Democrats for Education Reform: Let’s Meet the Funders

I often point out Democrats for Education Reform ’s far-right patrons like Rupert Murdoch and the Waltons but I haven’t given DFER MA’s Boston patrons enough attention. Let’s try.

First, DFER is really at least three different legal structures under one roof. There’s the DFER PAC and DFER SuperPAC which have to report contributions and expenses to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. But most of that reporting deceives the public because it’s attributed to DFER’s sister organization Education Reform Now Advocacy, an IRS 501(c)(4) operation that channels dark money from unidentified oligarchs. The third structure is the 501(c)(3) Education Reform Now Inc., which can do certain “educational” activities that creep up to the line of politics. DFER MA has also put together some other related operations but we’ll mostly leave them out for now.

If you head over to the DFER IEPAC data at Office of Campaign and Political Finance you’ll see the SuperPAC has raised $2,605,897. Breaking out donations over $10,000 we get to $2,574,000. Almost all of that–$2,434,000–is from Education Reform Now Advocacy of New York. Richard J. Burnes of Boston gave $100,000. The late Jonathon Sackler of the Oxycontin Sacklers kicked in $10,000 in 2013.

The public might be interested in DFER admitting who gave the political money laundered through ERN Advocacy but that’s dark money. DFER isn’t going to account to the public for it. You should ask though.

Probably a good deal of the ERN Advocacy pelf comes from the Waltons. That’s what happened in 2016 when DFER cobbled together a ballot committee called Advancing Obama’s Legacy on Charter Schools which was gray (traceable if you commit to following the money) Walton funds and hidden ERNA money.

I wrote about ERNI in Banned in Boston (Globe): the Walton Family’s 2021 Political Team:

ERN is a multi-state operation with no spending breakout by state available. But from 2017-2021 WFF loaded up ERN with $18,180,000 and it’s fair to assume some of that made it into Massachusetts. WFF funds about 30% of ERN’s yearly income. WFF explains in its 2021 Form 990 tax return why the notoriously anti-worker heirs and heiresses fund ERN: “to build the capacity of Democratic policymakers and left-leaning institutions to challenge the status quo and take bold action on education issues.” Translation: attack unions. This is what the oligarchs who fund ERN and DFER call “the inside game.” (Chapter 7 in my book is called “Democrats for Education Reform and the Inside Game.”) The Globe doesn’t reveal who funds ERN/DFER but it offers a favored position to DFER MA, including using it in news stories and turning over op-ed space to it.

For whatever reason the Boston Globe and other media don’t like to mention the local funders of groups like ERNI but there is plenty to talk about. From 2017-2021 the Barr Foundation gave ERNI $275,000 (Barr’s patron Amos Hostetter gave $2,000,000 in dark money to back the 2016 school privatization ballot measure). From 2017-2022 the Boston Foundation kicked in $172,500. Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund duked in $325,000. We’ll never know whose piggy bank the tBF and Fidelity investments came from.

Then there’s some information from my book about Rupert Murdoch investing in DFER operations going back over a decade:

Plenty of other rich Republicans donate to ERN/DFER:

Academic studies from Sarah Reckhow and colleagues of DFER national show that rich Democrats give too. That’s why Democratic and Republican parties don’t matter and the Oligarch Party does.

DFER isn’t a membership organization and thus has no Democrats, or at least so few that they could caucus in a broom closet. You have to take seriously the claim of DFER’s first president Joe Williams: “We’re essentially bundlers.”

Confession: the headline is click bait. We can’t identify all of DFER’s donors because they’re hiding behind dark money. You can ask though.

In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape, have full swing. . . . Publicity is the very soul of justice.”—Jeremy Bentham

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.]