J. Arthur Pope is president of Variety Wholesalers Inc., which operates a chain of over 500 retail stores in fourteen southern states. He is also president of the John William Pope Foundation, a private grant-making foundation. He served four terms in the North Carolina House of Representatives and was special counsel to Governor James Martin. He was a member of the state's Economic Futures Study Commission and State Goals and Policies Board. He was the founding chairman of the John Locke Foundation and has served on the boards of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Jesse Helms Center at Wingate College, and the Boy Scouts of America-Occoneechee Council. Pope, a Raleigh native, graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received a J.D. from Duke University School of Law.