So gradually did Art Pope became the powerful patron of the political right in North Carolina that few at first noticed. First he created the John Locke Foundation, a respected think tank churning out reports proclaiming the virtues of limited government. Then another think tank, to keep tabs on the state's colleges, was spun out of the Locke Foundation.

In recent years, Pope has created other organizations to sway public opinion, monitor the legislature, develop grass-roots political efforts and bring court challenges.

As a result, Pope, 49, a Raleigh retail executive, has emerged as an important behind-the-scenes figure in Tar Heel politics, spending millions of dollars on a network whose purpose is to move North Carolina to the political right.

You might call it Pope Political Inc.

One Pope organization is asking the courts to throw out the state lottery. Another is leading the charge against a Wake County school bond issue. And if you watch one of the talking-head TV shows, you are likely to see one of Pope's paid spinmeisters.

Pope Political Inc. now has 50 people on its payroll, including academics, journalists, political operatives, lawyers and a former N.C. Supreme Court judge.

Pope's reach extends beyond the public policy factory he has created. The Pope family has given so much money to the state Republican Party -- at least $700,000 in recent years -- that the party headquarters bears the family's name.

Not since the 1970s, with the creation of the National Congressional Club to serve as the political organization of U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, has there been a conservative network in North Carolina with such reach. Some Pope lieutenants see Pope Political Inc. as filling the vacuum left when the Helms organization collapsed in the 1990s.

"We are creating a freedom movement in the state," said Chris Neeley, director of one of the Pope-funded groups, Americans for Prosperity. "It's a march toward eventually putting conservatives in office and getting conservatives to support conservative issues."

Even as many conservatives cheer Pope's patronage, he has created enemies who feel that one man has gained too much power. They say Pope is bankrolling half of a civil war in the GOP to purge Republican moderates in the state House of Representatives.

Among his critics is former state Rep. David Miner, a Republican from Cary, whom Pope helped drive from office.

"What is scary about Art Pope is that it is one person," Miner said. "There is not any committee. There is no oversight. There is no elected official involved to face the voters every two years or every six years. It's him and his own personal agenda, and he is throwing his money around big time.

"Art Pope wants to control North Carolina politics."

The center of Pope Political Inc. is Hillsborough Place, a four-story office building in downtown Raleigh, across the street from the state Democratic Party headquarters. A Pope family real estate company bought the building for $11.1 million last year.

It houses The John William Pope Civitas Institute, Pope's legislative monitoring arm; Americans for Prosperity, its political arm; and the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, its legal arm, as well as organizations unrelated to Pope. On the same block, but in a separate building, is the John Locke Foundation, its research and communications arm.

Family beginnings

The Pope fortune was made in hundreds of small towns across the South. Started in the 1930s in Fuquay-Varina, Variety Wholesalers grew over the years to more than 500 discount stores and 10,000 employees. The company operates stores under several names, including Rose's, Maxway and Super 10. Privately held, the company competes with the likes of Wal-Mart and Dollar Stores in 14 states.

Art Pope and his family recently moved to a house valued for tax purposes at $2.3 million in Raleigh's Country Club Hills. He has a vacation house on Bald Head Island valued for tax purposes at $960,130.

The Pope family has been civic-minded, giving generously to such causes as the Boy Scouts, a lecture series at N.C. State University and the North Carolina Symphony.

The vehicle for the family's giving is the Pope Foundation, whose assets had a fair market value of $53.6 million in June, according to tax documents. The family fortune has been the subject of an acrimonious suit involving the widow of Art Pope's brother.

Pope traces his interest in politics back to at least 1972, when he was a 16-year-old campaign driver for Jack Hawke, a Republican congressional candidate who now leads one of Pope's organizations. His father, John William Pope, was a leading Helms supporter.

Pope later worked as an aide to GOP Gov. Jim Martin and served four terms in the state House. He was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in 1992 but proved to be a plodding campaigner and lost to Democrat Dennis Wicker.

Pope, who is intellectually inclined and well-read, has always had a Libertarian streak -- a group that favors less government in all spheres, including personal lifestyle issues.

Pope organized a Libertarian state chapter while in college. Some of his close colleagues -- George Leef, who heads Pope's higher education foundation, and David Koch, who is national chairman of Americans for Prosperity -- have run for office as Libertarians. During his campaign for lieutenant governor, Pope was forced to say he did not support prostitution, legalizing drugs or gambling.

Pope said he began thinking about starting a free-market think tank while serving as Martin's legal counsel in 1985. A Republican governor dealing with a Demo-cratic-controlled legislature, he said, often lacked the research and resources he needed to make the conservative case.

"The whole establishment in North Carolina -- the business establishment, the university establishment and governmental establishment -- was basically supportive of the Democratic Party and its policies," Pope said. "We are the underdog. We are almost overwhelmed."

The problem, as Pope sees it, is not just liberals trying to expand government. It's also corporations and other interests using government to manipulate the marketplace for their own benefit.

For too long, Pope says, the state's Democratic dominance has given North Carolina one of the South's larger governments without many benefits to show for it.

Pope says his millions have only somewhat narrowed what he views as a mismatch between the liberal and conservative public policy efforts. Left-of-center organizations in North Carolina dole out $18 million annually while right-of-center organizations give away $9 million, according to an analysis by John Hood, president of the Locke Foundation.

Pope says the left's resources include former Gov. Jim Hunt's Institute for Emerging Issues at N.C. State University, the N.C. Center for Public Policy in Raleigh, and former U.S. Sen. John Edwards' Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, as well as organizations such as the N.C. Justice Center, the Common Sense Foundation and the UNC Program on Southern Politics & Public Life.

Unlike the more liberal organizations, the purse strings of the Pope groups are mainly controlled by one man. The Pope network also seems more intensely focused on an ideological agenda.

Once a month, as many as two dozen representatives of conservative organizations meet in Raleigh to map strategy and discuss goals. The meetings are patterned after a similar meeting started in Washington by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.

"Is this part of 'the vast right-wing conspiracy'?" Pope asks. "No. It's just an exchange of ideas and what is going on in the state."

The Pope network is also trying to remedy what it sees as a leftward tilt in North Carolina's news media, spending much of its energy communicating the conservative message through daily e-mail newsletters, monthly newspapers, guest columns in established newspapers, and radio and television talk shows.

'One of the very best'

The Locke Foundation is part of a national trend of conservative think tanks. The national model is the Heritage Foundation in Washington, and 42 states have some form of conservative think tank. Only the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan is larger.

"It is a very common perception that Locke is one of the very best," said Mackinac President Lawrence Reed.

Although the Locke Foundation was created in 1989, most of the Pope network's growth has taken place in the past few years.

In 2004, Pope helped set up a state chapter of Americans for Prosperity. The group lobbies in favor of issues such as a constitutional amendment to limit the growth in state spending. It is in the process of organizing chapters in all 100 counties. The group will shortly release its Carolina Covenant, a pledge based on the Contract with America that helped elect a Republican Congress in 1994.

"We are basically trying to build an army," said Neeley, a veteran political operative who is the group's director.

Also in 2004, the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, led by former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, was created as the network's legal arm.

Last year, the Civitas Institute was set up under the leadership of Hawke, the former congressional candidate who also once was chairman of the state GOP. That group does polling, trains young people in politics, monitors legislation and is about to launch a Web site that provides legislative voting records.

For the fiscal year ending June 30, the Pope family was paying more than $56,000 per week for Pope's network, according to tax records. That figure will likely rise to $93,000 per week this year based on what the groups say they expect to spend as they expand. That does not include Americans for Prosperity, which does not make its budget public.

Although the Pope family has largely bankrolled the network, Pope hopes the organizations will attract other donors.

The Pope organizations are classified as tax-exempt and therefore must be nonpartisan. The exception is Americans for Prosperity, which can become involved in campaigns as long as it is advocating for an issue.

To protect their tax status and to project a nonpartisan image, the Pope groups sometimes invite Democrats to speak to their groups or participate in their training programs. They make available their reports to Republicans and Democrats and post their polling data on their Web site for all to see. They sometimes hire Democrats such as attorney Pamela Brewington Cashwell, a former Clinton administration official who now works for Orr's legal group. Journalists with The News & Observer have spoken at Locke Foundation events.

Democrats sometimes criticize the Locke Foundation for tailoring its research to fit its conservative views.

"I really do think the John Locke Foundation and the Pope orbit has contributed a lot and has a big role in challenging liberal and Demo-cratic dogma," said Mac McCorkle, a Democratic consultant to Gov. Mike Easley and others. "On the other hand, there is also a petty partisan side. They are involved in advocacy research. They do sometimes turn into Republican cheerleaders and apologists, and that undermines their larger intellectual mission."

Too busy to run again

Pope oversees his network with a light hand. While he sits on the boards of all of his groups, those who work for him say Pope is too busy running his family's chain of discount stores to spend a great deal of time on day-to-day decisions involving Pope Political Inc.

Pope says that he does not use his organizations to promote himself and that he has no plans to run again for political office.

It is not easy to measure the impact of the Pope network, in part because the state has been largely controlled by Democrats in recent years.

But it was a Pope publication that helped uncover abuses by then-U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance, a Warrenton Democrat who is now in prison for misuse of state funds.

Pope says he believes the Locke Foundation's advocacy played a role in the major tax cuts passed by the legislature in 1995, in shaping the school reform movement that led to more accountability, higher standards and more local flexibility, and in making it more difficult for lawmakers to raise taxes.

Pope says he is trying to change and enlarge North Carolina's political conversation.

"What I try to do," Pope said, "is educate the public about what is going on in the legislature and government and let them know what their elected officials are doing so they can make informed choices."

(Researchers David Raynor and Denise Jones contributed to this report.)

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