Powell-Memorandum

Richard Mellon Scaife Dies After Investing $620 Million in Conservative Movement Infrastructure

| Importance: 9/10

Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire heir to the Mellon banking and aluminum fortune who became the most important financial architect of the modern conservative movement, died on July 4, 2014, one day after his 82nd birthday, after a battle with cancer. Scaife’s death marked the end of a …

Richard Scaife Sarah Scaife Foundation Carthage Foundation Allegheny Foundation Heritage Foundation +5 more dark-money conservative-movement heritage-foundation federalist-society state-policy-network +5 more
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Edwin Feulner Becomes Heritage Foundation President, Beginning 36-Year Tenure Building Conservative Policy Infrastructure

| Importance: 9/10

Edwin J. Feulner Jr., co-founder of the Heritage Foundation in 1973, assumed the presidency of the conservative think tank in 1977, beginning what would become a transformative 36-year tenure that built Heritage from a modest Capitol Hill operation with 9 staff members into the preeminent …

Edwin Feulner Heritage Foundation Paul Weyrich Richard Scaife Joseph Coors +3 more heritage-foundation conservative-movement think-tank-influence institutional-capture dark-money +4 more
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Richard Scaife Acquires Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Building Conservative Media Infrastructure

| Importance: 8/10

Richard Mellon Scaife, heir to the Mellon banking and aluminum fortune, purchased the Tribune-Review newspaper in Greensburg, Pennsylvania for approximately $5 million in 1970, marking his entry into media ownership as part of a broader strategy to build conservative infrastructure across multiple …

Richard Scaife Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Scaife Foundations conservative-media dark-money media-infrastructure conservative-movement scaife-network +2 more
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