Who’s Paying for Public School Vouchers? (1998)

Editor s Note The Observer published this feature in its March edition The prior year s private school voucher proposal narrowly died at the Lege Bullock wouldn t discuss his new resignation from the voucher PAC Putting Children First But his aide Tony Proffitt who has worked for Bullock since long before he moved from the comptroller s to the lieutenant governor s office explained the Lieutenant Governor still supports a very limited voucher plan and that he left Putting Children First because as was first communicated by the Dallas Morning News it was engaging in partisan activity The specific partisan activity was a January letter from Putting Children First Chairman Jimmy Mansour to Betsy DeVoss the founder of the Amway company Editor s Note Betsy DeVos married the son of the founder of Amway The letter refers to last session s tremendous momentum for our forces as evidenced by Lt Governor Bob Bullock joining our effort And it mentions plans to gain two additional seats in the senate where we now hold a slim majority Mansour s we is bluntly the Republican Party which now holds a - advantage in the Senate The letter focuses however on the House There are eight crucial seats which we need to win in the Texas house to obtain a Republican majority By winning these seats we will ensure a new speaker of the house who will not attempt to block our statute DuboseVouchersDownload They assured him it wouldn t be partisan Proffitt noted Bullock still believes that a child who has been refused admission to another community school after leaving a low-performing citizens school should be allowed to attend a private school as long as it doesn t have a religious scheme Bullock spent only a minimal months as honorary chair of Putting Children First and has since declined to discuss his resignation In his six-sentence letter to Mansour Bullock wrote since partisanship has been introduced into this effort I feel I can no longer serve as the group s honorary chairman but he reaffirmed his backing of the concept of a limited test undertaking for school vouchers in Texas Backing for a limited voucher plan is one thing membership in Putting Children First is another To take Bullock s metaphor a little farther from the Gulf the Lieutenant Governor s association with the voucher lobby is not so much about what you eat as who you eat with Bullock s political office which until last year when he reported that he will not run again was a full-time year-round political campaign is as efficient and well-funded an operation as Texas has ever known Because of that office and that operation Bullock has often seemed omniscient there is little that goes on in the capital that he does not know about And in all likelihood he has known and knows about Putting Children First which until last year operated as a thoroughly partisan political action committee called The A PAC for Parental School Choice A was directed and funded by the same Jimmy Mansour to whom Bullock submitted his March resignation from Putting Children First And A controlled by Mansour and San Antonio physician and medicinal supply company owner James Leininger spent a huge amount of money on legislative and State Board of Guidance races with almost all of that money going to conservative Republican candidates Although A focused on the House and Board of Schooling it also worked to ensure that the Senate over which Bullock presided would have a Republican majority giving at least to the unsuccessful candidacy of Bob Reese and at least to Senator Steve Ogden who trounced a woefully underfunded Democratic opponent The total amount A contributed to Senate campaigns can t be precisely determined from Ethics Commission filings because Mansour and Leininger played a PAC shell battle that makes it impossible to follow their money For example they funneled through Leadership Texas a Republican Party funding mechanism that no longer exists and which never filed any disclosures with the Ethics Commission They gave at least to the Republican Party of Texas and contributed to in Seventy-six is the number required to hold a majority in the -member House and in directed by Milton Reisner aide to Midland Representative Tom Craddick who chairs the House Republican Caucus was one of the big three Republican Party PACs that spent several million dollars on elections Besides directly electing Republican candidates in the past two sessions the PACs targeting of vulnerable incumbent Democrats has driven the cost of campaigns so high that the limited funding materials of Texas Democrats are constantly exhausted Not only did A contribute to in it provided to the campaign of Representative Carl Isset a freshman Christian Coalition candidate who remained just outside the right margin of House politics during the last session A and Leininger himself gave at least to Hollis Cain who spent in a futile attempt to defeat House Speaker Pete Laney in and who is Laney s Republican opponent in The exact totals are uncertain because once A money was commingled with moneys of Leadership Texas in and the Republican Party of Texas it couldn t be separately followed And far more money was spent on Cain s race by various interest groups working to defeat the Speaker So it should not have been surprising to Lieutenant Governor Bullock that Mansour would write to Betsy DeVoss sitting atop Amway s corporate pyramid Editor s Note See above to ask for to help ensure a new speaker of the house who will not attempt to block our rule In the aftermath of Bullock s resignation Mansour now denies that he wrote the letter and his various society relations subcontractors which include Temerlin McClain Population Relations and McDonald and Associates spent the week following the resignation working on a credible account of who did Readers might ask themselves one question How likely is it that an employee of a political action committee would send out a letter to a major corporate funder over the signature of the PAC s director without informing the person whose signature would appear at the bottom of the letter I trust wrote Mansour in an underlined postscript that also referred to an enclosed summary of races on the targeting list that you will keep the information in this letter totally confidential A similar letter went to Wal-Mart heir John Walton who responded with a check As Putting Children First has raised only thus far Walton is its sole funder Walton who has supported voucher programs in other states also owns interests in private schools In Walton contributed to the A PAC which was largely funded by Mansour and Leininger This is not about the A PAC and it s not about any funding lineage commented Chuck McDonald in response to a question about the funders and framework agenda shared by A and Putting Children First McDonald who worked as spokesperson for Ann Richards when she was governor now owns a masses relations firm also among those hired by Putting Children First They formed a group in January of to go out and do one thing and one thing only McDonald explained The PAC had one purpose and still has one purpose It exists to give equally to Democrats and Republicans who advocacy school voucher decree McDonald stated the PAC gave to candidates of both parties in this year s primaries focusing on incumbents who had supported vouchers in the past and who had drawn primary opponents Ron Wilson a Houston Democrat had an opponent and he got funding And Ken Grusendorf an Arlington Republican had an opponent and he got funding Our contributions were bipartisan McDonald insisted Society disclosure forms filed with the Ethics Commission do indicate that Putting Children First gave to thirteen Republican incumbents and to seven Democratic incumbents All the Democrats are either black or Hispanic and represent inner-city urban districts with the exception of the indicted and all-but-convicted Gilbert Serna Editor s Note He later pleaded guilty who represents El Paso s Lower Valley McDonald also declared there will inevitably be certain imbalance in contributions as more Republicans than Democrats encouragement vouchers At this point in the balloting cycle Putting Children First s current contributions are almost irrelevant The PAC raised and spent on administrative costs and candidates in the Democratic and Republican primaries It is in general elections that PACs make a big splash and in the last polling A PAC Mansour Leininger Walton and several big out-of-state funders made sure that conservative Republican candidates were awash in money So Putting Children First has been bi-partisan thus far But the last time these funders got together as the A PAC the contributions were indeed imbalanced The A PAC provided a total of to Democratic House candidates To Republicans it contributed As with the Putting Children First money almost all the A Democratic money went to minority inner-city Democrats who now find themselves in the seemingly awkward position of accepting contributions from corporate and Christian right funders whose explicit and much-announced goals include making the Democrats a minority party and reducing funding for populace teaching In this battle vouchers are completely a means to an end and that end is defined by Republican funders Dr James Leininger for example got involved in political campaigns in when he decided to bankroll Republican candidates for the Supreme Court at a time when its Democratic majority included Ted Robertson Oscar Mauzy and Bill Kilgarlin Leininger hired Wal-Mart residents relations director Fritz Steiger formed Texans for Justice and relentlessly went after Robertson for accepting in campaign contributions from South Texas oilman Clinton Manges But according to R G Ratcliffe of the Houston Chronicle percent of the money spent by Texans for Justice was Leininger s money which ultimately resulted in one of the preponderance anti-consumer anti-plaintiff pro-corporate high courts in the country Leininger first turned on to politics in by a CBS News Minutes overview on the Texas Supreme Court has been investing in his own candidates ever since spending last year or as Ratcliffe observed about fifty percent more than the spent by the wealthy political action committee of the Texas Anatomical Association Leininger has also collaborated with Mansour who made his fortune in telecommunications to leverage Texas money by bringing in funders like Walton of Bentonville Arkansas John Patrick Rooney of Indianapolis and Robert L Cone of Elverson Pennsylvania Leininger and to a lesser extent Mansour provided all of the funding for A except what was received from the aforementioned out-of-state funders and a single grassroots level contribution of from Robert Schoolfield of Austin I requested Glen Lewis an African-American Democrat from Fort Worth if he had any misgivings about such funding considering that largest part of the Leininger spent on lobbying and campaigns last session was used against Democrats and Democratic Party interests I didn t go to them Lewis declared they came to me because I was interested in the issue Lewis one of three Democrats who remain on Putting Children First s Legislative Advisory Council reported he favors vouchers because of the extremely poor performance of the inner city population schools that his constituents are forced into The other Democrats still with Putting Children First are Ron Wilson of Houston and Laredo Representative Henry Cuellar who sent Mansour a letter complaining about the letter that provoked Bullock s resignation I urged Lewis if he had any objection to accepting campaign contributions from a group whose huge commitment in elections is moving the state s political center farther and farther to the right Texas politics Lewis reported How could it get any farther right than it already is For the answer to that question Representative Lewis will only have to watch the next two voting process cycles Domingo Garcia a Democratic representative from Dallas was more reflective than Lewis One I resigned from Putting Children First s Legislative Advisory Board And two I patronage public-to-public and not public-to-private vouchers Garcia explained adding that his affiliation with Putting Children First had nothing to do with partisan politics He explained he will take advantage of whatever guidance are available to pass voucher statute that will allow students to transfer from low-performing society schools to high-performing society schools I have a different agenda The Republicans are in this for the privatization and the free industry aspect I want to improve the constituents schools Garcia declared I promotion increasing educator salaries and decreasing class size to eighteen But until schools and in particular inner-city schools are improved Garcia mentioned he will work to pass a voucher bill that will require school districts with high academic performance to accept students from schools with low academic performance A law that Cuellar got through the session allows students to transfer from low-to high-performing schools but doesn t require the high-performing schools to accept students Garcia explained he will carry a bill that will require schools to admit students whose home-district schools cannot meet their requirements And the state he announced should cover the students transportation costs I have seven students in my district who want to transfer to suburban schools that refuse to admit them Garcia noted They think if they accept these seven students they ll have a whole wave of transfers and their standards will fall SIGN UP FOR TEXAS OBSERVER EMAILS Get our latest in-depth reporting straight to your inbox Sign Up Garcia s pragmatic argument may seem to make principled liberal opposition to vouchers seem somewhat precious But in historical perspective the battle over school vouchers is not absolutely about vouchers at all it s about real racial integration in Texas and U S population schools Garcia has sought House Speaker Pete Laney for a seat on the coaching committee describes learning as the biggest problem we face and revealed the dilemma he faces is that he cannot write off a generation of children while we re fighting to improve the horrible citizens schools they re forced to attend So like other legislators who represent inner-city school districts Garcia has decided to make a deal with the devil But the devil on the other side of this particular deal happens to be unalterably opposed to funding for masses tuition and moreover the devil has more money to spend on elections than Garcia or any other progressive funders could raise if they mortgaged everything they owned There is an enormous amount of cynicism attached to this sort of issue-related campaign giving What looks like principle at a distance is politics-as-usual at close range Minority inner-city candidates have accepted to checks but their entire intake was less than the provided for right-wing Lubbock Democrat Carl Isset who will vote against mentor raises smaller classes and improved curriculum as long as he is an elected legislator drawing breath And he is just one of a pack of Christian right franchises elected by Mansour Leininger Walton and a myriad of other Republican PAC funders If you want to understand what is driving the Texas legislative movement for school vouchers don t read Chuck McDonald s lips or Bob Bullock s resignation letter Read instead the canceled checks of James Leininger and Jimmy Mansour and John Walton if you can find them as the funders will now re-PAC and try to recover from an embarrassing episode Short term these guys will use inner-city children as a first step and even spring for a sparse tickets for poor minority kids to attend rich majority schools In the long term as Republican Representative Rick Williamson reported after the House came as close as ever to passing a voucher undertaking in the session losing only on a tie vote - We re going after the whole system The post Who s Paying for General School Vouchers appeared first on The Texas Observer