A secret recording of a lobbyist’s meeting in 2016 showed the true face of the voucher movement in Tennessee and elsewhere.

The lobbyist, an official with Betsy DeVos’s Tennessee Federation for Children, made clear that Republican legislators who opposed vouchers would face harsh retribution. He pledged that anti-voucher Republican legislators would be challenged in a primary by well-funded opponents committed to pass vouchers. Money would come in from out-of-state billionaires and millionaires to knock off Republicans who voted against vouchers.

The story came from NewsChannel 5 in Nashville.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A secret recording reveals how ultra-wealthy forces have laid the groundwork for the current debate in the Tennessee legislature over school vouchers by using their money to intimidate, even eliminate, those who dared to disagree.

In the recording obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates from a 2016 strategy session, Nashville investment banker Mark Gill discusses targeting certain anti-voucher lawmakers for defeat as a form of “public hangings.” At the time, Gill was a member of the board of directors for the pro-voucher group Tennessee Federation for Children.

Using their vast resources to defeat key incumbents, Gill argues, would send a signal to other lawmakers in the next legislative session…

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has teed up the issue this year with a plan for school vouchers that would send hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to private schools.

It follows a years-long effort by school privatization forces to elect lawmakers who would vote their way and to destroy those who would not.

In the 2016 recording, Mark Gill discusses the prospect of turning against Republican Rep. Eddie Smith from Knoxville because Smith had voted against a bill designed to cripple the ability of teacher groups to have dues deducted from teachers’ paychecks.

Gill has served on the Tennessee Board of Regents overseeing the state’s community and technical colleges since 2019.

“Think about it,” Gill says.

“What better way to say to people, OK, you want us to fall on our sword for you, to spend thousands of dollars — which I did personally — to get you elected, and you come up here and do this sh*t. Let me just show you what the consequences of that are,” Gill says…

At the time, Gill was also considering targeting Republican Judd Matheny from Tullahoma because Matheny was viewed as being too close to Tennessee teachers and would be a good “scalp” to hang on the school privatizers’ efforts.

“He also has, I think, put himself in a position where his scalp could be very valuable to all school reformers,” Gill says, noting Matheny’s relationship with the Tennessee Education Association. “He is one of the people who has bought the TEA line that you need to side with the TEA because of the teachers and that’s your safest route.”

The reporter for NewsChannel 5 played the recording for J.C. Bowman, leader of the Professional Educators of Tennessee.

Bowman was stunned.

“Judd Matheny was a conservative — a big Second Amendment guy. Some of the names they mention in there — conservative all the way through. So you are going to eat your own…”

NewsChannel 5 Investigates noted to Bowman that Gill was not talking about convincing lawmakers that the Tennessee Federation for Children was right on the issue of school vouchers.

“No, they are not even making that comparison,” the teacher lobbyist agreed.

“If you put this issue on the ballot — and that’s what I would say, put it on the ballot — vouchers would lose.”

A March 2022 NewsChannel 5 investigation revealed how the battle over education in Tennessee is largely financed by out-of-state billionaires and millionaires.

Last fall, NewsChannel 5 Investigates obtained a proposal — submitted to a foundation controlled by the billionaire Walton family of Walmart fame — detailing a plan by school privatization forces to spend $3.7 million in 2016 on legislative races in Tennessee.

That same year, The Tennessean reported on an Alabama trip where Gill had hosted five pro-voucher lawmakers for a three-day weekend at his Gulf Shores condo.

“I don’t think anybody is going to get unseated without some substantial independent expenditures coming in there,” Gill says, acknowledging that wealthy special interests would need to spend a lot of money to knock off lawmakers who did not vote their way.

That strategy was apparent in 2022 when Republicans Bob Ramsey and Terri Lynn Weaver were targeted and defeated. 

Weaver was among those Republicans who in 2019 refused to bow to pressure to vote for school vouchers.

And like these ads taken out against Bob Ramsey, Weaver also faced attacks from school privatization forces for supposedly being a corrupt career politician — attacks funded by so-called dark money.

“Tremendous amounts of money, much of which is outside money, [the] money was not from my district,” Weaver said. “They slander you. They want to win — and they’ll do anything to do it.”

Bowman said Gill’s strategy represents “the absolute destruction of people.”

We wanted to know, “Is there anyone on the public education side of the debate playing this sort of hardball politics?”

“None that I know of,” Bowman said. “I know of nobody playing that.”

To read the complete article and to listen to the recording, open the link.