June 30 Update: The Better Boston for Oligarchs SuperPAC sent in a new filing with OCPF yesterday and boy, is this 2016 and school privatization all over again. here are the salient updates. Ray Stata is in for $25,000. He gave $125,000 to the Great Schools Massachusetts ballot committee in 2016. Hilary Gabrieli is in for another $25,000 on top of the $25,000 she already gave and Chris Gabrieli duked in $25,000, getting the couple to $95,000. He listed his employer as Empower Schools and he is also the chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education. So, Baker administration. You may remember that back in 2016 two Baker administration executives, Paul Sagan and Mark Nunnelly, each gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in dark money in support of charter schools. thanks to great work by OCPF, oligarchs can’t hide in Massachusetts any more. That’s a good thing. Now we can see Oligarchs United.
Original Post starts here:
Louis Brandeis once said “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” The campaign finance report of the Better Boston Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee shows democracy is on the ropes. (Better Boston is supporting Councilor Andrea Campbell for mayor.) The donations are larded up with big bucks from school privatizers, some of whom furtively kicked in dark money donations in the 2016 charter schools fight.
Netflix’s Reed Hastings is in for $125,000 though since he lives in California it’s hard to see why he’d be so concerned with a Better Boston. He is a consistent underwriter of attacks on public schools. Supporters of an elected Boston School Committee may want to know that he has advocated for the abolition of all school boards. You may not be on the same page as Hoffman if you believe that a better Boston is a more democratic Boston.
On to Andrew Balson of Newton. In July 2016 he gave a dark money donation of $200,000 and in October another $100,000 in dark money to Families for Excellent Schools. On October 31 and November 2, 2016 he sent separate $100,000 dark money contributions to Strong Economy for Growth. These buy-ins were hidden from voters until the Office of Campaign and Political Finance forced disclosure and shut down FES and SEFG. In 2017 Balson gave $150 to Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts-backed Natasha Meggie-Maddrey for Lynn school committee. She lost but now works for Keri Rodrigues (another Maggie-Meddrey donor) at Massachusetts Parents United. Half the budget of MPU is picked up by the Walton Family Foundation, $800,000 in 2019.
There’s also a $100,000 contribution from Nonnie Burnes. Her husband Richard gave $100,000 to DFERMA in 2013 and $10,000 to Great Schools Massachusetts in 2015. There’s former MATCH charter executive Stig Leschly for $100,000. Billionaire Bill Bloomfield also wants a Better Boston with a $50,000 check postmarked from the far west suburb of Utah. He’s a major backer of SuperPACs for pro-privatization school committee candidates in California. Hilary Gabrieli for $25,000. Anthony Helies for $35,000; he gave $10,000 to privatization outfit Stand for Children in 2013. Stephanie Spector is in for $50,000. Brian Spector, same address, kicked in $525,000 in dark money to Families for Excellent Schools in 2016. Susan Mees Longfield is in for $25,000. Charles Longfield, same address, gave $650,000 in dark money to FES in 2016, another $100,000 on the record to charter backing Campaign for Fair Access to Quality Public Schools in 2016, $25,000 above board to Great Schools Massachusetts in 2016, $25,000 to Stand for Children in 2013, and $500 to Meggie-Maddrey. The Longfield Family Foundation is a featured donor on Massachusetts Parents United’s webpage.
Why bother with a $500 giver? Because one of them is Whitney Tilson of Democrats for Education Reform (which despite the name is happy to take money from right wing oligarchs like Rupert Murdoch when cash is needed). Tilson, a New York hedge funder, helped found DFER and was on the board of DFER’s money spigot Education Reform Now Advocacy in 2016 when ERNA pumped $770,000 in dark money into the 2016 charters campaign. While it is not clear what Tilsons’ role was with ERNA in 2013 it is worth noting that ERNA put $2.3 million into DFER MA that year, and DFER MA spent over $1.28 million in support of pro-charters candidate John Connolly for mayor of Boston. Donors to ERNA are anonymous but the Walton Family Foundation picks up about a third of the yearly cost of running its sister organization Education Reform Now Inc.
None of this would be possible without the fine folks at the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. By calling dark money groups Families for Excellent Schools and Strong Economy for Growth to account for their illegal conduct in 2016 and forcing the disclosure of the true sources of money behind the upbeat sounding SuperPACs, OCPF made an inestimable contribution to the public good. What, you think oligarchs who have made multiple donations through dark money vehicles are going to come clean on their own? No way.
Is this picture clear enough? They put the School Privatization Band back together. Only now we can see who they are.
Remember what Brandeis said: “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” It’s up to you.
Full disclosure: as a (retired!) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, not education.]
Hilary Gabrieli as in wife of serial edu-preneur and chair of higher education in the Commonwealth, Chris Gabrieli? That Hilary Gabrieli?