Bay Area Houston

You have to wonder how much they pumped into these races.

The 1776 Project PAC, based in New York, endorsed 12 candidates in 7 school districts across Texas. They won 7 with 1 going to a runoff. Local Trustee Jeff Larson was one of the candidates and defeated Albert Wittliff. They endorsed two candidates in Katy ISD. Both lost.

I’ve written about Katy before. Parents organized and created KEEP Katy Educational Excellence Partners. KEEP “is dedicated to organizing community support to elect school board trustees who are committed to provide excellent public education for all and to maintain Katy ISD’s reputation as an educational leader.” It is unfortunate that parents, teachers, and students have to organize to keep extremists off of their school board but that is where we are today. Maybe CCISD needs to create NOPE! NO Politics in Education! Lucky for us our school board is composed of excellent individuals who leave their political preferences at home. (except for Scott Bowen and Jeff Larson)

So how much did they spend to win these seats? That is a tough question to answer. These PACs have a way to hide their expenditures. For instance this PAC is registered with the Federal Elections Commission and has spent over $3 Million over the last year. Unfortunately we will not see how much they spent in support of Larson until July and the expenditures might be just generic categories like “texting services”.

So the New York PAC won in CCISD. Let’s welcome Trustee Larson back to the CCISD School Board.

Nothing good has come of it.

The Houston Chronicle, once again, has written about the heated race for two Katy ISD candidates due to political PACs funding and campaigning for them. According to the article two candidates have accepted endorsement from the Harris County Republican Party, The Project 1176 PAC and others. The Party has flooded the district with mailers, of course, claiming their opponents are flaming liberals.

Mailers are not cheap. From the article multiple mailers have been sent out. In a local race where a candidate is depending on support from parents and voters in the district it is very difficult, if not impossible, to compete against. In Keller ISD Patriot Mobile PAC invested $150,000 in three candidates. They all won. School Board races usually requires a couple thousand dollars, a hand full of signs, and lots of hand shaking. Trying to compete against $50,000 is impossible.

In CCISD the partisan political PACs meddling in CCISD began with Scott Bowen’s election. In the last election Bowen recruited his friend, Pete Lauzon, to run and found $5000 from Defend Texas Liberty PAC for his campaign. DTL also donated $5000 to Glendora Rogers. She returned the donation. Bowen received $2000 from DTL for texting in his re-election. DTL, a PAC funded solely by two Dallas billionaires, is no longer active after their leadership was caught meeting with a known white supremacist.

In this years election, Trustee Jeff Larson, applied for an endorsement from The Project 1776 PAC, an extreme right wing organization out of New York. I’ve seen the texts they have sent out in support of Larson and heard about phone calls to voters. Both are not cheap. Larson has raised $2858 with $2549 coming from two donors, Scott Bowen and someone in Houston.

Partisan politics does not belong in our school districts. Candidates should be representatives of the community, parents, teachers, and students, not to out of state PACs or political parties.

This should really piss off CCISD voters. BTW I have asked Larson about this situation. He has refused to respond.

Partisan politics was introduced into CCISD and many school districts across the state a few years ago. CCISD Trustee Scott Bowen led the charge here with Trustee Jeff Larson following his right wing partisan politics. It led to division in the community, attacks on the gay community, attacks on our teachers, attacks on curriculum, and attacks on our librarians. It brought in the ban on the fictional studies called CRT which was never taught in schools in the first place. This white wing, extremist agenda also brought money from out of district PACs funded by billionaires out of Dallas. Nothing good has come from partisan politics in non partisan elections for the school board.

So what does Trustee Larson do? He applied for the endorsement of The Project 1776 PAC, a far right, extremist organization. They are now sending out texts in support of his campaign. How much they are spending is unknown at this time. I will spare you a copy of the multiple texts that have been sent. What is very disturbing about this is that he actually had to apply for the endorsement and some of the questions are more of the same crap we saw over the last few years that caused so much division. Here they are. I can bet I know exactly how he answered them.

Over the last few elections voters in CCISD have turned down the extreme candidates, Parizo, Dawson, Lauzon, and current Trustee who recruited these extremists, Scott Bowen, failed to received 50% of the vote in his last election.

Our Board, besides Larson and Bowen, are composed of great individuals who have put their personal partisan preference to the side. They have served the community very well. CCISD residents are lucky. Other districts such as Keller and Katy are struggling after candidates were elected by billionaire donations. In Keller three candidates won after a PAC spent $50,000 on each!

Larson should be ashamed of himself. Anyone who brings their sorry ass partisan politics into our Board should consider doing something else.

Like resigning.

So how did CCISD do? Great!

The Texas Tribune had a great article about a new law requiring all school districts to post campaign finance reports. CCISD has posted the reports for years on their website. You can find them here. According to the Tribune “The Texas Tribune and ProPublica analyzed 35 Texas school districts that held trustee elections last fall and found none that posted all of the required campaign finance records.” That is 35 districts out of over 1000.

I have to highlight one of the responses from a school district. The State has put so much legislation pressure on school districts throughout the state including putting guns into school, posting religious statements, allowing Chaplins to replace professional counselors, and more. It’s amazing any district can keep up.

A spokesperson for Lago Vista Independent School District, outside Austin, said simply, “Unfortunately, with the multitude of legislative mandates following the 88th session, this one got by us.”

Even with posting these reports there are ways to hide campaign donations and support for candidates. Political Actions Committees (PACs) can spend unlimited money in support of a candidate and the expenditure can be very difficult to find. As an example a PAC spent $150,000 on three candidates in Keller ISD. $50,000 each in a race that typically should cost $2-$5 at most! BTW, all three won, one has resigned, and another is probably going to be sued.

I am surprised the State has required school districts to post this information but they should also require PACs to post to the Texas Ethics Commission in a way that a search can be easily performed. At this point it is very difficult to find a PACs participation.

The first campaign finance reports are in for the CCISD elections between Albert Wittliff and Jeff Larson. Jeff Larson raised $0 which makes me wonder what organization will be campaigning for him and whether they will be reporting the donations. Larson hasn’t filed a Code of Fair Campaign Practices.

Wittliff raised $1640 and spent $928. Both reports can be found at the Elections Website.