Staff photo / Doug Daugherty, president of Hamilton Flourishing, introduces Stuart and Tamarah Goggans during an event at the Chattanooga Public Library on Aug. 20, 2019, in Chattanooga. The event was part of Hamilton Flourishing's monthly educational event series.The future of the Chattanooga conservative group Hamilton Flourishing is in doubt with its president, Doug Daugherty, alleging its funding was cut off at the instigation of former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker.
Daugherty made the charge in a recent, urgent fundraising plea, charging that Corker, a Republican, called "our biggest donor" to get the funding cut. He did not identify the donor in question but the Maclellan Foundation has been the group's highest profile funder.
"The RINOs (Republicans in name only) are attacking us, especially over the Weston Wamp illegal election," Daughtery wrote in his missive, alluding to Republican Weston Wamp's victory in Hamilton County's May 3 mayoral primary election, which was challenged unsuccessfully at the state GOP executive committee.
The allegation that Corker sought to cut off funding is baseless, said David Denmark, executive director of the Maclellan Foundation.
"Bob Corker has not spoken with Chris Maclellan nor anyone else at the foundation about withholding funding for Hamilton Flourishing," Denmark said in an email. "It would be a moot point, since we have not funded Hamilton Flourishing in nearly four years."
Denmark said in an earlier statement that "the Maclellans and the foundation have no knowledge or opinion about the allegations made by Hamilton Flourishing regarding the recent primary election for our county's mayor. We will be happy to work alongside whomever is ultimately elected to serve our community in that important capacity."
Wamp will face Democrat Matt Adams in an Aug. 4 general election.
Todd Womack, Corker's former chief of staff, said by phone the former senator did not seek to cut off foundation funding.
Two former board members involved in the creation of Hamilton Flourishing told the Chattanooga Times Free Press by phone that the intent was always that the group, established as a conservative think tank and announced publicly in 2019, would become self-sufficient after three years with no more funding from the Maclellans.
Former board members Tom Decosimo and Tina Benkiser also said it was their recollection that Hugh O. Maclellan, the foundation's former president, had provided funding for at least some of that time.
Efforts to reach Hugh O. Maclellan on Saturday by phone to ask whether Corker or others contacted him in any effort to cut off funding were unsuccessful. The Times Free Press called three phone numbers listing Maclellan's name, and all responded with a recording saying they are not taking calls.
Corker, meanwhile, did not respond on Saturday to a Times Free Press text about whether he had raised the issue with Hugh O. Maclellan.
STATUS UNCLEAR
Daugherty has labored for decades in support of social and religious conservative issues. The Hamilton Flourishing group focused on education policy, abortion and other issues.
For two weeks running, the Times Free Press sought to determine whether the group received enough funding to stay active beyond the July 15 shutdown date listed in the fundraising plea.
The week before last, Daugherty responded briefly to several text messages, first writing, "Super, super busy. Talk to you next week if I can. Buying a home in Charleston."
Daughterty did not respond when asked whether that was in Charleston, Tennessee, or Charleston, South Carolina.
This past week, Daugherty wrote in response to a follow-up text to discuss the situation that "I just can't til the time is right."
In a later text, unedited, he wrote, "Hamilton. Flourishing until their is a full succession plan," before later adding "I'm on a sabbatical. I'll be 70 in October."
Hamilton Flourishing first received its IRS nonprofit approval in 2018. In a 2019 filing, it reported $96,100 in funding for what appeared to be a partial year's activity. It listed $34,896 in salaries, other compensation and employee benefits as well as $8,827 in professional fees and other payments made to independent contractors and other expenses, leaving a $41,992 balance.
In its 2020 disclosure, reflecting 2019 activity, the group reported receiving $305,185 that year. Of that amount, Daugherty received $125,000 as base compensation. It also reported $87,500 in service program expenses and $37,500 in management and general expenses. A section for fundraising expenses was blank.
EDUCATION ROOTS
The group's creation was publicly announced in April 2019 during a meeting with the Times Free Press. There, board members Ken Meyer, a former Republican legislator; Decosimo, managing principal of Decosimo Corporate Finance; and Benkiser, a local attorney and former head of the Republican Party of Texas, outlined what they saw as the need for a conservative think tank in the community.
Meyer at the time pointed to the community organizing work of UnifiEd - a local, progressive nonprofit group created in 2013 with the goal of reforming Hamilton County Schools. UnifiEd has been supported financially by the local Benwood Foundation.
UnifiEd shares its name with a political action committee that had been active in school board and County Commission races. Decosimo, Meyer and Benkiser were seeking to provide a balance to UnifiEd on the ideas front.
According to Decosimo, at least some of the group's funding came from Hugh O. Maclellan, whose family founded Chattanooga-based Provident Life and Accident Insurance Co., which later merged with Unum. The family has several other foundations as well.
"I think originally the Maclellan Foundation was going to fund" Hamilton Flourishing, Decosimo said in a phone interview last week. "But I believe for whatever reasons they decided that Hugh O. would do it individually."
Decosimo, who ran unsuccessfully for school board in 2020, said his recollection was Maclellan's financial support was to be for three years, the idea being that would allow Daugherty time to develop a sustainable fundraising plan to continue Hamilton Flourishing's operations.
"I thought Doug did a really good job," Decosimo said. "You know, just kind of being a neutral conservative voice, promoting literacy in our schools and providing insight into the voters as to who the candidates were."
Decosimo said Daugherty has been in the process of trying to broaden out his support.
"And that's where he was when I got off the board. He was aware of Hugh's commitment and he was trying to broaden his support so he just wouldn't be overly reliant.
"I have no idea what happened here," Decosimo said. "Like I said, I got off the board, I'm just too darned busy."
Meyer, executive director of federal affairs with K12 Inc., a for-profit firm that provides online school curriculum, said he had limited involvement in the early stages of Hamilton Flourishing and left after about a year given his business and other responsibilities.
Those include serving on the board of the Beacon Center, a Nashville-based free-market think tank. Meyer said he had suggested Daugherty might try to work out an arrangement with the Beacon Center.
"I just didn't have enough time to pay attention to what was going on locally that I would be of any real benefit," said Meyer, whose work often takes him to Washington, D.C. "Because I was involved in Beacon Center, I saw some value in the concept, but that concept just never really evolved."
Benkiser said she was on the board for about a year. She said she had been interested in "educating people to be involved in civic matters, educating people on the issues so that they could make up their own minds and just really get back to knowledgable civic engagement."
She said her understanding was the Maclellan Foundation was to provide initial funding for the first three years.
"And the idea for any nonprofit group is to develop its own donor base on any type of foundation or seed money," she said. "I know it was the Maclellan Foundation, and then I think that Hugh Maclellan stepped in, obviously, and took up where the foundation left off. But I think that three years is probably coming about now, coming to its natural end. So I think it fulfills the commitments it made."
She said she has no idea if Hamilton Flourishing has built a donor base, having read Daugherty's mentioning having a 60,000-reader base for his email newsletter.
"But I don't know how that translates into donations or donors," she said.
Wamp on May 3 won the Republican nomination for Hamilton County mayor in a three-person field. He received 318 more votes than his nearest competitor, Sabrena Smedley, Hamilton County Commission chairwoman. Businessman Matt Hullander came in third.
A group of Republicans charged that Democrats had "illegally" crossed over, although the state has no mechanism for political party voter registration and allows voters to select one party's ballot or another on the day of a primary election.
There was more "crossover" voting than usual this year, as Democrats on May 3 did not have a competitive primary for mayor.
Smedley challenged the election results before the Tennessee Republican State Executive Committee, but members noted there was no way to know which candidates received the votes from crossover Democrats, given that ballots are kept secret. Wamp and his allies noted he won many of the most conservative precincts in the county.
Both Meyer and Benkiser serve on the Tennessee GOP's State Executive Committee, which decided Smedley's challenge. Meyer voted against the challenge, saying current state law allows crossover voting. Benkiser voted to overturn Wamp's victory.
Among its activities this year, Hamilton Flourishing sponsored a Republican mayoral primary debate.
Decosimo, who supported Hullander in the GOP mayoral primary, expressed puzzlement over a Hamilton Flourishing poll by Knoxville-based Spry Strategies on the race, commissioned by Hamilton Flourishing. Released in April, it showed Wamp leading in the mayoral primary.
"I was not happy about the poll he ran showing Weston winning," Decosimo said. "I'm not sure where that came from."
"A CITY FOR GOD"
Daugherty has long been involved in conservative issues and sometimes on the political front, serving as campaign manager in 1986 for fellow social and religious conservative Jim Golden in Golden's unsuccessful challenge to then-U.S. Rep. Marilyn Lloyd, a Chattanooga Democrat.
He later became a political and fundraising consultant, working with Inner-City Ministries. He states in his Hamilton Flourishing biography that he became executive director of the Chattanooga Coalition Against Pornography and "ran all the pornography stores out of town."
Some time later, he became executive director of the Chattanooga Resource Center, another conservative social and religiously oriented group for nearly two decades. Its mission was making Chattanooga "a City for God."
As head of Hamilton Flourishing, he writes an email newsletter called Civilis. He recently hailed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, saying that "without question the blood of innocents, and millions of people's prayers and millions of people's hard work is the biggest miracle thing in any generation alive!"
In his appeal for financial support, Daugherty stated, "It's all-out war from the RINOs, the Trump haters, especially voter integrity .... It is a war. We will win if you help."
He signed the email, "Doug Daugherty, desperately working hard to survive financially."
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.