification exercise to enhance their influence over other Republican legislators.”[6]

Tea Party and the Koch Brothers

Despite its grassroots claims, observers have argued that FreedomWorks is an establishment organization that has endeavored to co-opt grassroots movements. Shortly after the Tea Party began to emerge as a force in national politics, FreedomWorks was one of several establishment groups that stepped in to claim the leadership of the movement.

Wrote Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, “Suddenly, tens of thousands of Republicans who had been conspicuously silent during George Bush's gargantuan spending on behalf of defense contractors and hedge-fund gazillionaires showed up at Tea Party rallies across the nation, declaring themselves fed up with wasteful government spending. From the outset, the events were organized and financed by the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which was quietly working to co-opt the new movement and deploy it to the GOP's advantage. Taking the lead was former House majority leader Dick Armey, who as chair of a group called FreedomWorks helped coordinate Tea Party rallies across the country.”[7]

FreedomWorks financial backers have included several conservative foundations—including the Bradley, Scaife, Castle Rock, Earhart, and Olin foundations[8]—as well as the Koch brothers (David and Charles), who along with Rupert Murdoch have provided much of the financial backing for anti-Obama administration activism.[9]

Commenting on the Koch brothers, the New York Times’ Frank Rich wrote, “There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the ‘death panel’ warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. … Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News. The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power, and given the recession-battered electorate’s unchecked anger and the Obama White House’s unfocused political strategy, they might.”[10]

American for Victory over Terrorism

After FreedomWorks was created in the run up to the 2004 presidential election, Bill Berkowitz wrote in MediaTransparency: "Stealing a page from MoveOn.org 's successful organizing playbook, the leaders of FreedomWorks … hope to conduct massive get out the vote and political education campaigns in the swing states on behalf of President George W. Bush. The two groups decided to merge because there was 'an overlap in issues between the two organizations,' Shawn Small, the director of policy at Empower America, told me in a telephone interview. It was an opportunity to bring together Empower America, which Small characterized as a 'grasstops' organization driven by such inside the beltway 'superstars' as William Bennett, Vin Weber, and Jean Kirkpatrick, and CSE's 'grassroots' following.”[11]

Despite the claims of overlap, FreedomWorks has largely abandoned the get-tough foreign policy advocacy that characterized much of Empower America's work, especially in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Among Empower's more notable efforts during the early years of the "war on terror" was the creation of the Bill Bennett-led Americans for Victory over Terrorism (AVOT), an advocacy outfit closely aligned with pro-war neoconservative groups that helped push public opinion to support the invasion of Iraq. AVOT eventually merged with the conservative Claremont Institute.

On foreign policy, FreedomWorks has little to say aside from advocating free trade agreements and pushing through immigration reform, including border security. As of 2012, FreedomWorks’ “Key Issues” web page failed to mention any foreign policy concerns. On “border security,” the group wrote on its website, "Large-scale illegal border crossings—the vast majority for economic reasons—are compromising the security of America's borders. … By providing American employers and temporary guest workers a legal way to operate, we can eliminate the source of much of the current lawlessness at the border. Reducing the overall flow of illegal traffic at the border will allow law enforcement to focus on stopping criminal gangs and capturing terrorists."[12]

AstroTurf

Describing FreedomWorks’ pre-Tea Party work, Rolling Stones’ Taibbi writes, “Prior to the Tea Party phenomenon, FreedomWorks was basically just an AstroTurfing-lobbying outfit whose earlier work included taking money from Verizon to oppose telecommunications regulation. Now the organization's sights were set much higher: In the wake of a monstrous economic crash caused by grotesque abuses in unregulated areas of the financial-services industry, FreedomWorks—which took money from companies like mortgage lender MetLife—had the opportunity to persuade millions of ordinary Americans to take up arms against, among other things, Wall Street reform.”[13]

A 2007 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists listed FreedomWorks as an organization that received much money from “Big Oil” and promoted an agenda that did not recognize global warming: "CSE received $275,250 from ExxonMobil in 2001, an increase from $30,000 the year before. CSE merged with Empower Americaand became FreedomWorks in 2004. FreedomWorks maintains that the science of climate change is 'far from settled' and cites scientists such as Sallie Baliunas," an astrophysicist who has criticized theories of global warming.[14]

FreedomWorks earned hundreds of thousands of dollars through a plan, designed by Citizens for a Sound Economy in 2000, in which people buying tax-free medical savings accounts sold by Medical Savings Insurance Co. were asked to become members of the advocacy group. The plan, which was the subject of a class-action lawsuit begun in 2005, was challenged on the basis that insurance holders were not made clearly aware that they were becoming members of the CSE when signing on. According to the lawsuit's motion for class-action status, "The certificates of insurance issued to class members, despite the clear language contained herein, did not disclose the identity of the Group Policyholder [CSE, and later FreedomWorks] of the group policy, despite the fact that each putative insured must 'join' and pay money to such group as a condition of obtaining insurance.”[15]

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.