November 02, 2011 01:31 AM UTC

The Real Big Money in DPS Races

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• by: glasscup

After voting (today, at the last minute, ya ya..), I’ve been thinking a lot about the Denver school board races.

While I think the races have generally been pretty clean and positive there has been one thing that strikes me as really toxic. David Sirota and Emily Sirota have been calling in David’s national connections to try and cast the race as some sort of big-money takeover.

Like I said before, I think this is a really toxic thing, and I honestly wish I’d weighed in on it earlier.

The truth is that there is a REALLY big spender in the DPS board races. And it’s not a conspiracy or anything unusual. It’s not even objectionable. It’s the teachers union.

I want to be really clear that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this and I’m not opposed to unions in any way. I just think that the Sirota’s are trying to ignore reality and poison the discussion around DPS with their rhetoric even further, and it’s important that the facts get fully out there.

I don’t think it’s been fully reported, so I went through the reports. All told, the teacher union spent $168,000 backing two candidates (Sirota and Jimenez) this election. That’s over $80,000 each, from one source, and when the final filings come in I assume it’ll be even more.

Here’s what I was able to pull together…

DCTA has spent $39,720.00 for Jimenez, according to his last report. I’d expect this to jump with in-kind paid canvassing.

http://tracer.sos.colorado.gov…

DCTA has spent $60,240.00 for Sirota, according to her last report. I’d also expect this number to jump.

http://tracer.sos.colorado.gov…

DCTA has poured $42,000 into “Delta 4.0”, their independent expenditure campaign for Sirota and Jimenez. I got one of their mail pieces (which – anecdotally – spelled ‘students’ wrong…unfortunately I threw it away). Notably, this filing is for how much DCTA gave Delta 4.0 so far, as of the beginning of the month. So I would expect this number to jump significantly.

http://tracer.sos.colorado.gov…

The CEA (DCTA’s parent union for the state) has spent $20,000 from their PAC, the “Public Education Committee”. The spent this money on an “independent expenditure” for paid canvassing by Rocky Mountain Voter Outreach, the same firm that the reports show the DCTA hired for Jimenez and Sirota.

The PEC also donated $6,000 directly to Jimenez.

http://tracer.sos.colorado.gov…

All told, that’s $168,000 for Sirota and Jimenez. Other people contributed heavily to campaigns too, but there was real big money in these races, and it’s the $168,000 check the teacher unions wrote. I don’t have a problem with unions participating, but I do have a problem with a smear campaign that distorts the facts. Despite everything Sirota has said to try and add poison and vitriol to these campaigns, the big money in these races was still the teacher union.