Billionaire Betsy DeVos has been unabashed about using her wealth to advance her own agenda. “We expect a return on our investment,” she once wrote about her family’s massive political contributions.

After giving millions of dollars to politicians over the past two decades, she now heads into her Senate confirmation hearing for education secretary with a clear advantage: DeVos and her husband, Dick, have donated to the campaigns of 17 senators who will consider her nomination — four of whom sit on the Senate education committee that oversees the process.


Big donors often get plum government jobs. But DeVos’ contributions to the lawmakers who will decide her fate stand out in a year in which President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to “drain the swamp” of Washington politics.

Education committee members Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) have all accepted money — collectively, $50,000 — from DeVos and her husband since 2010. In that same time period, the couple contributed a total of more than $160,000 to senators who will consider Betsy DeVos’ nomination, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

“It’s just another reflection of the distortion of our politics due to massive campaign contributions,” said Robert Weissman, president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, who said he finds DeVos’ political contributions troubling. “People who receive campaign contributions from her are far less likely to scrutinize her than people who have not.”

DeVos and her husband together made about $2.7 million in political contributions in 2016, including donations to Republican Senate leadership PACs, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Over the past two and half decades, the couple donated more than $7.7 million to Republican candidates and parties across the country, the analysis found. The center also examined donations by DeVos’ entire extended family, and found more than $20 million in contributions to Republican candidates, party committees, PACs and super PACs since 1989.

Writing in a 1997 Roll Call op-ed, DeVos defended her family’s political contributions and said she expects politicians to champion her causes after receiving financial support. She wrote that she hoped Republican candidates would use her family’s contributions to advance a “conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues.”

Asked about DeVos’ political donations, Scott suggested that plenty of President Barack Obama’s nominees had given money to Democrats.

“I would love to see the list of Obama appointees and who they donated to,” he said.

Scott described himself as a big fan of DeVos’ views on education, and the South Carolina senator previously spoke at an aviation-themed charter school in Michigan that DeVos and her husband help fund. “Her commitment to education is to make sure America has the best-educated children in the world,” he said, praising her efforts to push a “school choice” agenda that’s built around the growth of charter schools and voucher programs that allow taxpayer money to flow to private schools, including religious schools.

“If you're going to address the issues of quality education, you should address those issues for kids, and not for unions," he said.

Karina Petersen, a spokeswoman for Murkowski, said that her Senate office doesn’t “follow what contributions are made to Sen. Murkowski’s campaign, nor do we take them into account when considering an issue, or taking official action in the U.S. Senate.” Murkowski, she said, would “closely examine the merits” of each Trump nominee “before arriving at a final decision.”

Sens. Cassidy and Burr did not respond to requests for comment.

Through a spokesperson, DeVos declined to comment for this story.

The members of Congress who have received money from DeVos have often been prominent proponents of school choice legislation, such as the D.C. school voucher program, which allows low-income students to use federal money to enroll in private schools, including religious schools. DeVos has made the program a priority of her organization, the American Federation for Children.

Sen. Lamar Alexander said he didn't think the nominee's donations would influence senators. | AP Photo

DeVos’ relationship with some senators extends beyond political donations. Scott, for example, has spoken at conferences held by the AFC, whose board DeVos chaired until Trump tapped her last month to be his education secretary. Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, hasn’t accepted money from the DeVoses, but also has a longstanding relationship with their organization, and has spoken at its events. He said last week that he has some “serious early concerns” about DeVos’ nomination. “Like all of Trump’s nominees, I will approach her nomination with deep scrutiny, especially because I am alarmed by President-elect Trump’s overall education agenda and fear that he has little respect for — or interest in — the critical work that the Department of Education performs for our children.”

Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who isn’t listed among the donation recipients, downplayed the effect that DeVos’ giving will have on the confirmation process.

“All of that is disclosed,” Alexander said. “You can ask those senators and evaluate it yourself. That’s the reason we have limits on campaign contributions and we have disclosures of those things.”

Republicans have been largely unified in their support for DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist and education activist. And while Democrats have indicated they plan to question DeVos’ support for public education and her lack of traditional education experience, such as working as a teacher or school administrator, they have been less interested in going after her political donations to members of Congress.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate education committee, has been critical of DeVos but said he doesn’t worry about her political donations.

“It wouldn’t be the first time that a nominee has made political donations,” he said. “Penny Pritzker was a fantastic secretary of commerce, and she probably made a few donations to Democrats over the years. I don’t worry about those donations.”

But DeVos’ role as a Republican mega-donor could still emerge as an issue in the upcoming confirmation hearings.

A senior aide to a Democrat on the Senate education committee said she has spent money for years to advance what the staffer described as "her anti-public education agenda." "So there will certainly be interest into whether she's continued this pattern with her own nomination," the staffer said.

DeVos twice chaired the state Republican Party in Michigan and also worked for two years as a finance chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the George W. Bush administration.

Aside from boosting Republican candidates nationally, DeVos and her husband have also poured millions into advocating for a conservative education agenda. In Michigan, where the DeVoses have contributed at least $7 million to the state party and lawmakers, the powerful couple have influenced nearly every major piece of education-related legislation since the 1990s.

Kimberly Hefling contributed to this report.