Donors, some of them rich and many of them anonymous, wrote big checks to support East Baton Rouge Parish School Board candidates this past fall, triggering a flood of mailers, phone calls, text messages and digital ads.
This campaign largesse came almost exclusively through “dark money” channels, spent by nonprofit groups organized so they can raise unlimited sums of money on behalf of candidates as long as they do so independently and do not coordinate their spending with those they support. And their special federal tax status allows these groups to shield their donors from public disclosure, which they typically do.
According to the final campaign finance reports from the 2022 campaign, almost $2.4 million was spent on the nine parish School Board races this past fall. That’s more than three times what was spent on the previous cycle of school board elections held in fall 2018.
The cost of local School Board races has steadily increased since the famous Citizens United decision in 2010 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which enshrined independent expenditures as protected by the First Amendment.
Before then, School Board races were inexpensive affairs. For instance, the fall 1986 East Baton Rouge Parish school board elections cost collectively a little more than $100,000, according an Advocate story from that time. Two decades later, a school board race still cost at most in the tens of thousands of dollars.
This fall the cheapest race was in District 3, about $136,000, while the most expensive was District 9, about $434,000.
Mike Gaudet, who was barely elected to a second term representing District 7, had the most money spent on his behalf, about $202,000, to which he added $46,500 from his own coffers.
Less than 3% of the money spent in Carla Powell’s successful District 3 race was raised by her campaign and more than half of that came from a $5,000 contribution from FuturePAC, the political arm of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber.
Katie Kennison swore off all donations, raising and spending no money at all, in her upset victory over District 8 incumbent Connie Bernard. But Kennison still benefited from outside expenditures late in the campaign, including nearly $18,000 in ads attacking Bernard.
More than $1.9 million of the $2.4 million overall spending in the fall — about 80% of all spending — came through a handful of outside groups, all of them connected by their support for charter schools. Charter schools are public schools run privately via charters, or contracts.
By far the biggest of those groups were I.E. PAC, which has reported spending almost $860,000 supporting nine candidates, and Stand For Children IEC, which reported spending about $766,000 on seven candidates.
They are both 501(c)4 independent expenditure organizations formed by other nonprofit organizations, , and . Stand is a Portland-based group that has had for years.
Baton Rouge Alliance received $600,000 from , a large group formed in 2018 with large donations from a private foundation of Houston hedge fund manager John Arnold and his wife, Laura, as well as from the Hastings Fund, a philanthropic organization created by Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings. City Fund, however, has said little about who else gives money to them. Its IRS filing, for the fiscal year ending June 2020, showed that the organization had $66.7 million in revenues.
Gary Borden, , is , which was formed in 2021.
Stand does not reveal all of its donors, but in its 2021 annual report it listed three big donors, including a charity associated with billionaire Mike Bloomberg.
Bloomberg is one of the few rich out-of-state donors who contributed money in his own name for the fall school board elections, donating $150,000 last summer to Red Stick Leaders.
Bloomberg, who served for 12 years as mayor of New York City and spent $1 billion in an unsuccessful 2020 presidential bid, has been a big donor to Louisiana elections over the past decade. Bloomberg also is a longtime financial supporter of another group active in recent school boards: Democrats for Education Reform, or DFER. DFER contributed a total of $3,350 directly to five school board candidates.
DFER’s 501(c)4, Education Reform Now Advocacy, has reported $196,150 in independent expenditures on behalf of four Baton Rouge school board candidates. It filed its final election report Sunday, 10 days after the deadline, after this story was published. Education Reform Now in early November received $200,000 from City Fund, and $151,700 from Red Stick Leaders.
Terrence Lockett, DFER’s state director, said the Red Stick money was to help Education Reform Now’s work on behalf of Baton Rouge school board candidates, while the City Fund contribution was earmarked to help with the group’s work in New Orleans, including spending at least $160,000 backing Leila Eames’ .
The Baton Rouge school board candidates this fall who won, with the exception of Kennison in District 8, were supported by one or more of these big outside groups. The candidates they defeated were largely left to their own devices and heavily outgunned. Evelyn Ware-Jackson, who lost a bid for a fourth term representing District 5, spent the most of that group, $15,855.
There were new election players this time, however, who may prove important in the future. They have followed the lead of the charter school-friendly groups and have formed their own 501(c)4 organizations.
For instance, , an advocacy group based in New Orleans, and its independent spending arm did phone banking and canvassing for endorsed candidates in Baton Rouge in advance of the Nov. 8 primary, and it resumed that activity in late November, according to a co-founder of the group. The organization, though, has not as yet filed a final campaign finance report documenting all its activity this fall.
And in early December, Campaign for Our Shared Future, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan education advocacy group, made a late entry into the fall election, coming out in support of Kennison and in opposition to Bernard, spending money through its 501(c)4 arm in support of Kennison. The group has not as yet reported its campaign activity on behalf of Kennison.
Red Stick Leaders, however, did report late opposition to Bernard, spending almost $18,000 against the controversial former school board member.
Adonica Duggan, who helped found the Red Stick, said the group ended up paying for three mailers opposing Bernard, as well as some digital ads.