Will big money buy the position of State Superintendent of Public Instruction in California? Will false ads carry Marshall Tuck to victory?
The ACLU OF Northern California condemned the Marshall Tuck campaign for mailers falsely asserting that it had “sued Tony Thurmond.” It had not, and the ACLU demanded that the campaign withdraw the ad and offer an apology to Thurmond. Tuck refused.
Tuck is running a campaign based on lies. His character has been revealed. Will the public catch on in time to stop him? Or will the public believe Tuck’s scurrilous attack ads? It is possible. Tuck has an astonishing amount of money to spend. But should California’s schools be overseen by a person of such low ethics and character.
A thought for Marshall Tuck (written by sportswriter Grantland Rice):
“For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name,
He writes—not that you won or lost,
But how you played the game.”
Is Marshall Tuck and his billionaire backers so desperate to win that they will say or do anything? Apparently so.
See letter from ACLU to EdVoice here:
Here is a report on the ads, with links to the ads.
The dispute over negative ads has escalated, with the Thurmond campaign seeking to have an independent committee take off the air an ad that falsely claims Thurmond was reprimanded by the Obama administration.
The campaign for schools chief has attracted at least $43 million worth of contributions, most of which have gone to independent expenditure committees supporting Tuck and Thurmond.
Tuck’s backers are far outpacing Thurmond’s in fundraising: Two committees supporting Tuck have taken in $24.1 million as of Monday, while a committee supporting Thurmond has received $11.5 million. Independent expenditure committees can take donations of unlimited size but are barred from coordinating with campaigns.
The Tuck campaign had raised $4.2 million in direct contributions, compared to $2.8 million for Thurmond, as of Sept. 22, the most recent filing deadline.
The contributions have come largely from advocates of charter school expansion who back Tuck and labor groups who support Thurmond.
With two weeks to go in the race, and as some Californians are submitting early ballots for the Nov. 6 election, Tuck and Thurmond backers are spending millions of dollars on television, radio and mail advertisements. Campaign finance records show the committees supporting Tuck spent $8.1 million on television advertising alone as of the most recent campaign finance filing deadline on Sept. 22, while a committee backing Thurmond spent $4.4 million. Those totals are likely to increase substantially before Election Day.
Some of that spending has gone toward negative ads, leading Tuck and Thurmond to spar over new television commercials that criticize their records.
One recent ad from an independent expenditure committee supporting Tuck blamed Thurmond for problems in West Contra Costa Unified, the East Bay school district where Thurmond was a school board member from 2008 to 2012.
Another ad, produced by the Thurmond campaign, sought to tie Tuck to the education agenda of President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Is it inaccurate to tie Tuck’s pro-charter history to Betsy DeVos. She supports charter schools. Tuck supports charter schools. No smear there. It’s a fact: Marshall Tuck supports school choice, like Betsy DeVos.
The anti-Thurmond ad was funded by an independent expenditure committee supporting Tuck established by EdVoice. EdVoice officials did not return multiple messages seeking comment on their ad.
“Before he was running for state superintendent, politician Tony Thurmond was responsible for a school district with widespread budget problems,” the ad states, referring to West Contra Costa Unified.
Text on the screen directly ties district problems to Thurmond. “Tony Thurmond: School Board Member”; “Tony Thurmond: Sued by the ACLU”; “Tony Thurmond: Reprimanded by the Obama Administration”; “Tony Thurmond: Failed Kids”; “Tony Thurmond: Wrong for State Superintendent.”
The voice over adds details about the district: “Ranked last in the state for failing to serve students of color. Sued for leaving at-risk students in rotting trailers with mushrooms growing in the floors. Reprimanded by the Obama Administration for failing to address widespread sexual harassment and assault in district schools. Tony Thurmond failed the students he was supposed to help. California deserves better.”
The ad does not mention that Thurmond was one of five West Contra Costa Unified board members.
The claim that Thurmond was reprimanded by the Obama administration is false. The letter from the Obama-era Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights criticizing West Contra Costa Unified’s handling of sexual harassment never mentions Thurmond or the district’s board. The letter was issued in 2013, after Thurmond left the board, though it does state the department’s investigation began during his term in 2010.
“I was never reprimanded by Obama, and I wasn’t even on the board when the letter was sent by the Department of Education,” Thurmond said. He added that the claim prompted his campaign to send a cease and desist order to the committee that produced the ad.
The ad’s statement that Thurmond was sued over school facilities is technically accurate, in that he was named as a defendant board member in an American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit against West Contra Costa Unified. However, the lawsuit named every member of the school board, along with the district, its superintendent and its associate superintendent. The district’s daily management falls to its administration, not the elected board members.
The ad mirrors criticism of Thurmond’s time in West Contra Costa in an opinion column published in the San Francisco Chronicle last month by Bill Evers, a hardcore Republican and a Tuck supporter. Evers is a research fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution. Evers was also a member of Trump’s education transition team. Evers is not a neutral observer. He is a rock-ribbed Republican who worked in George W. Bush’s Education Department as Assistant Secretary of Education. He was a senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, after the Iraq War. His endorsement serves to reinforce the fact that Tuck has a conservative agenda that is aligned with the Republican Party.
Basic fact: Tony Thurmond was endorsed by the Democratic Party. Marshall Tuck was booed at the Democratic State Convention. Tony Thurmond has run an honorable campaign. Marshall Tuck has not.
The state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as Christine Pelosi, the chairwoman of the California Democratic Party’s Women’s Caucus, have also denounced the ad. While the Tuck campaign is prohibited by law from coordinating with the independent expenditure committee that produced the ad, Thurmond’s campaign has called for Tuck to disavow it.
Tuck told EdSource he would not disavow the ad. It accurately described problems in West Contra Costa Unified during Thurmond’s term, Tuck said, and “the board should be held accountable for that.” But, he also stressed that the ad was outside of his control.
Andrew Blumenfeld, Tuck’s campaign manager, also defended the ad.
“Assembly member Thurmond uses his time on the school board as evidence of his ability to serve as state superintendent,” Blumenfeld said. “I think it’s well within bounds to question what was the quality of his leadership when he was on the school board.”
The California publication EdSource predicts that the race is on track to cost $50 million, with Tuck having a 2-1 advantage over Thurmond.
“The largest donors to EdVoice for the Kids PAC, which managed independent campaign committees for Tuck and other activities, are real estate developer Bill Bloomfield, $5.3 million; Doris Fisher, co-founder of the Gap clothing company, $3.1 million and venture capitalist Arthur Rock, $3 million.”
Tuck has been endorsed by Meg Whitman, chair of the board of Teach for America, by billionaire Michael Bloomberg of New York, by Christopher Cerf, who was appointed to be state commissioner in New Jersey by Republican Governor Chris Christie.
See info here:
http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1243091&session=2017
Edvoice for the Kids PAC
Contributors here: http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1243091&session=2017&view=received
Contributions made (mostly to Tuck campaign) http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1243091&session=2017&view=contributions
See attached; expenditures of $4.9M since 09/17/2018 to two separate subcommittees
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