Kay Coles James

Even in the tumultuous Trump-era Washington, the Heritage Foundation has still proved to be the crown jewel of the conservative movement. And Kay Coles James, the president of the influential think tank, doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.

“Heritage will always be true north [in the conservative movement],” James said in an interview at Heritage’s offices near Capitol Hill. “Heritage stands on certain values or principles, and what makes it easy is one doesn’t have to navigate, one just has to stand.”

James took the reins of Heritage at the beginning of the year after the ouster of former President Jim DeMint, the firebrand ex-congressman from South Carolina, becoming the first woman to lead the organization.

DeMint was shown the door by the organization’s board over concerns that Heritage was becoming too closely aligned with the tea party wing of the GOP and was being used as a cudgel in messy intraparty fights among congressional Republicans, as opposed to a place to generate policy.

In James, the organization found someone with serious conservative policy chops. She served as director of the Office of Personnel Management in the George W. Bush administration, and previously was Virginia’s secretary of health and human services and dean of the school of government at Regent University. She has also been a trustee to the think tank for over a decade.

In the earliest months of her leadership, she said she believes that the conservative movement has come to an ideological crossroads.

“I think while we’re struggling as conservatives to take on the challenges that are coming from the left, we’re also taking on the internal challenges to define who we are,” she said.

The Heritage Foundation believes it has been successful in shaping the Trump administration into its particular definition of conservatism, which James sees as people who “recognize American exceptionalism” and believe in free markets, limited government, a “strong national defense” and a “civil society.” The organization crowed earlier this year that 64 percent of its “Mandate for Leadership,” a series of policy recommendations, was “embraced by the Trump administration” during its first year, including the passage of the tax bill.

James also points to the administration’s transition effort, which was loaded with former Heritage policy wonks and appointees the group recommended, as a sign of the think tank’s prominence.

She is unconcerned about disagreements between the think tank and the White House, which have notably crept up during the president’s tariff talks.

“I don’t agree 100 percent with my husband, but I love him dearly,” she said. “Of course we don’t agree 100 percent with the Trump administration; we don’t even agree 100 percent with the Republican Party. We are who we are as conservatives, and that’s OK.”

James said she has met the president only briefly, for a photo opportunity. She has also publicly expressed her disappointment in not serving in the Trump administration, chalking it up in an earlier interview with the POLITICO Women Rule podcast to interference from reality-TV-star-turned-White-House-aide-turned-reality-TV-star Omarosa Manigault Newman.

But now settled into her role at Heritage, she’s not pining for an office at 1600 Pennsylvania: “Why would I do that when I’m in the best job in Washington right now?” — Zach Montellaro

Photos by John Shinkle/POLITICO.