Betsy DeVos was born into money and she married a lot more money and if she becomes education secretary, she will have bought a Cabinet post with all that money. DeVos’ lone education “qualification” is that she has spent a lot of her family’s money trying to shape education policy to fit her anti-public education politics, and the thing that further propelled her into being someone Republican senators will take seriously is the amount of money she has spread around to those very same Republican senators.
It’s like a caricature of how money in politics works:
Big donors often get positions in government, ambassadorships or ceremonial titles, but rarely do they come as big as DeVos. Sitting Republican senators have received $115,000 from Betsy DeVos herself, and more than $950,000 from the full DeVos clan since 1980. In the past two election cycles alone, her family has donated $8.3 million to Republican Party super PACs.
Marco Rubio has gotten $98,300 from the DeVos family. Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis have gotten $70,200 apiece. Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey has gotten $60,050 in DeVos money. Ohio’s Rob Portman and Arizona’s John McCain have each gotten a little more than $50,000, while Colorado’s Cory Gardner, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, and Indiana’s Todd Young have each gotten a little less. Another nine Republican senators have gotten more than $20,000 from the DeVos family—including Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, who will be voting against DeVos thanks to the huge number of phone calls her office got from constituents. So don’t give up. Betsy DeVos has billions of dollars, and the only way to fight that is with millions of phone calls and in-person visits to Republican senators telling them no. No to an education secretary who wants to drain public education money into private schools, no to an education secretary who makes up nonsense about “potential grizzlies” to justify her support for guns in schools, no to an education secretary who has given money to anti-LGBT organizations, no to an education secretary who doesn’t know what protections federal law gives to kids with disabilities.
If you’re one of their constituents, give Deb Fischer (Nebraska) and Dean Heller (Nevada) and Jeff Flake (Arizona) and John McCain (Arizona) and Cory Gardner (Colorado) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) and John Hoeven (North Dakota) reason to stop and think about whether DeVos is worth it. Even if your Republican senator isn’t on that list of potential targets, give them a call. Find out if one of them will be meeting with the public over the next few days and show up. Let them know that Betsy DeVos is not an acceptable choice.