By: Alex Sakariassen
Betsy DeVos came one step closer to becoming Secretary of Education this week. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Tuesday split along party lines over her confirmation, and Republicans won 12 to 11. The question of DeVos’ installment in the Trump cabinet now falls to the full Senate, which is expected to take up the issue any day now. As that confirmation looms, critics are calling on 23 senators to recuse themselves from the vote in light of past campaign contributions from the DeVos family. One senator on that list is Montana’s Sen. Steve Daines.
Critics of Betsy DeVos’ nomination as Secretary of Education have urged 23 U.S. senators—including Montana Sen. Steve Daines—to recuse themselves from the confirmation process in light of the DeVos family’s contributions to their campaigns.
According to a search of the National Institute on Money in State Politics’ database, DeVos contributed $5,200 to Daines’ 2014 senate campaign. Additionally, at least seven other members of the DeVos family also donated money to Daines’ 2014 run, adding up to $46,800 all told. Campaign contribution reports filed with the Federal Election Commission also show $2,000 in donations from the Alticor PAC, the political arm of the DeVos-owned corporation Alticor. DeVos disclosed her personal contributions to Daines and scores of other candidates and political groups in her Senate questionnaire, and stated during her confirmation hearing that it’s “possible” her family has donated as much as $200 million to Republican candidates over the years.
Shortly after a meeting with DeVos in early January, Daines described DeVos as having “a passion for education” and forecast that she “will be a formidable leader at the Department of Education.” In response to questions from the Indy about the donations and the pending confirmation vote, a spokesperson for Daines emailed the following statement:
“Steve supports Betsy DeVos because she shares his commitment to increasing local control of our schools with policies that originate with the parents, teachers and administrators who are closest to the classroom. Any implication otherwise is both false and an insult to the people of Montana.”
However, thousands of protesters here in the state have already pushed back against the nominations of DeVos and several other cabinet members, at times taking their opposition straight to Daines’ local offices. They aren’t alone. Activists in South Carolina last month pressured Sen. Tim Scott to vote against DeVos’ confirmation with rallies, Facebook comments and calls to Scott’s congressional office. And yesterday, Philadelphia-based writer, teacher and costume designer Katherine Fritz launched a GoFundMe campaign titled “Buy [Sen.] Pat Toomey’s Vote.” In the past 18 hours, she’s raised $9,535. “This campaign isn’t actually about buying a vote from an elected official,” Fritz wrote on the campaign’s page. “But it is about using satire to point out the various ways in which our elected officials can—legally!—take money from the same people that now seek political office. Our education system shouldn’t be ‘pay-to-play,’ and neither should our democracy.”
The petitions and ads calling for Daines and 22 other senators to bow out of the confirmation process were launched last month by a consortium of left-leaning organizations including End Citizens United. ECU went so far as to publish a report documenting the scope of the DeVos family’s political investments, in which another notable name cropped up: Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of two Republicans who announced on Feb. 1 they intend to vote against DeVos’ confirmation.
Click here to read the full article at the Missoula Independent.