What happens to $2.1M in campaign donations?
As Ohio’s billion-dollar investment in ECOT fizzles into a closed school and 12,000 students left to seek an alternative in the middle of the school year, statewide candidates are pointing fingers over the $2.1 million in campaign money the school’s operator and key officials doled out during the past two decades.
Republicans, who got the bulk of the contributions, were largely mum when asked whether they would give them up now that the school has imploded amid scandal andmassive debt.
Attorney General Mike DeWine has received more than $12,000 and his running mate, Secretary of State Jon Husted, got $28,500. Husted was speaker of the Ohio House when key charter school legislation passed.
A campaign spokesman declined to say whether any of the $40,000-plus in contributions linked to ECOT would be surrendered.
“The DeWine Husted campaign supports school choice,” said spokesman Ryan Stubenrauch, campaign press secretary. “Every school in Ohio has to prepare kids for the real-world economy while meeting Ohio standards and regulations.”
Another GOP candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, took in $22,500. Her campaign did not respond to questions.
A spokesman for termlimited GOP Gov. John Kasich, who received $20,000 in ECOT-related contributions, said Kasich would give up nothing.
“No contributions will be returned,” Chris Schrimpf said in an email. “The only thing that donors ever get from the governor is good government.”
Ohio Auditor Dave Yost is seeking the GOP nomination for attorney general. In 2015 he supported legislation to make Ohio’s ballooning charterschool sector more accountable and he’s called for a crackdown on ECOT since.
Before that, however, Yost received almost $24,000 from ECOT-related sources, spoke at the school’s graduation and gave them an auditor’s award. But his political director, Amy Natoce, said ECOT founder Bill Lager got only grief in return for his contributions to Yost.
“Anyone that donates to Dave Yost invests in good government, and that is exactly what Yost has delivered by holding ECOT accountable,” Natoce said in an email.
“Lager’s donations — which account for less than one half of one percent of all contributions Yost has received — are now costing him millions thanks to Yost’s vigilance. Dave Yost always puts Ohioans first and is focused on recouping the money ECOT owes the state, and making sure ECOT’s students find a new school where they can succeed.”
Ohio Rep. Keith Faber, a GOP candidate for auditor, said he is still evaluating whether to give up the $34,000 he’s received from ECOT-related sources.
“We haven’t reached any conclusions yet,” he said, adding that the contributions were from years ago.
“It’s important to remember that (ECOT founder) Bill Lager hasn’t been happy with me for a long time. When I was president of the Senate we passed the charter school accountability measures that ended with ECOT being shut down.”
Ohio Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Hudson, is running for secretary of state. In 2012 he received a $5,000 contribution from Lager, according to records at the secretary of state’s office. In a text message Tuesday, LaRose said he was traveling and would have to check his records before saying anything about possibly returning money.
Though Democrats were largely on the sidelines of the ECOT-related largess, one of the Democratic campaigns for governor sniped at another over relatively small contributions. Richard Cordray, a Democratic candidate for governor and former director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, waxed biblical about ECOT on Twitter Monday.
“On the ECOT scandal: ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,’” he wrote, quoting from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. “‘Then next in Matthew: ‘For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’”
But Stephanie Dodd, a Democratic member of the Ohio Board of Education who is the running mate of Ohio Sen. Joe Schiavoni, had a Bible lesson of her own.
“Spare us the sermon, Rich. You took Bill Lager’s money in 2006 and money from #ECOT’s COO in 2008,” she tweeted, then cited Jesus’ words in the very next chapter: “‘For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you,’ Matthew 7:2.”
Cordray got just $600 from ECOT.
“Rich has spent his entire career fighting for people who were ripped off by special interests, which is why President (Barack) Obama entrusted him to take on fraudsters like ECOT as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” campaign spokesman Mike Gwin said in an email. “Democrats across the state want this primary campaign to be about a candidate’s vision and a comparison of accomplishments, not petty attacks — that’s how we win in November.”