Beware, Republican Legislative Candidates

After Tuesday's defeat of four DeSoto County Republicans at the hand of anti-public education forces, one has to wonder why House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) allowed his caucus members (two of whom are committee chairmen) to be attacked like they were and ultimately defeated.

As a reminder, DeSoto County Republican Reps. Forrest Hamilton, Wanda Jennings, Pat Nelson, and Gene Alday were all victims of a PAC that has been promoting the anti-public education agenda of Philip Gunn and the Bomgar Caucus.

In speech after speech, Gunn puts county, city, and community leaders on notice that if they do not send a Republican to the Capitol in January, they will get no seat at the table when it comes to leadership and decision-making. The question becomes what good it does to send a Republican to the Capitol when the Republican Speaker of the House kicks the chair out from under his own membership and does nothing to pick them up. Gunn publicly defends his position of changing the state flag, but he does very little to defend his fellow Republican legislators who disagree with him on education issues.

If this is how the Republican leadership treats its members, Republican candidates running for the House of Representatives touting their close relationship to Speaker Gunn should understand that Gunn will use you and lose you just like he has done his soon-to-be former colleagues from DeSoto County. Remember that you can either support public education or be a Republican, but you cannot do both. If you try to do both, Speaker Gunn will not have your back when the attack ads from other Republicans start flying.

Announcing the Bomgar Caucus

With the dust clearing from Tuesday's primary elections, we know one of the biggest losers of the night was public education.

Empower PAC, a group promoting charter schools and for-profit education spent tens of thousands of dollars against incumbent legislators - and they won. Big time. Empower was able to defeat DeSoto County Republicans Forrest Hamilton, Wanda Jennings, Pat Nelson, and Gene Alday. They also went after Republican Rep. Ray Rogers of Rankin County but were unsuccessful.

While Empower was sending checks to its anti-public education candidates, House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) sat idly by while members of his own Republican caucus took hit after hit only to fall last night. Since Gunn is doing Empower's bidding, it seems that good riddance is the best Gunn will offer his soon-to-depart colleagues from DeSoto County.

Dan Eubanks, the candidate who defeated Gene Alday, produced the video below with his brother, Dave. Dave Eubanks challenged incumbent Republican Sen. Chris Massey of DeSoto County but was unsuccessful.

Empower, which claims to seek better schooling options for marginalized children, funded the Eubanks campaign to the tune of about $21,000. Those funds must have assisted in Eubanks's widely-circulated song about "Mississippi values" featuring a disgusting racist caricature around the 1:27 mark. Then again, maybe the racist video was part of a calculated political strategy cooked up by Empower's out-of-state benefactors in order to peel GOP primary voters away from incumbent Gene Alday, who infamously said, "... all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call 'welfare crazy checks.'"

Joel Bomgar, the financial muscle behind this plot to defeat public education supporters, won a solid victory in his race for House District 58 in Madison County. Using his personal fortune, Bomgar spent what it took in order to capture this seat.

With Bomgar and his Empower-bought supporters heading to the Capitol in January, Mississippi's public education supporters should be terrified. There are now five more Republicans who will join a caucus already doing their best to undermine public education across Mississippi. With the Bomgar Caucus ready to fight public education, the statement still stands: You can either support public education or be a Republican, but you cannot do both.

Empowering Opponents of Public Education

In the Haley Barbour years, Mississippi Republicans at least voiced some support for public education. Even then-Lt. Governor Phil Bryant campaigned on the promise that he would always fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP.) As anyone who has observed the Republicans' shameless tactics to undermine Initiative 42 can tell you, Republican support for public schools has come completely unraveled over the past several years. What's changed?

Many Republicans have probably just started showing their true colors. For years, they would voice support for MAEP while voting to under-fund it. There were a few who really did support public education - mainly from districts with strong public schools, such as Lafayette, DeSoto, Madison, and Rankin counties. Their reversal seems to have been dictated by outside pressure rather than personal philosophy or the interests of their constituents.

Thanks to financial disclosures posted on the Secretary of State's website, we can start to get a picture of who is applying that pressure. A campaign finance report for an anti-public education political action committee, Empower PAC, shows some disturbing information about our elected officials' stances on public education. We already know that Republicans are not supporters of public education, and the information in this report further backs that up.

Between January 1 to April 30, 2015, this PAC received nearly $365,000 in donations from anti-public education forces such as state House candidate Joel Bomgaars of Madison and the Mississippi Federation for Children PAC, an ALEC-aligned organization, which is oddly based in Virginia. Who is the Federation for Children, you might ask?

The national organization is chaired by former Michigan Republican Party Chair Betsy DeVos. Her husband, Richard, unsuccessfully ran for governor of Michigan in 2006, as a Republican, while spending $35 million of his own money on the race. For Mississippi's purposes, the Chairman of the Mississippi Federation for Children PAC is Greg Brock, a person who is listed with a Washington, DC, address. To give you a sense of his feelings on public education, he led an unsuccessful school voucher initiative in 2000. The DeVos family, as well as billionaires Alice and Jim Walton of Walmart, have poured a tremendous amount of money into anti-public education efforts in recent years. That money is now seeping into Mississippi politics.

Republican candidates for statewide and legislative offices are indirect recipients of the DeVos and Walton money to undermine Mississippi's public education system. If you recall from this year's legislative session, state Rep. Forrest Hamilton spoke from the House Well claiming that he was to be the target of forces who want to hurt public education while Speaker Gunn demanded to know the source of this speculation. Hamilton was right. Hamilton's Republican primary opponent, Dana Criswell, has received at least $11,000 from Empower PAC. Steve Hopkins, who is challenging fellow DeSoto County Republican Rep. Wanda Jennings, has received at least $11,000. Mind you that Hamilton and Jennings both oppose legislation advocating vouchers and charter schools. Longtime Republican Rep. Ray Rogers of Rankin County voted against charter schools in 2013, and now he is a target of Empower. Rogers's opponent, Randall Stephens, has received over $11,000 to take on this race.

Not all incumbents are targets, however.

• Lafayette County Republicans like Senate Education Committee Chairman Gray Tollison and House Education Committee member Brad Mayo both received $2,500 from Empower PAC.
• House Education Committee Chairman John Moore received $2,000.
• Republican Rep. Carolyn Crawford (who serves on the House Education Committee) received $5,000.
• Republican Rep. Joey Hood received $2,000.
• Republican Rep. Randy Boyd (who serves on the House Education Committee) received $2,500.
• Republican Rep. Charles Busby (who serves on the House Education Committee and was the floor manager of the charter school bill) received $2,500.
• Republican Lt. Governor Tate Reeves (who is a product of the Rankin County school system) received $5,000.

The evidence is abundantly clear that Republicans do not care about public education; it's been said before and will be said again. You can be a Republican or you can support public education, but you cannot do both.

Profile in Redistricting "Courage" #1

As promised earlier today, this is our first Profile in Redistricting "Courage." We begin in north Mississippi, with House District 7's Wanda Jennings.

Rep. Jennings, nicknamed "the Fairy Godmother" by her colleagues, acted as the Republican witness at the Woolfolk Building as numerous Republican House members came over and made changes to their districts over the last two months. She was well-qualified to do that, since she went to several national redistricting conferences across the country, including the major redistricting conference in D.C. with Chairman Tommy Reynolds.  When the fruit of her labor at the Woolfolk Building came before the House subcommittee of the Joint Legislative Committee on Reapportionment Redistricting, Rep. Jennings voted for the House plan. Then she voted for it again before the full Joint Legislative Committee on Reapportionment Redistricting. And then she voted for the House plan a third time in the House Apportionment and Elections Committee.

As the plan she'd helped craft and voted for three times made its way to the House floor, Rep. Jennings enthusiastically boasted to House members that the DeSoto County delegation would vote for the new map "en masse."

Then she voted against it.

For those keeping score at home, that means she voted for the House plan three times...before she voted against it.