Richard Mellon Scaife, Billionaire Conservative Activist, Dies At 82

Richard Mellon Scaife, a philanthropist and heir to the Mellon banking fortune, died on Friday at his home in Pittsburgh at the age of 82. His lawyer, H. Yale Gutnick, confirmed Scaife’s death.

The reclusive billionaire was known for supporting right-wing causes and helped lay the foundations for America’s modern conservative movement, according to the New York Times. His influence helped fuel the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Scaife recently announced in a front-page article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which he owned, that he had an untreatable form of cancer.

The billionaire and Joseph Coors, the beer magnate, were the leading financiers of the conservative movement of the 1970s and 1980s. They sought to reverse the liberal traditions in America brought on by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.

Richard Mellon Scaife inherited about $500 million in 1965 from the Mellon banking fortune. He tripled his net worth over his lifetime with help from more family bequests and income from trust funds and investments in oil, steel, and real estate. His forebears were primarily benefactors of museums, public art collections, education, and medicine, but Scaife chose a different path.

While he never ran for public office or gave speeches to promote his political views, Scaife gave hundreds of millions of dollars to promote conservative politics.

CNN notes that Republican leaders mourned Scaife’s death on Friday. House Speaker John Boehner tweeted, “RIP Dick Scaife. Great newspaperman. Set the highest standard. True patriot for first principles we honor today. Prayers for his family.”

Among those he backed in political campaigns were Sen. Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. Despite his beliefs, Scaife didn’t always keep in line with the conservative movement. He broke with the Republican Party on issues like abortion, legalizing same-sex marriage, and the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Richard Mellon Scaife supported several causes and institutions in public, but reportedly struggled with alcoholism for years. Several family issues kept him in the headlines as well, including a contentious divorce from his second wife, which was finalized in 2012.

Despite hordes of lawyers, spokesmen, and retainers paid to insulate him from public fascination, Scaife’s troubled life was still examined in the news media. He purchased the Tribune-Review and several other newspapers in the 1970s. He spent lavishly on the Greensburg, Pennsylvania paper and used it as a platform for his conservative views. In the column announcing his terminal cancer, Scaife wrote that, for all the philanthropy and causes he supported, none of them “gave me as great a sense of accomplishment as the newspapers.”

Richard Mellon Scaife is survived by two children and two grandchildren.