Co-authored by David Donnelly
Imagine, just for a moment, this startling scenario: News breaks that the Atlanta Falcons had purchased fancy sports cars for the referees officiating this year’s Super Bowl, merely months before the big game. There would be outrage. Fans would demand an investigation. Newspapers would declare the game rigged.
In real life, the nation learned that President Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education has lavished campaign cash on the senators charged with vetting and confirming her. In Washington D.C., these senators shrugged it off. To them, it’s merely business as usual.
This is yet another example of the staggering disconnect between the halls of Congress and everywhere else in the country.
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Education, has said it’s possible that along with her family she’s given $200 million to Republican candidates, conservative super PACs and so-called “dark money” groups that keep their donors and their political spending secret.
Now, five Republican senators who benefited directly from her cash are poised to vote on her nomination. These five senators on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Todd Young of Indiana, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Tim Scott of South Carolina – have taken a combined quarter of a million dollars directly from Mrs. DeVos and her family.
The DeVos family’s ‘generosity’ has spilled beyond the HELP Committee as well, contributing nearly one million dollars to twenty-three sitting Republican senators – all of whom have a vote in her confirmation.
The issue isn’t simply the largess of Mrs. DeVos’ contributions. It is also her stunning admission about why she contributes such massive sums of money. In her own words, she has “decided…to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return.” Mrs. DeVos is admitting to creating a clear conflict of interest for the senators voting on her nomination. The public cannot be assured that these senators are giving Mrs. DeVos’ record adequate scrutiny.
Mrs. DeVos’ donor history only further complicates her nomination for a position which she has already demonstrated she is utterly unqualified for. During the first and only public hearing on her nomination, she fumbled answers about basic elements of federal education policy. Her complete lack of experience in public education was on full display. Sen. Bernie Sanders even questioned her on whether she believed she would have been nominated if it was not for her status as a mega-donor.
This is, at its heart, fundamentally what is wrong with Washington. Mega-donors with special interest agendas get their way, while the public good is ignored or overlooked. Mrs. DeVos’ nomination is an egregious, though unfortunately not uncommon, example of a dangerously rigged system that puts campaign cash ahead of the needs of American families.
We must demand more of our elected representatives. Each of the senators who took contributions from Ms. DeVos and her family should recuse themselves from any vote on her nomination.
Over the course of the past month, tens of thousands of members of End Citizens United and Every Voice have signed petitions, helped flood the Senate with calls and emails, written to their local newspapers, and taken to social media to amplify the call for senators facing this conflict of interest to #RecuseYourself. So far, the five senators on the HELP committee have refused. We must keep up the pressure, and fight to shine a bright light on a broken system failing our democracy. If we can imagine outrage over a rigged Super Bowl, the rigging of our government deserves a livid response.”