Will the MassDems Address the Money Corruption in Their Midst?

“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.”–Jimmy Carter

The Massachusetts Democrats are meeting in convention this weekend and one issue they might take up is just how much they want to be corrupted by money but they’ll likely take a pass on that one.

In the past few weeks AG candidate Quentin Palfrey raised a question about whether the Walton family of the Boston suburb of Arkansas is unduly influencing the attorney general’s primary on behalf of school privatization pol Andrea Campbell; in other words, are oligarchs including or associated with the WalMart heirs putting their heavy hands on the scale?

I wrote about this in Knives Out (and the Voters Get it in the Back):

Palfrey is suggesting that since Jim Walton of Arkansas gave $45,000 to the Better Boston Independent Political Action Committee to support Andrea Campbell’s losing bid for Boston mayor in July 2021, that the Walton-dependent Education Reform Now Advocacy (aka Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts) should not be paying for a MASSInc poll that, lo and behold, showed Campbell with a lead in the attorney general’s race in January.

The MassInc poll looks like  an effort by Democrats for Education Reform (acting through its primary funder, Education Reform Now) to help Campbell and also tip the balance against public school advocate Sonia Chang-Diaz in the governor’s race. Oddly (unless you pay attention to DFER, which is actually a front for corporate neoliberal interests) the poll had almost nothing to do with education. It did, however, include one weird question about whether Charlie Baker or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement would have more weight with Democrats (probably because AOC makes the DFER types so angry they want to toss their martinis across the lawn).

Palfrey suggested that with the kinds of donations flooding into Better Boston, the potential for conflicts of interest within the AG’s office are huge. Experts consulted by MassterList agreed. It’s obvious but worse than the obvious if you consider the uncountable hidden investments of the Waltons and other oligarchs pumping hundreds of thousands each into Better Boston.

Better Boston is a school privatization front for the interests of anti-democratic oligarchs. Any convention attendees who’d care to be impressed with their commitment to small d democracy can read A Better Boston for Oligarchs.

But is the ERNA/DFER poll the Waltons? (They fund their own political operations in Massachusetts) There’s no way to tell—it’s dark money! Without boring you with the legal distinctions among ERNA, DFER, and Education Reform Now Inc. we know from publicly available records that the Waltons fund about 30-33% of ERNI each year-meaning, they own it. It’s likely that the Waltons own a similar chunk of ERNA, which paid for the MassInc poll. ERNI and ERNA have been funded by a Betsy DeVos operation, and also from such “progressives” as the Rauner family, Robertson Foundation, Broad Foundation, anti-public pension billionaire John Arnold, and famous Democrat Rupert Murdoch.

DFER MA IEPAC is mostly funded by Education Reform Now Advocacy of New York. According to records at OCPF, DFER MA IEPAC has raised $2,547,801 since its inception and $2,385,250 has come from dark money ERNA.

Then there’s the 2016 pro-privatization ballot committee Advancing Obama’s Legacy on Charter Schools, the temporary love child of DFER MA (same leadership, consultants, contractors, donors). It raised $155,000 in dark money from ERNA and $567,000 from other ballot committees which were giving a light rinse to millions of dollars from WalMart heirs Jim and Alice Walton.

What if the Waltons didn’t fund the poll? Another possibility would be Boston billionaire Amos Hostetter. This public spirited citizen poured over $2,000,000 in dark money into the 2016 privatization campaign, only to be uncovered in an OCPF investigation. Since 2016 Hostetter, through his Barr Foundation, has been fielding his own political team in Massachusetts, at a price tag of nearly $7,000,000 (actually, mostly the same team members as the Waltons). Of that, $550,000 was spent on polling in 2020, including at least $75,000 to Education Reform Now for polling and $380,000 for polling to MassInc, which conducted the January 2022 poll for ERNA.

Frank Phillips in the Globe has suggested that Hostetter may not be immune from using philanthropy for his own interests, in Philanthropist Funded Trip for Oversight Officials. I lamented that this type of journalism might become more difficult given that Barr is funding some of the Globe’s education coverage, $600,000 over two years.

In response to MassterList, Campbell’s campaign manager Will Stockton offered the usual boilerplate nonsensical answers that buy a day until the issue washes away in the next media cycle. This kind of money in an AG’s race shouldn’t wash away. SuperPACs have to be “independent” of candidate committees. But here, after the mayor’s preliminary and before filing for AG, Campbell wasn’t a candidate. Did she or her representatives have discussions with Better Boston, or any of its donors, or representatives? Were promises made? Maybe someone should ask.

Thanks to our Supreme Court we’re living through a period of unparalleled money power in American politics. Everyday people understand it’s corrupt. Why not make this corruption the focus of our elections? Ask about it, MassDems!

Money never sleeps. Follow the money.

[Did you know that the Democratic Party state convention offers the potential for passion and romance? It does. I met my wife Mary Devlin at the 1992 convention and we celebrate whenever the MassDems meet again. Happy 30 years to my beautiful wife!]

[Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is now in print.]