Do you donate to State Board of Education Campaigns? | William C. Brehm
The Citizens United decision has opened the floodgate for future campaign contributions. Below is a discussion between Bill Moyer and Jeffery Toobin about the recent Supreme Court ruling. The gist of the conversation centers on the probability of corporations putting money and energy into smaller, hidden campaigns—not nationally televised presidential, or even Congressional, campaigns. Toobin is insistent that local judicial campaigns will see the greatest increase in campaign contributions from corporations.
(Remember, there is a long history of corporations injecting money into judicial campaigns for particular candidates because of specific interests—because of the belief that judges will rule differently for those who helped in a campaign. It is naïve to think corporations have no vested interest in certain candidates holding power in the congressional, legislative, and judicial systems in our country. For instance, in his 1996 race for Texas Supreme Court, Tom Phillips raised $1.3 million, 43 percent of which came from parties with Supreme Court Cases. Talk about conflicting interests!)
After reading this New York Times magazine article about the controversial and all too powerful Texas Board of Education, I wonder if campaign contributions will increase not only for judges but also for state boards of education like the one in Texas. One of the most telling quotes from the article shows how conscious special interest groups are when it comes to local politics: “[Pat] Robertson’s protégé, Ralph Reed, once said, ‘I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members’”
The increase of campaign contributions to state boards of education candidates around this country because of Citizens United is a real possibility, and one that might be even more “under the radar” than the judicial campaigns. In fact, it is already happening. Local boards of education and local judges can have far greater power in altering how we think about education and law respectively than any Senator or Congress member.
