A Patton Boggs lawyer, Aubrey Rothrock, said in a statement that the Waltons’ lobbying supported “private foundation reforms to create new incentives for charitable giving” and did not involve “the specific issue of repealing the estate tax.”
Aided by Democrats such as Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas senator, Congressional Republicans in 2001 passed a temporary measure that would phase out the tax over 10 years. The tax was restored in 2011.
As a senator, Lincoln was one of the few Democrats to whom the Waltons donated. She’s now a lobbyist whose clients include Wal-Mart.
Walton Contributions
Lincoln’s opposition to the estate tax wasn’t driven by the Waltons or Wal-Mart, she said in a telephone interview. Her views were shaped by growing up on a farm and representing a state with many small family businesses that could be hurt by the tax, she said.
Contributors to Lincoln included Alice Walton, the youngest of Sam and Helen Walton’s four children. Alice, 63, is a former money manager who founded and ran her own financial firm, Llama Co. She now lives on a ranch in Texas known as the Rocking W., where she raises award-winning cutting horses and collects art. One of her favorite paintings, now hanging at Crystal Bridges, is a vivid full-length 1904 Alfred Maurer portrait of a model in a huge feathered boa, clutching a cigarette and sneering at the viewer.
In 2005, Walton grabbed the art world’s attention with a series of purchases. Spending as much as $35 million for a single work, she quickly amassed the collection that would form the basis of Crystal Bridges.
Art Patron
Walton stepped up to a lectern to christen the museum on a bright November day in 2011. Her sunglasses shielding her eyes from the glare, she thanked just about everyone else who had played a role, from the architect and construction workers to the Northwest Arkansas Council.
“This project exemplifies the way one single gift grows and becomes greater, as many more give generously,” she said in her Ozarks twang.