It's been an interesting ten days in Milwaukee since I finished adding up all the strange details about Advocates for Student Achievement and concluded that they were, in fact, a pro-voucher front group for unnamed, unknown folks who may or may not live in Milwaukee, or even in Wisconsin. You know what they say: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. Well, according to my math, a whole bunch of ducks got together, appointed themselves in charge, recruited a bunch of candidates to run for the Milwaukee Public Schools Board, then ran a big flag up the pole over the duck clubhouse that read, "We're not ducks, we're not pro-voucher, and vote against that anti-voucher MPS President Peter Blewett." Doesn't take a lot of calculating to figure out they were ducks.
And that their agenda is school vouchers.
And that their primary target is MPS President Peter Blewett.
While I've been getting over changes in the weather these past few days, some interesting things have happened. Not surprisingly, I didn't learn many of them from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, but there was one odd note there on March 12. Dan Bice wrote about Thad Nation getting a second call from pollsters asking, again, about Blewett, even though Nation lives outside Blewett's district. And, again, the pollster asked about vouchers.
And, once more, Nation said he asked who was underwriting the survey, something that must be disclosed under state election laws. The response, he said, was "various groups." The first poll, it turned out, was paid for by the pro-voucher Advocates for Student Achievement.
There was one big difference: Nation said the pollster didn't ask any misleading questions intended to "push" a respondent one way or another.
So after getting beaten up and losing $11,000 on a push-poll that got it no good press coverage last month, I suppose ASA learned its lesson and did another poll, keeping the "push" part out of it this time. Though it still didn't pick a pollster with a good sense of geography, since it makes no sense to poll people's public opinions of Peter Blewett when those people can't vote for or against the guy. Maybe that'll get cleared up in the next poll.
You know another poll is coming. There's a full two weeks left before the April 7 election day, and the folks pushing vouchers have a lot of money. They just don't know how to poll the right group of voters.
And I saw that Marvin Pratt has come out for Blewett's re-election, adding his name to the list. Pratt was the first African-American mayor of Milwaukee, moving up when John Norquist stepped down early, and it would have been interesting if he'd won election to serve his own full term in 2004. Anyway, Pratt said he liked that Milwaukee's graduation rate had improved while Blewett's been board president.
I noticed too that Matt Flynn, who ran for Congress in 2004, essentially congratulated the Shepherd Express on getting the main points of its reporting about ASA correct. Just to recap, here's what Lisa Kaiser of the Express wrote on March 4:
A new "reform" group was launched in late-2007 to recruit anti-union, pro-voucher candidates for the Milwaukee Public Schools board of directors.
We’re just now seeing the results, but only if you know where to look.
The group, Advocates for Student Achievement (ASA), is supporting three candidates in the April 7 election: David Voeltner, running against Donna Peck on the Southwest Side; Annie Woodward, challenging Michael Mathias for Charlene Hardin’s old seat; and ReDonna Rodgers, challenging MPS Board President Peter Blewett.
The ASA has been operating under the radar—and none of the ASA candidates have returned phone calls seeking comment for this article—but evidence of the group has been popping up in these weeks before the MPS board election:
- According to a campaign e-mail sent to "friends of ASA," Voeltner, Woodward and Rodgers "have taken advantage of the candidate orientation sessions we held last fall, the issue papers we commissioned to help candidates understand the key challenges facing MPS, and the candidate roundtables we host on Saturday mornings to provide continuing education and moral support."
- The e-mail then asks "friends" for donations to the candidates’ individual campaign committees, and also the Orwellian-named campaign conduit "Milwaukee Fund for Public Education," which dumped $50,000 into voucher-supporting incumbents’ campaigns just before the 2003 board elections. The "Milwaukee Fund for Public Education" is an odd choice for a name, considering that they want to destroy public education. MPS board member Bruce Thompson, who spearheaded the voucher movement in Milwaukee, has been involved with this fund. George Mosher, who lists the fund as his employer, contributed $500 each to Woodward and Voeltner.
- ASA registered as a political action committee (PAC) with the Milwaukee Election Commission on Aug. 16, 2007, but it has not filed any financial disclosure forms with the city since its inception, so the public doesn’t know where ASA’s funds are coming from or, as of this date, how its funds are being used. The treasurer is listed as former MPS board member Joe Dannecker, a voucher supporter who was ousted by Terry Falk.
- Campaign strategist Eric Hogensen’s cell phone is listed as the contact number for ASA’s PAC. Hogensen is also the campaign strategist for the ASA candidates, and his fees show up on the financial forms for Rodgers and Voeltner.
- As reported in the Shepherd on Feb. 4, ASA commissioned a highly questionable poll seeking voters’ views on MPS issues. Included in the poll were inaccurate, misleading questions about MPS Board President Blewett, who is facing ASA-backed candidate Rodgers in April. Blewett has blasted the "push poll" as a "classic sleazy campaign trick."
- As reported in the Shepherd in November 2007, ASA held a fund-raiser sponsored by voucher backers Thompson; former MPS board members Jeff Spence, Joe Dannecker and Ken Johnson; and former state legislator Dennis Conta. Thompson told the Shepherd at the time about its focus on recruiting pro-voucher, anti-union candidates: "We’re looking to the next election, when four [of nine board] seats will be up."
In his letter to the Express, published last Tuesday, Flynn personally confirmed some of Kaiser's main points. For instance, Flynn wrote,
Eric Hogensen, who also ran my 2004 bid for Congress, aided Bruce Thompson in founding the group, ASA, after Bruce’s election to the school board in 2007...
Kudos to Ms. Kaiser for getting that one right.
Flynn confirmed, too, that
It is true that Eric is working with ReDonna Rodgers and Annie Woodward.
Right again, Ms. Kaiser. One of the founders of the pro-voucher Advocates for Student Achievement is working directly with two of the three challengers running for the MPS Board, including the one who's running to replace MPS Board President Peter Blewett. So far, Ms. Kaiser is two-for-two.
And what about ASA's pro-voucher agenda? Flynn weighs in:
ASA has its own agenda, which can be examined by questioning one of their own representatives.
Score one more for Ms. Kaiser, who may have been the first journalist to peg ASA as pro-voucher but couldn't get a call back from ASA.
In my reading of Ms. Kaiser's article, I didn't sense she was suggesting that anyone forced ASA's founder (and experienced campaign consultant) Eric Hogensen to work for two of the three candidates being supported by ASA, including the one running to replace Peter Blewett, but Flynn confirmed anyway that Hogensen made that decision on his own, without being forced by anyone. In his own words, Flynn states,
Eric made the decision to work with ReDonna Rodgers and Annie Woodward...
Pretty clear to me: The co-founder of Advocates for Student Achievement is working to defeat MPS Board President Peter Blewett.
All in all, though he calls it a letter of "clarification," Flynn's letter might be interpreted as a wholesale letter of thanks to Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express for giving coverage to issues that aren't being covered by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Flynn himself writes,
...the true issues at stake in the school board race have been overlooked.
He's exactly right, and I agree with him. I'm still wondering when the Journal-Sentinel's going to cover ASA, its backers, its agenda and what exactly it's doing to change the make-up of the MPS Board.
Speaking of covering the true issues in the school board race, I saw in Thursday's posting of the Express yet another item by Ms. Kaiser, a question-and-answer with Peter Blewett himself about the school board, the issues on the front burner, and what he'd focus on if he's re-elected. Ms. Kaiser writes that Blewett has pushed for, among other things, "increased transparency" while leading the board, the same as Barack Obama's pushing for in Washington.
I liked this part of what Blewett said:
I believe that if we really try to bring back MPS to what it once was, and make it even better, Milwaukee could be a center for progressive, educated people. We could reverse the brain drain. I think we can do it but it’s going to be really hard work.
It's true.
This part was true, too:
We’re making some progress. In the governor’s budget they’ve started to address one of the funding flaws. It’s not the funding flaw the mayor has been talking about. The mayor wanted more money for property tax relief. [In the budget proposal] they’re letting us count the students [which will result in more state funds for MPS]. That’s the funding flaw that we wanted to address [two years ago] and they’re going to start doing that. Only 10% this year and then it goes up to 50%. That’s not good enough for me but it’s a start. So we’re making some progress.
The other thing that’s in the budget is accountability. We’re going to require these teachers [in voucher schools] to have a college degree. It’s about time. There will be some other things. It isn’t enough but it’s about time that we start to address these things. The governor has at least recognized the MPS agenda in the budget this year. That’s a sign of hope.
So it's been an interesting week or so.
I really feel like there's something else I'm forgetting to mention, but it's slipped my mind right now. I'd check the last couple editions of the Journal-Sentinel, but I know it wouldn't be in there. Something big, something important... but I can't think of it.
If I remember it, I'll post about it tomorrow. Meanwhile, it's fifteen days and counting, right?