The conservative movement in Chattanooga and Hamilton County is alive and well and will continue to thrive without Hamilton Flourishing, the think tank's founder, Doug Daugherty, maintained last week.
"The conservative voice is growing," he said in a phone conversation with the Free Press. "All kinds of things are happening that bode well for conservatives."
Hamilton Flourishing, created in the fall of 2018, was to be a "think-tank-with-legs" with the aim "to provide the public, policy makers and media with sound research to support ... solutions and ... to communicate principles and policy in a meaningful and influential manner."
Its focus, Daugherty said at the time, would be "liberty and responsibility, strong families, educational excellence, free enterprise, good government and civil society."
Although he didn't use the word "conservative," it was implied Hamilton Flourishing would be a conservative alternative to UnifiEd, a local organization created in 2014 to help parents be more involved in their children's public education but which wound up creating a political action committee to elect left-leaning office-holders.
Daugherty said last week he has shut down Hamilton Flourishing because it was difficult to create a financial base to sustain the organization during the COVID-19 pandemic, that it was "a good time to change gears" as he neared his 70th birthday and that other people had taken up some of the causes the organization supported.
During its nearly four-year run, its founder said the organization had done meaningful work on infrastructure development, homelessness, affordable housing, abortion, public education in general, and, perhaps most thoroughly, on literacy and voter education.
"The whole area of voter education is probably where we had our biggest impact," Daugherty said.
He felt Hamilton Flourishing "had a big part" in bringing the lack of literacy in the district's elementary school students to the public attention.
"The Hamilton County Department of Education [has] never had a history of being transparent," Daugherty said. "Getting information [on literacy] was difficult. School board members didn't know what was going on. So we paid our people to go in and look at the data. [The results] were stunning ... horrible."
To highlight the problem, he appeared before the board and handed out leaflets to parents at struggling schools and suggested that they call their school board members.
Literacy, Daugherty said, had been "kicked down the road. "We moved it to the forefront. There are all kinds of reasons to fix that."
It is one of the subjects, he said, parents have taken note of since the pandemic. He said people are more interested in school board races, issues have become more politicized and things are generally more agenda-driven.
"Voters are watching in a way they never did before," Daugherty said.
Locally, he believes there will be "a realignment within [GOP] circles," with more conservatives challenging mainstream Republicans. "I think we'll see a lot of that over the next few years."
Social issues, according to Daugherty, still "are a big deal" in Hamilton County.
In a poll the organization did, he said, 54% of respondents indicated they wouldn't vote for a candidate who wasn't pro-life. That's about twice the national number, he said.
Although pro-life activists were able to shut down the city's last abortion clinic about 30 years ago, the movement didn't stop, Daugherty said.
"They focused more on the service side," he said, adding that such groups have been able to thwart at least three attempts to reopen a clinic in the area.
Daugherty said if an abortion clinic was in existence here today, the local movement would spring into action.
"People would be in the streets again," he said. "It would be huge."
Other local organizations have taken up the conservative mantle during Hamilton Flourishing's existence, Daugherty said.
He said Church Voter Guides has come in and been able to do the hard work of creating and compiling information about candidates and disseminating it to the public. "They were doing a great job," he said, "and they'll be better the next election of keeping up where people stand. It's hard work."
Daugherty said the statewide Tennessee Conservative website, created by Chattanooga-based Brandon Lewis, is also making inroads.
That organization recently held a fundraiser keynoted by author, commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, he said.
Daugherty said the current presidential administration is doing its part to keep conservatism on the march.
"[The Biden administration's actions have] shocked the heck out of everybody," he said. "Liberals and conservatives that I talk to are bewildered. It's not leadership. It reminds me of malaise (a term often associated with the administration of Jimmy Carter).
"If anything," Daugherty said, "he's been divisive, calling half of Americans un-American and fascist" in a recent speech.
"Yes, I think," the local conservative movement will remain strong.