Last Tuesday, I posted highlights from the public Yahoo group used by the right-wing, pro-voucher Advocates for Student Achievement in Milwaukee, ones that illustrated the sharp contrast between ASA's carefully-staged public profile and its real activities and intentions. For example, it purported to be, in its own words, a "good government group" organized to encourage more people to run for the Milwaukee Public Schools Board. But their internal communications showed that ASA was, in fact, a machine to recruit, train and manage pro-voucher candidates for that board, and to discourage others from running. In public, ASA said its only intent was to identify and inform good candidates; in private, ASA engaged in everything from fundraising to message-management for its stable of three: Redonna Rodgers, Annie Woodward and David Voeltner. And while in public, ASA's representatives said they had no agenda except to focus attention on improving Milwaukee's public schools, their internal conversations reveal a very different goal: to remove MPS Board President Peter Blewett from office.
What's the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's position on that question? Stick with me to the end of today's note and I'll tell you. I promise you'll enjoy it.
Until last week, only Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express had published any reporting that scrutinized ASA at all, asking natural questions about ASA's origins, its motives and its funders. But aside from Kaiser's own public records research, there were few answers to those questions, as ASA representatives chose to exclude the Shep Express from the organization's media outreach. And why should they answer Kaiser's questions? So long as they stuck to their story in public, they could afford to wave off reporters like Kaiser.
Through last week, Kaiser kept up her digging, though, and she was the first to pick up on the summary of those internal communications from ASA's Yahoo group. For almost two years, ASA claimed to have two different "wings," a good-government wing called ASA-MKE and a political action committee called ASA-PAC. But its interal conversations demonstrated that its leaders didn't pay heed to any such separation in reality, and that they engaged in the gamut of political activities without filing the required political action committee reports. Kaiser asked on Thursday, "Why would Advocates for Student Achievement, a political action committee co-founded by a member of the MPS board, Bruce Thompson, and whose treasurer is a former MPS board member, Joe Dannecker, not submit campaign finance reports to the City Election Commission?"
After all, ASA’s been around since 2007. The Shepherd reported on its first fundraiser back then. Thompson and Dannecker have both run campaigns and surely must know that campaign finance reports are due throughout the year—in January to cover 2008’s activities, and then in February, just before the primary.
Why wouldn’t ASA want to officially report that, for example, MMAC held a fundraiser for ASA on Feb. 5, 2008, a full year ago? Sure, you can find that information if you run a Google search, but shouldn’t that become part of the public record?
Not sure if this counts as a campaign contribution, but I’m sure ASA was thrilled that the Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors sent out a call for candidates who would want to work with ASA. If my sources are accurate, this call for candidates went out in October.
Then just weeks ago, the "ASA Executive Committee" sent out an e-mail asking for donations to three candidates who went through its training sessions—ReDonna Rodgers, Annie Woodward and David Voeltner. But, the ASA e-mail explains, if supporters wanted to write just one check, they could send it to the Milwaukee Fund for Public Education, a pro-voucher conduit that dumped $50,000 into candidates’ campaigns just before the 2003 election.
No, I can’t imagine why Dannecker and Thompson wouldn’t want to report that ASA has strong links to the pro-voucher, pro-privatization MMAC, Realtors Association and the Milwaukee Fund for Public Education. I just can't figure it out.
I have an answer, one that comes only from intuition: I think that whoever purports to advise ASA (including Thompson and Dannecker) told them to set up their activities this way, to present ASA in a particular public light so as to obscure its roots in the voucher movement and to build a presence in the Milwaukee community as a neutral public policy group. I think its sponsors hoped to build and broaden ASA's presence once it had achieved some initial goals, namely the replacement of Blewett and re-direction of the MPS Board. I doubt that ASA was ever intended to serve as a single-use tool for a single election cycle. I think that although they set up the PAC for show, they intended to accomplish their goals without reporting any activity. Dannecker said as much when Kaiser finally got him to answer a question: "What’s more, ASA-PAC treasurer Joe Dannecker told me yesterday that the PAC hasn’t filed any campaign finance forms because there hasn’t been any activity."
They might have succeeded, too, if they'd gotten slightly better advice. It's likely that a single keystroke might have preserved ASA's future, if those who established ASA's Yahoo group had clicked to keep the group private rather than public. They recognize it now and have corrected their mistake. But the genie's out of the bottle now.
I was pleased to see on Friday that Folkbum picked up on the trail too, and was just as skeptical as I was.
Earlier this week, I wondered about Advocates for Student Achievement, a seemingly pro-privatization group that wants to influence the election of members of the Milwaukee Public Schools board. Another blogger, going by the monicker of "sixandsevens," has been tracking the group, too, at dKos and OWN.
One thing this person caught--and, honestly, I have no idea who s/he may be--is that ASA and its members were on the Yahoo! together in an open email listserv. Well, open in the sense that anyone could stroll through and read their emails to each other, not that anyone could just chime in.
...
And there was lots more, including talk about the candidate training and roundtables the group offered, strategy they used, and a lot of talk about which reporters might be most manipulable to get their version of events out to the public. It is not wrong that such a group exists, or that they used Yahoo! to chat amongst themselves. It was, for the brief moment it lasted, though, an interesting glimpse into the motivations and machinations of this group.
Kaiser wrote on Friday about what she called "the payoff" for "a pro-voucher, pro-privatization front group that's trying to swing the election."
Given what she'd read by then in the ASA Yahoo group, it was hard for her to believe ASA's public statements and she wondered whether, now that ASA had been exposed, we would finally get to see why and how much the Milwaukee Metropolitan Association of Commerce (MMAC) had invested in ASA's candidates.
Take, for example, support for the three candidates ASA recruited for the April 7 elections: Annie Woodward, ReDonna Rodgers and David Voeltner.
ASA—notably MPS board member Bruce Thompson, one of the biggest voucher supporters in the city, and someone who would love to be president of the MPS board of directors—worked with the candidates closely. Annie Woodward, one of the candidates, admitted to me in an interview a few weeks ago that ASA recruited her to run and she’s been meeting with them regularly for strategy sessions.
But ASA was also drumming up support for their candidates throughout the business community. ASA benefited from a fundraiser sponsored by MMAC, joined forces with the Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors to recruit candidates, and even sent out e-mails asking for donations to the three candidates. But if it was too inconvenient for donors to write multiple checks to the three individual candidates, the Milwaukee Fund for Public Education, a pro-voucher conduit formerly run by Bruce Thompson, would be happy to take the money and disburse it accordingly, the "ASA Executive Committee" helpfully explained.
Unfortunately, ASA hasn’t filed any campaign finance forms with the City Election Commission. It’s sort of ridiculous, if you ask me. I mean, ASA was co-founded in 2007 by Bruce Thompson, who is an elected official. ASA’s treasurer is Joe Dannecker, a former MPS board member. These guys should know that PACs must file finance reports with the city. There are only two explanations, if you ask me: A) they’re incompetent or B) they didn’t want the public to know what they were up to.
In fact, Kaiser said, some of MMAC's contributions were already showing up in the required campaign filings for March 30: MMAC has given $500 to Annie Woodward, $1,050 to Redonna Rodgers. And Bruce Thompson's own PAC, the sadly misnamed Milwaukee Fund for Public Education, funneled another $500 to Rodgers and $500 to David Voeltner.
Yesterday, out of the clear blue sky came the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's first report on ASA's exposed activities; it came not from education reporter Alan Borsuk but from investigative report Dan Bice.
Advocates for Student Achievement didn't leave a paper trail about its political activity in three Milwaukee School Board races. It left an Internet trail. A long and potentially damning Internet trail. ASA posted more than 300 internal messages on what its leaders thought was a secret Yahoo group site. An anonymous blogger, though, found anyone could join the cyber group, copy the e-mails and post them for everyone to see.
The e-mails suggest ASA, which opposes the Milwaukee teachers union, recruited three candidates and helped provide them with position papers, campaign advice, voter lists, campaign money and poll data. And all of this was done without the public's knowledge.
I give credit where it's due, and Bice did a service to the Journal-Sentinel's readers yesterday. He got a number of ASA's leaders on the record, admitting what they've been caught at doing.
And you know what I didn't hear in any of their statements? Contrition. There's none whatsoever. Thompson, a sitting member of the MPS Board and who was actively engaged in nasty politics to defeat his colleague on the board, told Bice only, "We certainly screwed up with our Yahoo account." Asked by Bice whether he believed ASA crossed a legal line in its activities, Thompson answered, "I don't believe we did (cross the line). But I'm close to the situation."
Do the messages provide evidence that the education group skirted election law by failing to disclose just what they were doing for candidates Annie Woodward, ReDonna Rodgers and David Voeltner? All three are up for election next week.
Jeremy Levinson, a lawyer who handles campaign-related cases, said there may be a problem, based on his quick review of the e-mails. "This raises very serious questions across the spectrum of election laws," said Levinson, who is not endorsing in the School Board races. "This was entirely brazen."
Citizen Action of Wisconsin, which has strong ties to local and state unions, has already filed one complaint about ASA's involvement in the School Board races. That complaint is now in the hands of Milwaukee County prosecutors. Robert Kraig, a spokesman for Citizen Action, said the messages bolster his organization's case.
ASA leaders offered only a weak defense last week. Their political action committee filed its first-ever spending reports Friday, disclosing how it spent more than $3,500 over the past 1 1/2 years. But the records don't spell out all the help detailed in its Yahoo messages.
There's some black humor in knowing that ASA's leaders and sponsors spoke to each other as experts in their internal conversations, but now deflect the most critical questions as beyond their awareness of the law.
Another group leader, John Parr, said the organization should have done more to separate the two sides. Pressed further, he responded, "Now you're getting into the legal issues, and I'm not a lawyer."
Which begs a pretty good question: Didn't ASA have one? A competent one?
Bice picked up on another good question having to do with that expensive push-poll -- the one that cost ASA $12,000, which ASA is trying to get back from the pollster Cornell Belcher. ASA's internal dialogue made it clear that the poll was being shared with ASA's candidates, including Rodgers. But Rodgers' campaign spokesman says she hasn't gotten anything from ASA except attendance at its public meetings.
Under state law, corporations are not permitted to provide anything of value to political candidates. PACs may do so as long as the cost and description of the item is disclosed. Neither ASA nor the candidates have reported this donation.
Who's telling the truth, ASA or its candidate, Redonna Rodgers?
In yesterday's Shep Express, Kaiser caught onto the dodges by Thompson and Dannecker in Bice's report and she underscored them.
Supporters say ASA is split into two groups, the nonpolitical ASA-MKE and the ASA-PAC, a political action committee, and that means it can’t have any contact with any candidates for office. There’s a strict wall between candidates and PACs, but time and time again the ASA folks seem to blur the line between ASA-MKE and ASA-PAC. PACs can only contribute $600 to candidates for the MPS board, including in-kind contributions. I don't recall even seeing ASA-PAC referenced in any of the emails.
There’s mucho evidence that ASA and candidates Annie Woodward, ReDonna Rodgers and David Voeltner were in contact throughout the campaign. I’m sure that the ASA folks will say that their educational, nonpolitical ASA-MKE was simply recruiting and nurturing these candidates, while the PAC was doing the fundraising.
Then she catalogues the evidence that refutes that assertion.
For example:
ASA trained the three candidates, and even went so far as to meet with them weekly to discuss strategy. Candidate Annie Woodward told me just that in a recent interview. According to the Yahoo emails, ASA supplied text of ReDonna Rodgers’ campaign platform, to be posted on her website. That activity hasn't been reported on Rodgers' campaign finance reports. Rodgers was personally recruited by ASA's Kevin Ronnie, who once ran against Peter Blewett. Rodgers is now running against Blewett. Revenge, much?
Kaiser concludes, "It’s ironic, given that ASA is trying to position itself as a 'good government group,' that it doesn’t have a good grasp of what it’s allowed to do under the law."
Folkbum caught the Rodgers campaign's dodge too, in his post yesterday.
Finally, Kaiser ended yesterday with a couple of follow-up posts on what IS found and what ISN'T found in the campaign finance reports filed by ASA and its three candidates.
Well, lookie-loo. Looks like some bad press and the attention of the District Attorney’s office finally forced Advocates for Student Achievement’s PAC to submit tardy campaign finance forms. A first! Here’s what ASA-PAC treasurer Joe Dannecker signed and delivered to the City Election Commission on Friday, March 27:
January Continuing 2008: $100 from Joe Dannecker.
July Continuing 2008: No money raised.
January Continuing 2009: $100 from Michael W. Hatch.
Pre-primary 2009: $3,000 contribution from Marshall & Isley Corp. Political Action Committee on Jan. 8; $634.24 contribution to ASA-MKE Inc. to "pay for 2 questions on poll"; $600 contribution to Annie Woodward for Education on Feb. 5; $600 contribution to Friends to Elect ReDonna Rodgers on Feb. 5; $600 contribution to Voeltner for School Board on Feb. 5.
That’s interesting, because Woodward did not report that contribution on either her pre-primary report (filed on Feb. 9) or pre-election report (filed on March 29). Voeltner, however, reported it as an in-kind contribution on Feb. 6 on his pre-election report, dated March 29.
ASA candidate Annie Woodward may want to proofread her campaign finance forms, because it appears that some information is missing. The latest form, dated March 29 and signed by Feisal J. Salahadyn, shows that she took in $3,140 during this period, $2,540 of which came from individuals. Woodward reports that a $600 in-kind contribution came from the Concerned Realtors Committee on Feb. 12.
But what about the other PAC contributions Woodward received? ASA-PAC reported that it contributed $600 to Annie Woodward for Education on Feb. 5. I can’t find it in any of her campaign finance reports.
Woodward also received $300 on March 26 from the Milwaukee Fund for Public Education, a conduit run by Kathy Ronco, head of the Highland Community School. That’s missing from Woodward’s campaign finance report.
Annie, let me know if you report these donations, OK?
And that brings us up-to-date, except for the endorsement column published this morning in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
I've wondered about which way the Journal-Sentinel would go this year. After all, it has recommended Peter Blewett's opponents every time that Blewett has run for MPS Board, and every time he's offered himself to serve as board president. (I outlined the history here.) In the 2001 primary, it recommended Ann Bowe over Blewett, despite its acknowledgement of "a cloud hanging over the Bowe campaign." And its endorsement in the general election that year: "In District 6, on the west side, defense attorney Ann Bowe is our choice over Peter Blewett, assistant coordinator of the creative writing program at UWM." Of course, voters chose Blewett.
In 2004, when Blewett ran against Jeff Spence to be board president, the Journal-Sentinel said the board needed "stability at the top," so it recommended against Blewett getting the job. But Blewett won anyway.
In 2005, when Blewett was up for re-election to the board, newcomer Kevin Ronnie ran against him. Did the Journal-Sentinel believe that the board still needed "stability at the top"? The Journal-Sentinel concluded, "On Tuesday, voters can and should put control of the Milwaukee School Board back into the hands of the reformers. That means electing Kevin Ronnie in the 6th District on the west side..."
Why not Blewett that year? The Journal-Sentinel declared, "To his credit, Blewett has been somewhat conciliatory in heading the board, but he falls short on vision."
Despite the premium that year on vision over stability, Blewett won. And the Journal-Sentinel called his win "unfortunate."
When Blewett won re-election as board president in 2007, the Journal-Sentinel called the board "complicated."
When he won re-election to the same seat in 2008, the paper said he won "with five votes, the minimum needed."
Last week, none other than ASA's Bruce Thompson wrote, in the last note posted at ASA's Yahoo group before it was taken down, that the Journal-Sentinel would endorsement Redonna Rodgers in last Thursday's edition. Of course, that didn't occur, but it led me to wonder whether Thompson was clairvoyant, whether the Journal-Sentinel intended but pulled its Thursday endorsement of Rodgers, whether the paper would stick to its record of opposition to Blewett or whether it might hesitate in light of Rodgers' questionable ties to the now-exposed ASA? Would the Journal-Sentinel make its decision based on the need for stability? Vision? Experience? Change? I've almost lost sleep over this.
Thankfully, the Journal-Sentinel resolved the matter for me this morning. This year, the Journal-Sentinel's rationale is "new energy," and it has decided that Peter Blewett has none. "Clearly," it declares, "the status quo is unacceptable."
"We recommend ReDonna Rodgers."
It turns out that Bruce Thompson is half-clairvoyant, after all.
The endorsement notice includes no mention of the reporting by Dan Bice published on yesterday's front page, no mention of Rodgers' yet-unexplained relationship with ASA's leadership, and the yet-undocumented goods and services that ASA apparently provided to her campaign. There isn't even that queasiness about a "cloud hanging over" Rodgers' situation as the Journal-Sentinel admitted in its 2001 endorsement of Ann Bowe. It is as if the drafters of the editorial page do not read their own front page.
There is an upside in today's note: I won my bet that the statesmen and philosophers of the Journal-Sentinel's editorial page value consistency above all else.