The R Street Institute is a public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., that was spun off from the right-of-center and Chicago-based Heartland Institute in 2012. ¹ R Street’s president and co-founder, Eli Lehrer, was formerly the head of the Heartland affiliate in Washington, D.C. ² As of 2018, R Street’s budget was $10.5 million and Lehrer was paid a total compensation of $262,000. ³

R Street promotes a generally free-market policy agenda on most issues, such as trade⁴ and technology.⁵ However, R Street departs from most free-market policy organizations by supporting the implementation of a carbon tax and promoting the expansion of left-leaning labor-union affiliated worker centers. ⁶ On March 24, 2020, the Washington Times published an op-ed by Eli Lehrer and MSNBC political analyst Michael Steele urging conservatives to support broadening the use of mail-in absentee ballots for elections, suggesting the United States should switch to a universal vote-by-mail policy. ⁷

Left-leaning foundations such as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Energy Foundation, and the Foundation to Promote Open Society provided 26 percent of R Street’s total contribution and grants revenue between 2012 and 2017 and 71 percent of the organization’s total foundation support during that period.^{8 9}

Background

The R Street Institute was founded in 2012 after a conflict arose between the agendas of the right-of-center Heartland Institute (based in Chicago), some of Heartland’s donors, and what was then the staff of Heartland’s satellite office in Washington, D.C. In the spring of 2012 Heartland unveiled a highway billboard with the image of convicted “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, captioned with the slogan “I still believe in global warming. Do you?” Financial supporters of Heartland’s D.C. office, many of them from the insurance industry, were reportedly offended by the tying of climate policy to Kaczynski and decided to withdraw their support from Heartland. Eli Lehrer, then the head of Heartland’s D.C. operation, arranged what was described as an “amicable” separation from Heartland that preserved the work of the D.C. office and its donor base in a new right-of-center spin-off organization that would not follow Heartland’s policy agenda regarding climate change. ^{10 11}

Policy Agenda

R Street characterizes its perspective as “free market,” favoring competition and simplified and light taxation and regulation. It cites as its ideological inspiration libertarian economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. ¹² In practice, the R Street policy portfolio frequently conforms to this agenda, but with some exceptions.

Examples of R Street’s conforming to free-market ideology include:

• Support for free trade and opposition to the “trade wars” and tariff policy of the Trump administration;¹³
• Proposals for market-based insurance reforms such as the end of government subsidies for reconstructing buildings and homes that have been built in flood and hurricane risk areas;¹⁴
• Support for the 2017 decision by the Federal Communications Commission to do away with the federal government’s so-called “net neutrality” regulations on internet service providers;¹⁵
• Opposition to harsh restrictions and prohibitions on “vaping” or “e-cigarette” products;¹⁶
• Opposition to minimum wage hikes to $15 an hour; and ¹⁷

Labor Policy

In a November 2019 opinion for the right-of-center National Review, R Street president Eli Lehrer argued the Trump administration should use executive authority to loosen the federal regulations on “alternative workers’ organizations,” or “worker centers.” Lehrer conceded most free-market policy organizations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, consider worker centers to be little more than “front groups” for left-leaning labor unions trying to hide from federal regulations that labor unions must normally abide by. Lehrer stated this is a flawed interpretation: “The mere fact that they annoy employers and sometimes promote public policies that conservatives oppose shouldn’t make them subject to burdensome regulations.” ¹⁸

Asserting his idea was a valid free market policy, Lehrer wrote: “A strategy of supporting groups that perform some functions of unions but not all does not mean cozying up to the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters, or any other part of “big labor” — just the opposite, in fact.” Among the examples he cited were the United Farm Workers (UFW), the Freelancers Union, and the Pioneer Valley Workers Center. ¹⁹

Critics noted that a number of Lehrer’s examples had significant ties to left-leaning labor unions and organizations. ²⁰ The United Farm Workers (UFW), identified by Lehrer as an “alternative workers’ organization,” is recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor as a labor union, and UFW belongs to the Change to Win coalition of labor unions founded by the Service Employees International Union and International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Pioneer Valley Workers Center, another of Lehrer’s examples, has staffers and funders affiliated with the United Auto Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA). And another example, the Freelancers Union, has a founder, Sara Horowitz, who has received a fellowship from the left-of-center MacArthur Foundation and is a co-founder of Demos, a staunchly left-wing public policy organization. ²¹

Energy Policy

R Street advocates for creation of a revenue-neutral tax on carbon emissions that would be offset by reductions in federal taxes on income and capital gains. ²²

R Street’s carbon tax policy was criticized in 2014 by Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Association. Pyle wrote that the carbon tax would harm the economy and kill jobs, and that supporting it conflicted with R Street’s advocacy for “consumer choice; low, flat taxes; …and systems that rely on price signals rather than central planning.” Noting the financial support R Street had received from the left-of-center Energy Foundation, Pyle accused R Street of being a “sword-for-hire in the climate activists’ battle against American families and small businesses.” ²³

In a rebuttal to Pyle, R Street listed several of its free market policy positions and made the following criticism of the American Energy Association:²⁴

“If you can’t imagine a world in which you would say or do things that don’t comport 100 percent with the wishes of your donors, perhaps that says more about you than it does about us. The identity of our donors is no more material to the substance of debates over energy or other policy than is the identity of AEA’s donors.”

Aside from supporting the carbon tax, the rest of R Street’s energy policy agenda resembles that of most other free market organizations. R Street opposes energy subsidies, including those for weather-dependent energy and biofuels, having opposed renewal of the tax credit for wind energy and supported an end to the renewable fuel standard. ^{25 26}

In an April 2014 blog post arguing for elimination of the Wind Production Tax Credit, R Street criticized U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Mark Udall (D-CO) for supporting the wind subsidy, and implied campaign contributions were influencing their policy choices:²⁷

“Similarly, in this case, one doesn’t have to be an investigative journalist to see how the desire for campaign cash is the uniting factor. Grassley, for instance, has been on the receiving end of $5,000 from the wind industry, while one of Udall’s top five contributors throughout his career has been the alternative energy company NextEra Energy, who have given him a total of $42,000 over five years. In the words of Frank Underwood, “when the t—’s that big, everybody gets in line.””²⁸

R Street also supported construction of the Keystone XL energy pipeline,²⁹ criticized the Obama-era carbon regulations on power plants as “Death-star governance,”³⁰ and supported reducing regulations that block the expansion of nuclear energy. ³¹

Campaign Speech

The R Street Institute has opposed left-of-center efforts to force disclosures of private political participation and financial contributions. In September 2022, R Street issued a statement condemning the DISCLOSE Act, a piece of legislation supported by the Biden administration which would have eliminated anonymity for citizens who give donations to activist organizations that run political advertisements.³²

Mail-in Voting

On March 24, 2020, the Washington Times published an op-ed which R Street president Eli Lehrer wrote with MSNBC political analyst and former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele urging conservatives to not only support broadening the use of mail-in absentee ballots for elections, but also suggesting that the United States should switch to a universal vote-by-mail policy by arguing that “vote-by-mail also increases turnout from people in rural areas and older Americans, groups that tend to lean right.” The op-ed was silent on whether state election laws should be taken over by federal legislation, but said, “Legislation proposed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, and Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, that would expand mail-in voting to almost everyone — and help states foot the bill — also deserves careful consideration.”³³

Conservative election attorneys criticized the op-ed, retorting that “it’s most often the poor and elderly who lose their votes to ballot harvesters.” ³⁴ Disputes over ballot harvesting have resulted in lawsuits over electoral abuse, including a 2018 court case in North Carolina where ballot-harvesting fraud in a federal election led a court to throw out the results and require a special election. ³⁵ By contrast, the op-ed was supported by the Washington Post writer and former conservative Jennifer Rubin. ³⁶ The op-ed also received support from David Hawking at the Fulcrum, a website operated by left-wing advocacy group Issue One, which is supported by the Democracy Alliance. ^{37 38}

Ranked-Choice Voting

In December 2022, the R Street Institute published a report promoting adopting ranked-choice voting (RCV) for primary elections. In a RCV system, voters place candidates on the ballot for a particular office into their order of preference rather than choosing a single candidate. If no candidate receives the majority of first-preference votes, the least-popular candidate is eliminated and the ballots of his or her voters are counted based on their second preferences. The report’s authors argued that RCV would lead to fewer votes being “wasted” on non-competitive candidates and would improve the legitimacy of the political system by selecting for candidates with broad popular support.³⁹

In January 2023, R Street elections fellow Matthew Germer, who contributed to the RCV report, testified to a Virginia state senate committee in support of a proposed bill to implement the system in the state’s elections.⁴⁰ The following March, R Street fellow Ryan Williamson wrote a favorable analysis of Alaska’s recently-implemented RCV system, claiming that “races in the state became more civil” and that “Alaskans viewed the process favorably.”⁴¹

In April 2023, R Street policy director Jonathan Bydlak wrote an article arguing that the Republican Party should reconsider its opposition to RCV in light of Republicans’ perceived under-performance in the 2022 midterm elections. Bydlak claimed that Republicans could perform well within the system, potentially even better than Democrats.⁴² That month, R Street state government affairs senior manager Robert Melvin testified to the Vermont state senate in favor of RCV. Melvin argued that the system would allow more voters to contribute to the selection of a winning candidate, especially in primary elections, even if their top choice ended up dropping out of the race.⁴³

Leadership

Eli Lehrer

Eli Lehrer is president and co-founder of R Street, and in 2018 was paid a total compensation of $262,000. Prior to R Street’s split off from the Heartland Institute in 2012, Lehrer was the vice president for Heartland’s Washington operations. He has also been a reporter for the Washington Times; a senior editor at the American Enterprise, a magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute; and a speechwriter in the U.S. Senate. ^{44 45}

Erica Schoder

Erica Schoder is the executive director of R Street Institute. She was previously senior vice president for operations and has held a senior position at the organization since at least 2013.⁴⁶

Susanna Dokupil

Susanna Dokupil is the chair of the R Street board of directors. She is also the chief executive officer of Paladin Strategies, which has provided legal services to executives in the biotechnology and communications fields, including top managers at Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft. Dokupil previously held a number of high-profile legal positions, including assistant attorney general and assistant solicitor general of Texas, as well as general counsel of the Texas Republican Party.^{47 48}

Charles Duan

Charles Duan is a senior fellow at R Street who focuses on intellectual property policy. He was previously the institute’s director of technology and innovation policy. He was previously employed at Public Knowledge, a think tank for which he worked on patents policy.⁴⁹

James Wallner

James Wallner is a resident senior fellow for governance at R Street. He was previously employed at the right-of-center Heritage Foundation and as an aide to several Republican U.S. Senators. ⁵⁰

Financials

In 2020, the R Street Institute received more than $12.6 million in contributions and grants. Revenue grew steadily from less than $800,000 in 2012 to more than $10.5 million, dipped to less than $9 million in 2019, but rebounded the following year.⁵¹

Donors

Of the $9 million in foundation donations received by R Street between 2012 and 2017, nearly $6.4 million (71 percent) was given by foundations with a history of large contributions to left-of-center policy organizations. These left-of-center foundation donors account for 26 percent of the $24.2 million in total donations given to R Street between 2012 and 2017. ⁵²

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Through 2017 the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation contributed grants totaling almost $2.8 million to R Street, with nearly $1.3 million of this contributed during 2017. ⁵³

In 2018, R Street received $4.15 million from the Hewlett Foundation. ⁵⁴

The Hewlett Foundation is a major donor to many left-of-center causes. Examples of its donations in this sector between 2016 and 2019 include the Energy Foundation ($105.3 million), the New Venture Fund ($13.8 million), Climateworks Foundation ($36.8 million), the Bipartisan Policy Center ($3.2 million), the Center for American Progress ($1.5 million), the Brennan Center ($1.3 million), the Third Way Institute ($1.8 million), and the Natural Resources Defense Council ($4 million). ⁵⁵

The Hewlett Foundation has a history of smaller giving to right of center organizations. From 2016 through 2019 it gave grants totaling $1.8 million to the Niskanen Center (a nominally libertarian think tank with ties to left-of-center environmental groups), $700,000 to the Christian Coalition, and $500,000 to the Federalist Society. ⁵⁶

The Energy Foundation

Through 2017, the Energy Foundation contributed grants totaling almost $1.8 million to R Street, with $460,000 of this contributed during 2017. ⁵⁷ The Energy Foundation is a left-of-center “pass through” charitable foundation founded by and supported by a network of left-wing organizations.

In 2017 the Energy Foundation funded a wide variety of left-of-center organizations such as Media Matters for America ($100,000), Public Citizen Foundation ($225,000), the Tides Center ($445,000), the BlueGreen Alliance ($430,000), the Consumer Federation of America ($230,000), Earthjustice–formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund ($935,000), and the Natural Resources Defense Council ($2.5 million). ⁵⁸

The Tides Foundation

In 2017, the Tides Foundation contributed a grant of $500,000 to R Street. ⁵⁹ The Tides Foundation is a donor-advised fund provider that was named after a San Francisco Bay Area left-of-center independent bookstore. The particular donor which advised the funds was Google.org; they aimed to support R Street’s Justice for Work Coalition. This was just one organization Google.org has donated to in support of racial and social justice policies. ⁶⁰

Democracy Fund

In 2017 the Democracy Fund contributed grants totaling $365,000 to R Street. ⁶¹ The Democracy Fund is principally funded by eBay founder and former chairman Pierre Omidyar, and contributes to center-left and left-wing media organizations, groups seeking to infringe on campaign speech rights, and left-of-center-leaning voter registration organizations. ⁶²

Foundation to Promote Open Society

Through 2017 the Foundation to Promote Open Society contributed grants totaling $270,000 to R Street. ⁶³ Formerly the Open Society Institute, the Foundation to Promote Open Society is part of an international grantmaking network founded by left-wing billionaire George Soros. ⁶⁴

In 2014, Foundation to Promote Open Society gave $120,000 to R Street to support its work in promoting “Dr Elizabeth Letourneau’s report among conservative audiences to expose the negative and costly consequences of the current practices of placing young people on sex offender registries.” ⁶⁵ In 2016, Foundation to Promote Open Society gave $150,000 to R Street to “challenge the practice of registering youth under sexual-offender registration and notification (SORN) policies.” ⁶⁶ While these Open Society grants only mentioned advocating for ending sex-offender registries for juveniles, then-R Street policy analyst and state affairs manager for criminal justice Jesse Kelley advocated for ending sex-offender registries for all persons in an op-ed for the Hill. ⁶⁷ Jesse Kelley is still with R Street’s policy team, working as the manager for Government Affairs as well as the manager for Criminal Justice & Civil Liberties. ⁶⁸

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Through 2017 the MacArthur Foundation contributed grants totaling $250,000 to R Street. ⁶⁹ MacArthur provides significant grants to a large assortment of left-of-center causes, such as Planned Parenthood, the Population Council, the Energy Foundation, the Center For American Progress and the New Venture Fund. ⁷⁰

David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Through 2017 the David and Lucile Packard Foundation contributed grants totaling $200,000 to R Street. ⁷¹ The Packard Foundation provides grants to a large assortment of left-of-center causes such as New America (New America Foundation), the Tides Center, the National Women’s Law Center, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. ⁷²

Foundation for the Carolinas

Through 2017 the Foundation for the Carolinas contributed grants totaling $121,000 to R Street. ⁷³

The Foundation for the Carolinas (FFTC) is a donor-advised fund provider. One of its largest known account holders is North Carolina billionaire Fred Stanback, who was characterized in an April 2018 Knoxville News report as a “known proponent of anti-humanist environmentalism [. . .] the belief that protecting the environment hinges on population control.” Thirty-nine percent of FFTC’s donations from 1999-2017 ($825 million) were given to organizations favoring the Stanback policy agenda: left-leaning environmentalism, abortion, population control, or immigration restrictionism. Stanback has been publicly identified as a significant contributor to many large recipients of FFTC donations that conform with his ideological concerns, such as Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth), NumbersUSA, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Biological Diversity. ⁷⁴

Public Welfare Foundation

In 2016 the Public Welfare Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to R Street. ⁷⁵ The Public Welfare Foundation is a left-of-center grantmaking organization with a history of donating six-figure and larger grants to left-leaning advocacy groups. Also in 2016 Public Welfare gave to the Bluegreen Alliance Foundation ($100,000), the Center for Popular Democracy ($150,000), the Economic Policy Institute ($150,000), and the New Venture Fund ($975,000). ⁷⁶

Other Foundation Donors

The Walton Family Foundation has provided grants totaling nearly $1.2 million to R Street—13 percent of total foundation grants received by R Street through 2017, and 4.9 percent of R Street’s total donations from all sources. ⁷⁷ Walton is an ideologically centrist foundation, with a history of giving to right-of-center policy organizations such as the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, and left-of-center organizations such as the Center for American Progress. ⁷⁸

The Linden Trust for Conservation is a foundation focused on conservation and environmental giving that has provided grants totaling $386,000 to R Street through 2017. Linden has been a large donor to the left-of-center Center for American Progress (grants of at least $500,000 since 2014), and the right-of-center American Action Forum (grants of at least $400,000 since 2015). Linden has also been a donor to the libertarian Niskanen Center ($400,000 since 2014), and the notionally right-of-center Alliance for Market Solutions ($1 million in 2016), both supporters of implementing a tax on carbon emissions. ⁷⁹

Financial Documents

R Street Institute’s 2018 IRS Form 990 filing is archived here.

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51. R Street Institute Internal Revenue Service Form 990, ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Accessed April 24, 2023. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/263477125.
52. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
53. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
54. “R Street Institute – for the Cyber Program.” Hewlett Foundation, November 12, 2018. https://hewlett.org/grants/r-street-institute-for-the-cyber-program/. ;

    “R Street Institute – for Advancing a Free-Market Clean Energy Agenda.” Hewlett Foundation, November 20, 2018. https://hewlett.org/grants/r-street-institute-for-advancing-a-free-market-clean-energy-agenda-2/. ;

    “R Street Institute – for Support of the Governance Project.” Hewlett Foundation, March 19, 2018. https://hewlett.org/grants/r-street-institute-for-support-of-the-governance-project-0/. ;

    “R Street Institute – for Support of a Free-Market Research Project for Birth Control Access.” Hewlett Foundation, June 7, 2018. https://hewlett.org/grants/r-street-institute-for-support-of-a-free-market-research-project-for-birth-control-access/.

55. “William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 15, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/william-and-flora-hewlett-foundation/
56. “William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 15, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/william-and-flora-hewlett-foundation/
57. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
58. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
59. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
60. Dickey, Megan Rose. “Google’s nonprofit arm donates another $7.5 million to advance racial justice.” Tech Crunch. Verizon Media. November 21, 2017. https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/21/googles-non-profit-arm-donates-another-7-5-million-to-advance-racial-justice/
61. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
62. “Democracy Fund.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 18, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/democracy-fund/
63. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
64. “Foundation to Promote Open Society.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 18, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/foundation-to-promote-open-society/
65. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
66. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
67. Kelley, Jesse. “The Sex Offender Registry: Vengeful, Unconstitutional and Due for Full Repeal.” TheHill, March 5, 2018. https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/376668-the-sex-offender-registry-vengeful-unconstitutional-and-due-for-full.
68. “Jesse Kelley.” R Street. Accessed April 3, 2020. https://www.rstreet.org/team/jesse-kelley/.
69. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
70. “John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 18, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/john-d-and-catherine-t-macarthur-foundation/
71. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
72. “David and Lucile Packard Foundation.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 18, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/david-and-lucile-packard-foundation/
73. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
74. “Foundation for the Carolinas.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 18, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/foundation-for-the-carolinas-fftc/
75. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
76. “Public Welfare Foundation.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 18, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/public-welfare-foundation-inc/
77. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
78. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019.
79. Data compiled by FoundationSearch.com subscription service, a project of Metasoft Systems, Inc., from forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Queries conducted November 15, 2019; AND “Niskanen Center.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 18, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/niskanen-center/; AND “Alliance for Market Solutions.” Influence Watch. Accessed November 18, 2019. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/alliance-for-market-solutions/