Features

Donations for school measures top $116 million

The Associated Press
Wednesday February 07, 2001

SACRAMENTO — Silicon Valley millionaires, school teachers and anti-tax groups topped contributors who pumped more than $116 million into campaign battles over three school-related initiatives last year, according to spending reports. 

Most of that money – $62.8 million – was given to pass or defeat Proposition 38, the school voucher initiative that was overwhelmingly rejected by voters in November. 

Another $53.2 million was spent on campaigns for and against two attempts to convince voters to pass a measure making it easier to issue local bonds for school construction. 

In March, Proposition 26, to reduce the vote needed for such bonds from two-thirds to a simple majority, narrowly lost. Then in November, the same backers were successful with Proposition 39, which reduced the vote requirement to 55 percent. 

The anti-tax group that was greatly overspent opposing both local bond initiatives is now working on a new proposal for the 2002 ballot that would return the two-thirds vote requirement. 

Final campaign financial reports were filed last week with the secretary of state’s office. Proposition 38, written and largely self-financed by Redwood City venture capitalist Tim Draper, would have given parents $5,000 annual vouchers to send their children to private schools. 

His campaign committee, called Prop38yes.com School Vouchers 2000, reported raising a total of $30,807,567. Almost all the money, $24 million, came from Draper. 

The committee reported debts of $5.2 million, almost all of that for loans Draper made to the campaign. 

Other large contributors were his father, William Draper, with $2 million, and Jerry Perenchio of Los Angeles, head of Univision, the Spanish-language television network, with $1 million. 

The coalition of school, business and labor groups opposed to Proposition 38 listed a total of $31,944,707 in contributions and $87,824 in debts. 

The largest contributor was the California Teachers Association, the state’s biggest teachers’ union, which gave $26.4 million. Other large givers were the California School Employees Association with $1.8 million, the California Federation of Teachers with $1.3 million and the Association of California School Administrators with $588,711. 

Most of the same school and business groups that opposed Proposition 38 also backed the two local school bond initiatives. However, the CTA, which was one of the largest contributor to the March measure, shifted its attention to vouchers in November, leaving the fund raising almost entirely to Silicon Valley millionaires. 

The March initiative, Proposition 26, listed a total of $15,992,962 in donations and had $1.3 million in debts, all of those loans. The fund-raising total for the November measure, Proposition 39, was $31,547,740 with $9.5 million in debts, almost all of that loans. 

The biggest combined contributors for the two measures were CTA with $2.4 million; Palo Alto venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife Ann with $17.7 million in stock and loans; Reed Hastings, head of Netflix.com and president of the state Board of Education with $7.6 million in stock and loans; and Wal-Mart heir John Walton of Bentonville, Ark., with $3 million. 

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association opposed both Propositions 26 and 39 and raised $5,874,754 in the total effort during 2000 with debts of $862,533, more than half of that in loans. 

The association typically raises money through direct mailings, taking in hundreds of small contributions of a few hundred dollars or less. The association itself lent $570,000 and contributed $190,583 to the effort. 

The association has filed a proposed initiative to raise the approval rate for local school bonds back to two-thirds with the attorney general, the first step toward putting it on the 2002 ballot. 

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On the Web: Read the reports at www.ss.ca.gov.