History
The genesis of the Mackinac Center is described on its Web site as follows: “The Mackinac Center was founded in 1987 by a group of citizens who met on Mackinac Island and shared an interest in making Michigan a better place to live and work. They were concerned about the state's direction and the fact that no institution in Michigan was developing policy ideas that harnessed the benefits of our free enterprise system.” This group formed what ultimately became the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, so named after Mackinac Island, which is considered to be an iconic Michigan image. The Center began operations in 1987 with no office or full-time staff, but formally opened offices in Midland in 1988 with its first president, Lawrence W. Reed, an economist, writer, and speaker who had chaired the economics department at Northwood University. The Lansing-based Cornerstone Foundation provided early direction and some funding. The first budget under Reed was $80,000. In 1997 the Mackinac Center moved from rented offices to its current headquarters after having raised $2.4 million to renovate a former Woolworth’s department store on Midland’s Main Street. Lawrence Reed served as president from the Center’s founding until September, 2008, when he assumed the title President Emeritus and also became the president of the Foundation for Economic Education. Former Chief Operating Officer Joseph G. Lehman was named the Mackinac Center’s president on September 1, 2008.
The Center was created with funding by the Cornerstone Foundation. Created by Dykema Gossett attorney Richard D. McLellan and located in the same building as the Dykema Gossett law firm, Cornerstone’s original board included McLellan, then-Senator John Engler, and D. Joseph Olson then General Council for Amerisure Insurance. Fundraising activity was active from 1984 to 1991, with peak activity in 1987 when Cornerstone established the Mackinac Center. The insurance industry (primarily Citizen’s) provided initial funding, amounting to $306,382 during this period. Various officials of Dow Corning and Dow Chemical paid $335,986.
In a 2011 interview, founder Olson said that the Center was first conceived in a Lansing Michigan bar at a meeting between he, another insurance company lobbyist Tom Hoeg, Richard McLellan and then Senator John Engler: "In 1986, John Engler, then majority leader of the state Legislature and later governor, summoned attorney Richard McLellan and the state's two top insurance lobbyists, Olson and Hoeg, to the private club in Lansing." It would be designed to bolster the insurance lobby's influence in the legislature: "Back in 1980s, Hoeg said the insurance industry was losing a lot of battles in the state Legislature and didn't have what he called "intellectual authority," namely research and information to support their ideas."
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