Did you ever imagine that the passion for privatizing public schools would motivate two billionaires to dump a fat gift into Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign for governor?
“Netflix CEO Reed Hastings pledged $7 million and Los Angeles real estate entrepreneur Eli Broad promised $1.5 million to an independent expenditure organization called Families and Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa for Governor 2018, which is run by the California Charter Schools Association Advocates.
“Antonio Villaraigosa will be a governor for all Californians, keeping the American dream possible in California with good schools, safe neighborhoods, affordable health care, and opportunities for everyone to succeed,” said Gary Borden, executive director of the charter schools group…
”[Gavin] Newsom is leading most polls, while his fellow Democrat Villaraigosa is fighting it out with Republican John Cox, a Rancho Santa Fe (San Diego County) businessman, for second place, according to a nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California survey this month. Only the top two finishers in the June 5 primary, regardless of party affiliation, will advance to the general election in November.
“Villaraigosa’s campaign had $5.9 million in the bank at the end of 2017, the most recent campaign finance disclosure period. Newsom had $19.5 million.
“You knew it was going to happen. Here you have entrenched political interests where there are billions of dollars at stake,” said state Treasurer John Chiang, who has been mired deep in the polls behind Newsom, Cox and Villaraigosa.
“Villaraigosa has long been an advocate for charter schools. The education platform on his campaign website says that “poor families also deserve the right to access high-quality schools and publicly chartered schools often provide that access. High-performing public charters playing by the same set of rules as other public schools are laboratories for innovation and creativity.”
“Steve Smith, spokesman for the 2.1 million-member California Labor Federation, which endorsed Newsom, said the cash infusion to the independent expenditure group “shows that the Villaraigosa campaign hasn’t gotten off the ground, so the billionaire charter school guys came to his rescue.”
The Network for Public Education Action Fund has endorsed State Treasurer John Chiang for Governor because of his unequivocal support for public schools. Perhaps the infusion of charter school money for Villaraigosa will help Newsom decide where he stands (he has already been endorsed by the California Teachers Association).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think it is interesting that the billionaires would give money to Villaraigosa when Newsom has the big lead. Did they also give to Newsom? Is this some signal to him that he better to their bidding or they will support his opponent in the general election?
Is it because Newsom isn’t one of the politicians that Broad and Hastings own?
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Newsom has been equivocal about charters.
Villaraigosa is a charter zealot.
Chiang requires charter accountability and transparency, which charters oppose.
NPE endorsed a Chiang. A good man.
The top two will have a runoff.
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Chiang would have my support, but it is nice to see that the reformers don’t seem to own Gavin Newsom. They are certainly not helping him by donating to Villaraigosa.
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The billionaires will get behind Newsom if they don’t have Villaraigosa after the primary. He probably won’t mind taking their money, but hopefully, like Diane said, having to go up against them in the primary while being supported by the CTA will have an effect on Gavin Newsome if Chiang can’t pull off a dark horse win. In the primary, a vote for Chiang is a good vote. A primary vote for Newsome is a decent vote. Heck, even a vote for Cox, who will not win the actual election, is a good vote in the primary. As long as Villaraigosa doesn’t come in second in the primary. That man is completely unscrupulous.
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Gavin Newsom’s Campaign Finances according to VoteSmart.org
Where the contributions are coming from.
https://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign-finance/70386/gavin-newsom#.WtOfBZoh2Uk
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And then there’s this:
“An independent political action committee paid for an ad slamming Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom partly with money from groups that are backing his run for governor.”
https://calmatters.org/articles/new-analysis-paid-ad-attacking-gavin-newsom-unlikely-source/
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Why doesn’t Villaraigosa just be a good boy & go away (like Bobby Jindal & Chris Christie)?
Sorry–we have our own “dancing lemon” to contend with here in Chicago…Paul Vallas.
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I guess we’re not going to see “Backpack Full of Cash” on Netflix anytime soon.
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Never
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“In his retirement, former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has decided to enter the exciting world of multi-level marketing, taking on a new role as adviser to Herbalife, the Amway of nutritional supplements.
The move comes as Herbalife hires lobbyists and gears up for a battle on Capitol Hill over its business model. Congresswoman Linda Sanchez has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the company is actually operating as a pyramid scheme.”
Herbalife is a pyramid scheme and it survives by preying on poor people.
Forget charters. This alone should disqualify him.
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Amway is linked to Betsy DeVos through her husband.
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Michael Johnson (the Herbalife guy) belongs in prison right next to Betsy DeVos’s husband and father in law.
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Actually, as evil as Betsy is (and she really is), it’s her brother, Eric Prince, founder of the mercenary, war- profiteering company Blackwater, who’s really the Devil incarnate.
It must be in the genes…
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These large contributors are destroying our Democracy!
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While there is a lot going on here that I disagree with – the main one is the support of charter schools. Don’t get me wrong, the idea of charter schools sounds phenomenal when you hear it through the words of California Charter Schools Association Advocates
“Villaraigosa has long been an advocate for charter schools. The education platform on his campaign website says that “poor families also deserve the right to access high-quality schools and publicly chartered school often provide that access. High-performing public charters playing by the same set of rules as other public schools are laboratories for innovation and creativity”
How could you not not want to be in support of charter schools after reading this? What’s clever and well worded is the fact that it doesn’t mention the lottery system that keeps many children out of the school and filed back into the “poor” school they were trying to escape from, that many times you don’t need to be a credentialed teacher to work in them, and that some charter schools are profit run. I was lucky. I came from a good charter school in California, but now I see all the faults behind them as well. While I’m all for a school that fosters innovation and creativity, charter schools end doing worse. There’s only a handful of successful ones across the country and many times just because you went to a chartered elementary school doesn’t mean your going to have a chartered middle or high school to attend later.
So the question here is, why be in support of charter schools when you can use that money to change and revitalize the “poor” schools? That way every single student really does have the means of receiving a good education, instead of potentially being turned away from one because their number wasn’t drawn in a lotto? If we want to be able to revamp education we have to do in favor of all students – not just the handful we pick from a computer system
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“That way every single student really does have the means of receiving a good education, instead of potentially being turned away from one because their number wasn’t drawn in a lotto?”
The key words in that pull quote above reveal a lack of knowledge or lack of experience and those words are “every single student”.
Because every single student is not ready to receive a “good” education, whatever that is.
Even in public schools wrongly labeled failures, there are students that learn and end up going to college and succeeding, and they had the same teachers that students that did not receive a “good” education had.
Teaching is the teacher’s job. Teaching works better when the teachers (the experts because that was what they did when they earned a teaching credential, they became the experts and the longer they teach, the more of an expert they are) are allowed to make most of the decisions on what and how they teach.
Learning is the student’s job. When a student doesn’t make an attempt to learn because, for whatever reason, they don’t want to, then they don’t learn. Teachers cannot force students to learn.
And that is why a study out of Stanford found:
“There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.”
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
Disadvantaged means children living in poverty. Teachers cannot feed every hungry child that walks into their classroom unless those teachers are wealthy or paid a lot more.
How can teachers meet the needs of students that live in poverty when the teachers are not allowed to be part of the decision making and are not paid enough?
“How does ‘toxic stress’ of poverty hurt the developing brain?”
The United States has the highest rate of child poverty in the developed world!
“About 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold, a measurement that has been shown to underestimate the needs of families. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 43% of children live in low-income families.”\
http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html
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