Thomas F. Ellis
Raleigh lawyer who ran Jesse Helms's political organization, sat on the Pioneer Fund board, took its money for his television foundation, organized a bid for CBS, and lost a Reagan nomination over his record on race.
Thomas F. Ellis was a Raleigh lawyer and the chief organizer of the political operation of Senator Jesse Helms. He studied at the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia law school, served as a Navy lieutenant in the Second World War, was an assistant United States attorney and special counsel to the North Carolina governor's advisory committee on education, and was a founder of the firm of Maupin, Taylor and Ellis. He was North Carolina chairman of Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1976, national co-chairman of Jack Kemp's in 1992, and an adviser to Steve Forbes's in 1996.1
The Helms Organization
Ellis was chairman of the National Congressional Club, the committee that raised 9.8 million dollars in 1982 and helped raise a record 13.99 million for Helms's reelection in 1984. His partner Carter Wrenn was its executive director and treasurer. Ellis was the principal stockholder of the tax-exempt Educational Support Foundation, which owned the direct mail company Jefferson Marketing, and chairman of the Coalition for Freedom, "a tax-exempt foundation whose goal is to finance conservative-oriented television programs." The coalition produced "KGB: The Lie and the Truth," shown on August 28, 1982, on two and a half hours of air time donated by Ted Turner, with Helms, Senator John East, and Representative Philip Crane. The Federal Election Commission sued over Jefferson Marketing's services to campaigns in 1985. The Internal Revenue Service later revoked the coalition's exemption for political activity and private benefit to insiders. Thomas Farr, who joined Ellis's firm in 1983, represented the Helms committees.23
The Pioneer Fund
Ellis joined the board of the Pioneer Fund in 1973, with the Kinston lawyer Marion Parrott, and left it in 1977. The fund's tax returns show 195,000 dollars to the Coalition for Freedom: 10,000 in 1983, 20,000 in 1984, 30,000 in 1985, 100,000 in 1987, and 35,000 in 1989. The fund's president, Harry Weyher, was the lawyer for Fairness in Media, which Ellis, Wrenn, and James Palmer Cain formed on November 13, 1984, to urge conservatives to buy stock in CBS. The network's suit against the group cited the officers' ties to "a controversial tax-exempt foundation, The Pioneer Fund."124
The 1983 Nomination
Reagan nominated Ellis on February 8, 1983, to the Board for International Broadcasting, which supervised Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Forbes was nominated to the same board. At the hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 26, where his chief critics were Senators Paul Tsongas and Joseph Biden, he was challenged on his service on the board of "a group financing studies into theories that whites are genetically superior to blacks," his membership in an all-white country club, a letter circulated in 1976 claiming that President Ford was seeking a black running mate, and a visit to South Africa paid for by its government. He told the committee: "I do not believe in my heart that I'm a racist." A majority of the committee asked the president to withdraw the name. On July 28 Ellis asked to be withdrawn, in a letter on his firm's stationery distributed by a Helms aide, calling the criticism "an obvious partisan political effort to drive a wedge between you and the black community using me as the instrumentality." He hoped the board would continue to "broadcast the tenets of Christian belief" without "interference from some of those in public office who do not recognize the threat of communist world domination." Reagan replied that he had "acted in a manner consistent with the reputation for honor that you have always possessed." The nomination lapsed on August 4.56
Asked by The New York Times in 2001 whether one race was genetically superior to another, Ellis said: "I have no idea."3
Sources
- Lynn, Richard. The Science of Human Diversity: A History of the Pioneer Fund. University Press of America, 2001, pp. 55-56. ↩
- Edsall, Thomas B., and David A. Vise. "CBS Fight a Litmus Test for Conservatives," The Washington Post, March 31, 1985, p. 1. ↩
- Southern Poverty Law Center, "From eugenics to voter ID laws: Thomas Farr's connections to the Pioneer Fund," Hatewatch, December 4, 2017. ↩
- Mehler, Barry, comp. "Pioneer Fund Grants, 1971-1996," Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, compiled from Internal Revenue Service Forms 990; Mahler, Jonathan. "Forbes Waffles on Ellis; Brooks Blasts Buchanan," The Forward, February 1996. ↩
- United Press International, dispatch on the withdrawal of Thomas Ellis, Washington, July 28, 1983. ↩
- United States Senate, nomination PN59-1, Thomas F. Ellis, Board for International Broadcasting, 98th Congress. https://www.congress.gov/nomination/98th-congress/59/1 ↩
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