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Major pro-voucher group might have broken PA election law
Pro-voucher Students First PAC allegedly funneled money through McDaniel's PAC--and may have violated state campaign finance law.
Major pro-voucher group might have broken PA election law
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Political operative John D. McDaniel's ongoing Philadelphia Board of Ethics saga has centered on Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown's troubling campaign finance practices and wasteful political patronage in the Nutter administration. McDaniel had been Brown's campaign manager, held apparently sole control over a political action committee and held a well-paying job at the airport provided by the mayor himself. Now there's a new twist: McDaniel's Progressive Agenda PAC also funneled $5,900 from Students First PAC, a Pennsylvania group backed by Bala Cynwyd hedge fund managers and wealthy national school voucher advocates, to state House candidate Fatimah Muhammad's 2012 campaign, which was heavily supported by voucher proponents.
McDaniel's transfer of funds, detailed in an Ethics Board settlement released on Monday, was a violation of Philadelphia's Home Rule Charter. But Students First PAC (not to be confused with the ideologically related Michelle Rhee group StudentsFirst) may have also violated state campaign finance law.
"You may not direct another person to give money on your behalf," says Barry Kauffman, director of watchdog Pennsylvania Common Cause. Kauffman points to Section 1634(a) of the state election code, which states that it is "unlawful for any person to make any contribution with funds designated or given to him for the purpose by any other person, firm or corporation. Each person making a contribution shall do so only in his own name."
Here are the details: On March 26, 2012, Students First PAC gave McDaniel a check for $6,000, which he deposited in Progressive Agenda's account. Progressive Agenda and Students First, according to McDaniel, had an understanding that the money would then be given to Friends of Fatimah, Muhammad's campaign committee. On April 4, 2012, McDaniel cut Friends of Fatimah a $5,900 check.
"According to McDaniel, the contribution was arranged this way so Students First would not be directly connected with Friends of Fatimah," according to the Ethics Board. "According to McDaniel, Progressive Agenda kept $100 of the Students First contribution to cover what he called administrative costs."
Students First has not yet responded to a voicemail message.
In 2012, Muhammad mounted a primary challenge to state Rep. James Roebuck, an outspoken opponent of school privatization and the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee. Muhammad ultimately failed to unseat Roebuck, but her campaign flooded his West Philadelphia district with mailings and billboards of dubious origin charging that he "blocked kids from attending the schools of their choice" and, more bizarrely, that he was somehow responsible for the enrollment cap at the popular Penn Alexander School.
City Paper extensively covered the race (very much including the shadow money) at the time.
There are big politics at play here: Muhammad's campaign operation was deeply intertwined with state Sen. Anthony Williams' political circle, and Muhammad initially told CP — and then denied — that the senator backed her campaign. Williams is one of Harrisburg's most prominent supporters of school vouchers, which allocate taxpayer funds for private and religious school tuition, and a frontrunner in the 2015 campaign for mayor.
At the time, Roebuck told CP that Williams was targetting him because of his role blocking voucher legislation, saying the senator's "fingerprints are very much in evidence."
Williams also has close ties to Students First PAC. In 2010, the PAC donated $5 million to Williams' quixotic gubernatorial campaign. He lost, but ultimately victorious Democratic nominee Dan Onorato declared his support for vouchers and won Williams' ensorsement. He also asked Williams' financial backers for support.
Students First PAC receives most of its funding from Susquehanna International Group hedge fund managers Jeffrey Yass, Arthur Dantchik and Joel Greenberg, and the American Federation for Children, a Washington, D.C., pro-voucher group headed by Amway heiress and major right-wing donor Betsy DeVos.
And Yass' influence over public education in Philadelphia has only grown since the Muhammad campaign.
In 2012, Yass' wife, Janine Yass, made a donation to cover part of a multi-million-dollar contract for a controversial Boston Consulting Group study calling for the closing of dozens of traditional public schools, the mass downsizing of the District central office and reorganization of schools into "achievement networks" potentially run by private managers, and the outsourcing of the District's blue-collar workforce. That contract is the subject of a separate ethics complaint, which alleges that the payments to BCG, organized and in part paid for by the William Penn Foundation, violated the city's lobbying law (a complaint that briefly, and controversially, prompted the foundation to freeze all new grantmaking to city-related entities).
Janine Yass also sits on the board of the Philadelphia School Partnership, a pro-corporate-school-reform organization that received $15 million from William Penn during the tenure of the foundation's controversial former leader Jeremy Nowak (CP's July 2012 profile here). PSP has thereafter been the most prominent "independent" organization in the city to support the District's controversial plan to close dozens of public schools.
"I want to applaud the district for clearly what has been a very thorough approach and for putting the focus on moving all students into high-quality learning environments," PSP Executive Director Mark Gleason told the Inquirer in January.
In 2012, some anti-Roebuck mailings were paid for by an unknown third-party group called Public Education Excellence. The PAC's founder told the Daily News at the time that she "believed" they had received funding from both Students First PAC and American Federation for Children. In addition to Public Education Excellence and Students First, Friends of Fatimah received significant donations from no-name groups including Economic Development PAC, Women for Change (creating a funny scenario of wealthy anti-abortion advocates funding pro-choice ads), and Fighting Chance PAC.
Friends of Fatimah also received at least $44,500 in contributions from the Black Clergy PAC. Significantly, Black Clergy received donations from Students First PAC.
Black Clergy head Rev. Terrence Griffith is on the Philadelphia School Parnership board, where he is one of just two black members out of 16. The Board also includes, as we've reported, "communications executive Chris Bravacos, who leads the pro-voucher REACH Alliance and Bravo Foundation. The latter is a conduit for corporate donations to [Educational Improvement Tax Credits]; a recent New York Times investigation found evidence that middlemen like Bravo coordinate private-school donations with politicians whom they also lobby." The Educational Improvement Tax Credit is a program, similiar to vouchers, which pays corporations via tax credits for donations they make to private school tuition.
Bravacos was also a director of the Pennsylvania Republican Party. Last year, his firm received a hefty contract to publicize the state's voter ID law from the administration of Republican Gov. Tom Corbett — who also happens to control the state-run School Reform Commission.
Needless to say, all of these PACs seem to merit further investigation. Defenders of Boston Consulting Group and William Penn like to deride this rather straightforward accounting of money and influence as a "conspiracy theory." But if the law has been violated, the Pennsylvania Department of State and Attorney General Kathleen Kane should follow Philadelphians' lead and take a closer look.
Are you sure Students First PAC has no connection to Rhee's StudentFirst except ideological? Rhee spent a week in Harrisburg holding press conferences and promoting Muhammed's campaign during the primary. Is there a separate StudentsFirst organization? There were leaders of PA StudentFirst at Rhee's author event at the Free Library a few weeks ago.— tom-104- The stench is overpowering.— pachysandra
- Time to launch an investigation of Corbett. Charter schools are not a new idea anymore and their track record is poor. Vouchers are tactic that has been around for decades with an aim of public funds financing the education of wealth kids at private schools. By paying for a bogus study that concluded all these public schools should be closed, we're insuring that there's no going back from Charter schools or vouchers even after they prove to be a failure. Corbett and some of his supporters have a goal of eliminating public education. They want to control who gets an education and what they are taught and neither would ever get wide support by residents of PA. That's why they have to resort to illegal methods.— MikeP
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