Story by Maya Hagan
In Art Pope’s office in Raleigh, North Carolina, a framed picture referencing the Eagle Scouts hangs on the wall. A nod not to Pope’s own experience but to the Scout principles and journey that he respects.
“I was not a Boy Scout. [The John William Pope Foundation] supported a scholarship for Eagle Scouts. We wanted to have a way to determine that young people who were determined and made an achievement, encouraged them to reach that achievement. It’s difficult to become an Eagle Scout,” Pope said.
His support for Eagle Scouts is just one way Pope has inserted himself into public work. Over the past several decades, through business, think tanks, appointments and philanthropy, Pope has left a mark on North Carolina in various ways. While supporters view Pope as an effective advocate for conservative principles, critics argue his influence has quietly reshaped the state in ways that should be more transparent.
Pope was born in 1956 in Fayetteville, but grew up in Fuquay-Varina and later moved to Raleigh. His introduction to the family business, Variety Wholesalers, began at birth — literally.
“My father was not there when I was born because he was opening up a new store in Elizabethtown, North Carolina,” said Pope, who joined the company as general counsel in 1986. “I went to travel to stores when I was a young child with my dad. I worked summers as a teenager in college with the company. So, really, I’ve been involved with the family business as a family member my entire life.”
Pope’s first foray into public office was in 1988, when he ran for the N.C. House of Representatives. Paul Stam, former North Carolina General Assembly member, recalls the first time he and Art Pope met. Stam said it was 1989, and he and Pope were both about to be sworn into the North Carolina House of Representatives.
“Brilliant, studious, prepared. He knew much more about the budget than I did,” Stam said, describing his first impression of Pope.
Stam said he and Pope were not competitors as freshmen in an environment dominated by seniors. Nonetheless, during his first term in the House, Pope established himself as he was elected Republican Joint Caucus Leader. Pope was re-elected in 1999 and served until 2002. In 2013, then-Gov. Pat McCrory appointed Pope as North Carolina’s budget director, a role he held until 2014. Between his terms in office, Pope co-founded the Civitas Institute in 2005 and became CEO of Variety Wholesalers in 2006.
Today, Pope continues his role as CEO of Variety Wholesalers, which includes discount retailers Roses, Maxway, and Super10. Last year, Pope expanded the company to include approximately 200 Big Lots, another discount retailer that filed for bankruptcy in September.
Pope said he saw a “different opportunity” when adding Big Lots to Variety Wholesalers. Acquiring the stores would allow Variety Wholesalers to serve a demographic that partially overlapped with that of Roses and Maxway while still being distinct operations. Pope’s new business endeavor will not only save several Big Lots, but it will also save several jobs. According to Pope and Reuters, the sale of Big Lots is due to save an estimated 5,000 jobs.
Nat Jirasawand owns Sugar Koi Ice Cream, an ice cream and espresso shop near a Cary Big Lots that Pope does not plan to save. According to Jirasawand, the impact of the Big Lots near his restaurant closing was immediate.
“Foot traffic shortened. If [Big Lots] was there, [there would be] a little bit more customers coming in,” Jirasawand said.
When the store closed, the street lights were also taken, forcing many customers and employees to walk to and from their cars in the dark during nighttime hours. Jirasawand said this caused him to be more vigilant of employees from nearby merchants when leaving at night. Jirasawand said this also contributed to decreased customers and heightened security concerns. For example, Jirasawand said he noticed homeless people walking by at night causing him to worry about potential break ins.
Roses has been a part of Variety Wholesalers since 1997. Durham resident Theresa Kinlaw has been shopping there for more than 50 years, before it was acquired by the Pope family. One of her main reasons for coming is that every Wednesday is Senior Citizen Day, which means 10% off select items. While she purchases household items such as utensils, rugs, and plates, she comes back for the T-shirts that have become her trademark at the gym.
“It’s kind of the community spot, and most of my friends are seniors like I am, and every little discount helps… You see stuff [here] that you might see at another store, but it’s a little bit cheaper,” Kinlaw said.
While Variety Wholesalers shoppers like Kinlaw enjoy their experience at the stores, Pope has faced scrutiny from organizations such as Democracy North Carolina, a nonpartisan organization seeking to strengthen Democratic structures in North Carolina.
“Art Pope makes big profits by paying store workers poverty wages and selling cheap products,” according to a Democracy North Carolina graphic.
In response, Pope, who refers to employees as “associates,” said less than 3% of Variety Wholesalers associates earn a minimum wage based on state and federal laws.
“We provide stores that serve the local community, the local neighborhood, many of which are African American. We also provide and create jobs in those communities,” Pope said.
According to Facing South, an online magazine by the Institute of Southern Studies, Variety Wholesalers places stores in areas with a minimum 25% African American population within five miles of their stores. Facing South said they got these numbers from the Variety Wholesalers website, which has since removed the page.
Because Pope’s retail company is said to operate primarily in African American communities, sources such as Facing South and the North Carolina NAACP organized an informational picket in 2013. They believed that African American shoppers should be aware that their money helps indirectly support Pope’s political endeavours such as voter ID laws and opposition to the expansion of Medicaid. According to the US Commission on Civil Rights, certain voter ID laws disproportionately impact African Americans negatively.
In addition, a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent source for health policy research, said non-expansion of Medicaid also harms African Americans as they are more likely to fall into a coverage gap. The John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Institute, which Pope contributes to, have published articles supporting both of these policies.
While Pope’s business endeavors alone contribute to his prominence in North Carolina, how he leveraged his wealth to help shape the state’s political landscape significantly contributes to his controversy. As the former budget director under Gov. Pat McCrory, Pope has been an invisible hand in North Carolina’s red transformation.
In 2010, the Republicans gained control of both chambers of the North Carolina legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. As a result, Pope was accused of fueling the shift through significant political donations to conservative candidates. According to Facing South, published by the Institute for Southern Studies, Pope, his family and groups supported by Pope spent an estimated $2.2 million supporting 27 North Carolina legislative races in the 2010 election.
Pope denied this claim saying that neither he nor his family spent $1 million, let alone millions, supporting conservative candidates that year or any other election year. He said they wanted to create a boogeyman, a demon, and they chose him because of his activity within the Republican Party, public policy and business.
However, Pope’s critics suggest that his influence does not require him to contribute to campaigns directly. TransparUNCy, a student-led organization, seeks to shed light on the role of political influence in UNC governance. They are also some of Pope’s toughest observers.
“He operates on this principle of ‘I want to make a bunch of different organizations that are x number of times removed from me,’” TransparUNCy executive member and UNC junior, Toby Posel said. “The John Locke Foundation… subsidiaries of that… increasing that complexity means it is increasingly, exponentially harder to track whose money is going where, why, and how.”
Pope is co-founder and primary funder of the John Locke Foundation, one of North Carolina’s principal conservative think tanks. He also plays a large role in other conservative organizations, such as Civitas and the James G. Martin Center, formerly the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. According to Stam, Pope is targeted because “he’s effective.”
Alexander Denza, who is also an executive member of TransparUNCy and a UNC senior, views Pope in a different light: “Art Pope is a very wealthy and powerful man from North Carolina who has had a hugely destructive impact on state and national politics over the last several decades,” Denza said.
Other than receiving his undergraduate degree from UNC, Pope’s connection to the university includes the Republican-led legislature’s 2020 appointment to the UNC Board of Governors. Pope served until 2023, furthering his influence in politics and education through one of the nation’s leading public university systems.
More recently, Pope’s ties to UNC have revolved around Chancellor Lee Roberts’ appointment in 2024.
Roberts began serving on the board of directors for Variety Wholesalers in 2019, a role he continued even after being appointed chancellor of UNC despite forgoing compensation. Despite Pope’s conservative politics, Roberts said in an online webinar hosted by the Coalition for Carolina that he will serve as chancellor in a nonpartisan way.
Outside of education and business, Pope has also become a prominent figure in North Carolina through policy-focused institutions, Civitas and the John Locke Foundation, which merged in 2021. According to Stam, who is on the board of directors of the Locke Foundation, Pope contributes almost half of the budget.
However, Pope’s influence extends beyond the local level to the national level as he serves on the boards of national conservative organizations, the Heritage Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.
“Heritage and Bradley are two of the biggest power players in national right-wing, philanthropic circles…And so his fingers are in, are, are in everything right now that is sort of in power.” Denza said.
Through his business interests and political connections, Pope has drawn criticism, but as chairman and president of the John William Pope Foundation, named after his father, he helps support a range of causes. These include conservative think tanks and his $10 million commitment to Carolina, as well as K-12 education, humanitarian efforts, and job training programs to teach people employment skills.
“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime… [The John William Pope Foundation] definitely believes in teaching the man to fish,” Pope said.
Pope’s philanthropy is also guided by his politics, specifically his belief in a free market.
“That peril [of teaching a man to fish] depends on the belief that the man has the right to fish, that he owns the fish that he catches, that there exists a marketplace where he can sell his fish when he goes to the marketplace…In order to alleviate poverty, we support those public policies that support that free market, as well as teaching the man to fish and providing the man the fish,” Pope said.
Although Pope faces criticism for conservative leaning views such as this from groups like TransparUNCy, Pope said it is his family it bothers most.
“It’s a huge backhanded compliment. If you weren’t doing something right in the first place, they wouldn’t bother attacking you,” Pope said.
Despite his polarization, which he attributes to Democrats’ 2010 defeat, Pope has reached multiple sectors of North Carolina. From discount stores to the boardrooms of one of North Carolina’s most prominent universities to think tanks supporting policies and legislatures considering those policies, Pope became a significant figure in the state’s business, political, and philanthropic arenas.
As North Carolina continues to evolve politically and economically, Pope’s influence remains a subject of debate. As Pope expands his businesses and other endeavors, whether supported or contested, he continues to stand seemingly as one of North Carolina’s most consequential figures.
“My legacy is very trite, but it’s simple,” Pope said. “It is to leave the world a better place than I found it.”
