Influencing Local elections

Efforts to Influence Local Elections

Newspaper articles indicate there have been considerable efforts by a variety of organizations to influence certain elections for the boards of the Santa Clara County Office of Education and the Los Altos School District.

“With an unprecedented surge of cash from charter schools and their high-tech backers, normally low-profile school board campaigns have morphed into big-bucks contests to elect charter-friendly candidates and defeat their challengers.”

“The PAC is also sending mailers to re-elect Grace Mah, who’s running for the county school board to represent areas within the Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos and Sunnyvale school districts. Her opponent, Dave Cortright, is an outspoken opponent of Bullis Charter School in Los Altos.”

“It’s unprecedented that so much money is coming into this race against people who are more measured with their approach to charter schools,” said Cortright, who is self-funding his campaign and plans to spend about $1,000.

PAC Money Floods Local School Board Races - October 31, 2012, Bay Area News Group

Our community should understand the nature and extent of this outside pro-charter influence on our local and county school board elections. We should consider whether we will allow the national and state charter movement to affect our personal, local election choices and what actions we might take in response to counteract these forces.

In 2012, two charter Political Action Committees (PACs), the Parents for Great Schools PAC and Santa Clara Schools PAC), spent approximately $500,000 to influence the SCCOE board election. The $500,000 financial influence is significant.

Further, the choice of the PAC to support Grace Mah as our representative was interesting.  Grace Mah was the 16th signer of the original 2003 BCS charter petition, which indicated she had a “meaningful interest in having his or her child, or ward, attend the school.”  She also played a role in trying to establish charter schools in both Palo Alto (2007 - not approved) and in Mountain View (2019 - not approved).  In other words, our elected SCCOE Board member is very pro-BCS and pro-charter school. She is supposed to represent the collective electorate of “Area 1: Palo Alto Unified, Los Altos, Mountain View Whisman, Mountain View-Los Altos Union High school districts and a majority portion of Sunnyvale school district and the corresponding portions of Fremont Union High School district.” 

The “money trail” is not necessarily transparent.  Following the trail of money is similar to seeing a spider web and then following each strand of the web.  The trail requires both physically visiting the Santa Clara County offices and reviewing online filings.  To get a full picture of who might be trying to influence our elections, and their agendas, an analysis ultimately needs to be completed for 2012, 2014, 2016 & the 2018 elections for SCCOE. 

This posting examines part of the 2014 LASD School Board Election.  Measure N, which authorized the issuance of $150 million in bonds to add a 10th school site and improve facilities, was also on this ballot but is not included in this analysis.

Searches of the County of Santa Clara Public Portal for Campaign Finance Disclosure website (https://public.netfile.com/pub2/) leads to a number of filings.  For example, there is a filing from the Pro-Charter Political Action Committee named "LASD Parents for Great Schools" - Flier ID 1372479.  The name suggests it is a local spinoff of the “Parents for Great Schools” organization noted above. 

Step 1 - Following the money, from the top down, begins in 2013 with $4.7 million contributed to the PAC “California Charter Schools Association Advocates Independent Expenditure Committee” (California Charter Schools Association or CCSA).   $4.5M of the funds came from nine individuals who are charter school advocates but do not live in Mountain View, Los Altos or Los Altos Hills.  Please refer to Attachment A for details.

Step 2- Another umbrella charter school organization, “Parents for Great Schools”, worked with individuals in our community to form a pop-up PAC named “LASD Parents for Great Schools”.  The "LASD Parents of Great Schools" PAC was professionally managed in Sacramento by Deane and Company.

Forty individuals, primarily from Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, beginning 28 days before the election, made a total of $26,432 in contributions to this local PAC.  The day of the election, the California Charter Schools Association or CCSA PAC contributed $22,770 to the “LASD Parents for Great Schools” PAC.  These $49,209 in donations were not disclosed in Santa Clara County filings until 80 days after the election.  Delaying the financial impact of these focused PAC’s is a reflection of the value selected BCS leadership placed on transparency.   At what point, we each need to decide for ourselves, does lack of transparency in a carefully orchestrated effort to influence electoral results cross the line to being deceptive.

The managers of the local pop-up PAC knew in advance what funds would be available (including those contributed by the CCSA PAC on Election Day) and deployed the funds in the campaign. 72% of the expenditures were for the benefit of, or directly to, three LASD candidates and 15% was in support of Measure N. One candidate was not aware that a mailer was sent on her behalf.  Please refer to Attachment B for details.

Step 3- The five LASD Board candidates conducted their campaigns, the community voted, and three candidates were elected.

The total expenditures in the election of the school board members were $112,969.  Historically, each candidate’s election would expend between $5,000 and $15,000.  This was true for three of the five candidates.  Expenditures for the other two candidates were $33,957 and $47,663.

Five candidates were generous in offering to provide leadership and oversight for LASD.  Three candidates ran financially modest campaigns funded by the candidate and fully disclosed members of the community.  Two candidates ran more extravagant financial campaigns, with significant funding from outside our community, that was not disclosed until a couple months after the election. Please refer to Attachment C for details.

The Takeaway - Many members of our community did not realize the messaging and media we received was a premeditated and undisclosed effort to influence an election in our community, using money collected from national actors and organizations, then sent to state-wide organizations, and then used as matching funds for an undisclosed local pop-up PAC.

This lack of transparency does not build trust. To the contrary, it nurtures skepticism, suspicion, uncertainty.

The next Two Elections – In 2016 and 2018 the level of financial expenditure was much lower and the impact of committees or PACs was much lower.

Looking at Three (2014, 2016 & 2018) Elections – There were 5 candidates in 2014, 2 in 2016 and 4 in 2018.  2016 also had two appointed board members.  The strategy used by the candidates varied.  The candidates viewed as BCS advocates invested up to $40,000 more than most other candidates.

The candidates viewed as BCS advocates seemed to have managed a very successful “pass-the-hat” campaign focused on less than $100 contributions, raising a consistent $7,500 to $8,000 for each candidate..

Total expenditures by all candidates, for all three elections, were heavily related to the creation and distribution of campaign literature, generally outsourced to specialized vendors.