Municipal candidates are busy filling out questionnaires from interest groups including one from Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts. I can help with that one because there’s only one real question: do you stand for dark money in politics, or will you fight for democracy?

Dark money is vast sums poured into a front organization from hidden sources, a handful of very rich hidden sources. Voters are denied any information about who is spending all that money to influence them. But voters should have an absolute right to know who is spending that money.

Candidates, how do you feel about begging support from a group when you can’t tell where the money is coming from? Prepare your answer now, because voters will ask.

DFER has been around since 2005 and the identities of some of its funders have leaked out over time. And guess what? Many of the donors are not Democrats at all!

Unless you think of Rupert Murdoch as a Democrat. He put in $1 million in 2010. Yes that Rupert Murdoch – Fox News, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity.[1]

That was a big year for DFER and its funding parent Education Reform Now, because its leadership realized that they weren’t raising enough money and needed to turn to the big bucks. So they begged money from a motley collection of Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and Koch Brother billionaire buddies.

Ken Langone hosted a little get together at which Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s school chancellor Joel Klein made a pitch (Klein soon after left for a job with Murdoch. I hope you believe in coincidences). Langone, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Paul Tudor Jones II immediately agreed to pony up $500,000 each.

Langone attended the 2010 Koch Brothers Seminar for right wing givers and is a big Republican donor. He also co-founded Home Depot and his co-founder Bernard Marcus is a Yuuuuge Trump contributor, so consider your local hardware store.

Druckenmiller has also been a steady giver to Republican candidates and causes including to Paul Ryan, National Republican Campaign Committee, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, and Keep Conservatives United.

Paul Tudor Jones was one of the “9 Billionaires” out to remake New York schools in 2014, largely through the vehicles of dark money Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy (since collapsed in corruption) and the Republican independent expenditure committee New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany.

More donors: Green Orchard Inc. a dark money front tied to libertarian billionaire Jeffrey Yass, gave $100,000. In 2017 Yass was exposed for duking $600,000 in dark money to Strong Economy for Growth to support the charter schools ballot question in Massachusetts. Right wing Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rauner’s foundation gave $450,000 in 2012.[2] In 2013-14 Education Reform Now Advocacy took in $1.7 million from conservative billionaire John Arnold.[3]

Maybe DFER should be DFRR – Democrats for Romancing Republicans.

If DFER decides to spend on you, who knows if the money is coming from these rich old white Republican guys? DFER is actually very good at hiding its donors. Except for one thing: much of your backing will come from the Waltons of Arkansas, heirs to the WalMart fortune. They’ve invested over $22 million in DFER/ERN since 2010. The WalMart-ers provide at least 25%-30% percent of their funding each year. That’s their stake.

So if you take the DFER support understand the most likely source and that voters will ask why the Waltons of Arkansas are so in love with you.

There is also a dicey political calculation to make. DFER’s usual modus operandi is to pick candidates in Democratic primaries; it rarely opposes Republicans because it holds the same positions on education as the GOP. In 2016 DFER shell gamed over $700,000 in Walton dollars around to support charter schools, the highest priority of Governor Charlie Baker who is, after all, a Republican. Part of the dowry DFER brings to your nuptials is commitment to charters, which lost while attracting a mere 38% of the vote in 2016. True the DFER folk are smart and thus not likely to trumpet their positions in endorsing you but who’s to say that some cruel opponent might not mention it?

If you acquiesce and DFER backs you, what do you get? DFER is a money laundering operation and an ATM. It will make independent expenditures to hire consultants who will make social media buys, text messaging, mail, phone calls, maybe even pay some canvassers. It’s not nothin’. Being a candidate is tough going and it’s hard to turn away money.

But dark money is a scourge that undermines our fragile democracy, which is already under enough strain. It’s a tool for the wealthy to gain even more dominance over politics and government. It’s a shock and a scandal and a direct assault on American democracy.

So when you open that DFER questionnaire understand that it really poses only one question. Are you going to take the dark money, or are you going to stand up for democracy?

“In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape, have full swing.” – Jeremy Bentham.

[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, not education.]

Photo: pxhere.com

[1] Brill, Class Warfare, 325-26; Jeremy W. Peters, Michael Barbaro, and Javier C. Hernandez, “Ex-Schools Chief Emerges as Unlikely Murdoch Ally,” New York Times, July 23, 2011 https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/business/media/joel-klein-ex-schools-chief-leads-internal-news-corp-inquiry.html?pagewanted=all .

[2] Several of the donors including those not mentioned by Brill show up in the tracking at LittleSis.org, for Education Reform Now at https://littlesis.org/org/89075-Education_Reform_Now! Yass’s involvement with Green Orchard is set out at https://littlesis.org/maps/914-rare-reveal-dark-money-megadonors.

[3] https://littlesis.org/org/267353-Education_Reform_Now_Advocacy