The 'Offended' 911 Group “Peaceful Tomorrows” is funded largely by Teresa Heinz

“Peaceful Tomorrows” is being portrayed as an independent group of relatives of victims of the 911 attacks. They are getting a lot of press claiming to be outraged over the new Bush ads.

Call me insensitive if you like, but I wonder if this outrage could possibly be a tad overblown, and more likely attributable to the millions and millions of dollars this group has received from endowments chaired by Teresa Heinz, wife of Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry.

According to their own contribution page, “Peaceful Tomorrows is a project of the Tides Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.”

According to an article in the Pittsburgh Review, “Between 1995 and 2001, $4.3 million of that money came from the Howard Heinz Endowment. In 2002, it and the Vira Heinz Endowment blessed The Tides Center, a San Francisco spin-off of the Tides Foundation, with another $190,000 while the two endowments gave $1.6 million to the new Tides Center for Western Pennsylvania.” (The Heinz Endowments have teamed up with a secretive left-wing group)

The money that flows into The Tides also flows out. They have given grants totaling $489,000 to the Iraq Peace Fund, who used that money to fund the anti-war marches and media costs of 27 groups, including MoveOn.org, whose purpose is to defeat George W. Bush.

Other Tides Center projects include The Youth Gender Project, which seeks to "empower and support transgender, gender-variant, intersexed and gender-questioning youth and young adults."

They also shoveled $200,000 towards The Ruckus Society - founded in 1995 to train activists in violent protest against biotechnology, globalization and the World Bank. It incited property destruction in the Seattle riots of 1999 and Washington, D.C., the following year.

Now, if you really want to get mad, you should also know that $8,000,000 in taxpayer money flowed into the Tides Center in the form of federal grants made by eight different agencies between 1997 and 2001.

Also from that blog:

During the course of this campaign, John Kerry’s opponents have suggested that Teresa Heinz Kerry has used her philanthropic work to advance her husband’s candidacy. This story is false. And as we have learned, we cannot let such false claims go unanswered.

This accusation originated with a couple of “think tanks” called the Capital Research Center and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Ironically, given that writers affiliated with the two groups accuse Teresa of secretiveness, neither organization’s website offers information about their funding sources. As to their agenda, both of these groups display strong antipathy for advocates for environmental and women’s issues like Teresa.

Far from being secretive, Teresa is one of the foundation sector’s leading champions of greater public accountability for the nonprofit sector. Information about the Heinz Family Philanthropies and The Heinz Endowments is readily available in our public filings and online.

One specific allegation is that the endorsement of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) was influenced by alleged funding from the Heinz Family Philanthropies. To begin, as a 501c4 advocacy organization, LCV is not even eligible for philanthropic funds. For a period of time, we did provide support to the League’s Voters Education Fund, which is a nonpartisan and legally separate entity that works to familiarize voters with candidates and their records. This funding started in 1993—before Teresa and John Kerry were married—and stopped in 2001, well before any endorsement considerations.

Given her experiences growing up in a dictatorship, Teresa has a deep commitment to promoting greater citizen involvement in American democracy, and our funding was nothing more than a reflection of that commitment.

Teresa and the foundations with which she is associated are known for their thoughtful, reasoned approach to philanthropy, including approaches often considered conservative. She was a supporter of faith-based programs before it was fashionable, has pushed hard to promote parents’ responsibility and involvement in the education of their children, and has long advocated the use of market mechanisms to protect the environment. Her late husband, Senator John Heinz, was one of the earliest proponents of these market mechanisms, because he saw a healthy environment as the very basis of a healthy planet and society and a source of economic advantage.

Having worked with Teresa for almost 13 years, and her late husband John Heinz for three years prior to that, I can attest to Teresa’s integrity and professionalism. She is a gifted and caring person who uses her philanthropy to develop pragmatic solutions to some of the most difficult problems of our time. That’s what drives her, a genuine passion to make the world a better and safer place—an impulse that eludes the understanding of her critics.

Jeffrey R. Lewis

Chief of Staff for Teresa Heinz

Posted by Jeffrey_Lewis at February 10, 2004 08:16 PM

This is just one of many examples of the intricate funding measures for campaigns that have sprung up since McCain Feingold. It also raises many questions. Has Theresa Heinz been using her position at the Heinz Foundation to further her husbands campaign? If so then is this an appropriate use of the organization's money and resources?

More importantly, if Theresa Heinz can direct Heinz Foundation resources to causes that directly or indirectly support her husband's campaign then do those funds fall under the non-exempt tax status of campaign donations, thus threatening the status of the Heinz Foundation. Similarly, do these monies then fall under personal donations, thereby drawing the ire of the FEC. The activities of the League of Conservation Voters and Tides Center are likely just the tip of the iceberg in this laundry list of funding activities. As this campaign stretches into the summer, the money will continue to flow and these questions will continue to be asked.

Very Interesting

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