type: timeline_event In 2014, Tony Perkins served as vice president of the Council for National Policy - one of the organization's three executive officers - while simultaneously serving as president of the Family Research Council, demonstrating the integration of religious right leadership into CNP's coordination structure.
Perkins had served as president of the Family Research Council since 2003, making FRC one of the most prominent organizations opposing LGBTQ rights and promoting Christian nationalist policies. His position as CNP vice president meant FRC's activities could be coordinated with Heritage Foundation policy, ALEC legislation, Federalist Society judicial strategy, and major donor funding through CNP's network.
The 2014 leaked membership directory (released by SPLC in 2016) revealed that "sexual morality/anti-LGBT" was one of the two most predominant issues among CNP members, alongside "international/islamophobia." Perkins's leadership of both FRC and CNP executive committee aligned with this ideological priority.
Perkins served on the executive committee of the secretive and powerful Council for National Policy and would later serve as CNP president, showing his trajectory from executive officer to organizational leader. This demonstrated the continuity of CNP leadership and the prominence of religious right leaders within the network.
CNP's secretive membership rolls included Perkins alongside Ralph Reed (Faith and Freedom Coalition), DeVos and Mercer families (major donors), Heritage Foundation leaders, and Federalist Society members. This brought religious right social conservatism into coordination with economic conservative policy, judicial strategy, and billionaire funding.
The integration of Family Research Council into CNP's coordination network explained how religious right priorities (opposing LGBTQ rights, promoting Christian nationalism, restricting abortion access) became seamlessly coordinated with Heritage Foundation policy papers, ALEC model legislation, Federalist Society judicial appointments, and Alliance Defending Freedom litigation strategy.
At CNP's three-times-yearly secret meetings, Perkins could coordinate FRC's legislative priorities with ALEC's state-level bill mills, ensuring FRC's policy goals would be translated into model legislation distributed to Republican-controlled state legislatures. He could coordinate litigation strategy with Alliance Defending Freedom and judicial selection priorities with Federalist Society members.
Perkins's dual leadership of FRC and CNP executive committee exemplified the organizational model that made CNP so effective: the same individuals who ran major conservative institutions also served on CNP's leadership, ensuring organizational strategies discussed at CNP meetings would be implemented by leaders with the authority to direct their organizations' activities.
This explained the conservative movement's lockstep coordination on religious right issues: it wasn't independent organizations reaching similar conclusions - it was leaders meeting three times yearly to coordinate strategy, then returning to their organizations to execute the coordinated plan.