Almost every campaign for city, county and state government in Orange County has a limit on how much donors can spend on their favorite candidates.
But one big outlier in Orange County is the county Board of Education, which Voice of OC found has no limitations on donations to politicians.
A review of the most recent election cycle found over $700,000 of contributions to the current board that would violate state campaign finance limits for cities and counties without their own campaign financing caps.
But they are legal for school districts and boards of education.
Voice of OC also reviewed the campaign finance filings for all of the board’s challengers for the March 5 primary.
While none received direct contributions that went over state limits for cities and counties without campaign contribution limits, the Westminster Teachers Association reported spending around $52,000 on mailers for Nancy Watkins’ and David Johnson’s campaigns combined.
All of the $700,000 in contributions to county education board trustees came from advocates focused on increasing the number of local charter schools in OC, which have seen a 300% expansion in recent years according to Mark Bucher, co-founder of the OC Classical Academy and one of the leaders of the movement.
The board of education has not denied a charter school application in four years, when they turned down Irvine International Academy’s application, which was later approved.
While many of those same funders have also spent big in districts like Orange Unified, which recently greenlit one school’s effort to mortgage a former junior high school on the district’s property, the biggest bang for their buck comes at the county board of education, which oversees and approves charter schools throughout OC.
What’re The Limits on Campaign Contributions?
If cities and counties don’t set a campaign contribution limit, they’re required to use the state limits of $5,500 per donor, per election, under AB 571 – a law sponsored by then-Democratic Assemblyman Kevin Mullin that went into effect in 2021.
The state’s overview of the law explicitly states it covers candidates “for elective county or city office.”
According to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, those limits also apply to the county superintendent, but they do not apply to county boards of education or school boards.
The Board of Education also has the power to create its own limits, but that seemingly hasn’t been done.
Trustees Mari Barke and Tim Shaw say their board has never had any campaign limits.
“My understanding is we have no campaign limits,” Barke said in an interview. “I think that’s unusual.”
Department of Education spokesman Ian Hanigan and OC Registrar Bob Page could not find any written limits adopted by the county board of education when asked by Voice of OC.
Multiple donations to the board of education reached as high as $50,000, and a Voice of OC review found at least 25 donations to board members that would violate limits in many city council and county campaigns.
What Does The Board of Education Do?
Each of the county’s 28 K-12 public school districts are governed by their own elected board, and the county’s Department of Education is governed by an elected superintendent.
But the Orange County Board of Education has the power to greenlight charter schools across the county, and are responsible for managing them and approving potential expansions.
The board has frequently clashed with county Superintendent Al Mijares over who has final control of the Department of Education.
Amidst those fights, they’ve approved numerous charter school applications, and been outspoken proponents of their expansion.
Barke, who also works for the California Policy Center, a conservative think tank, complained in an article she wrote this month that many districts are “pursuing cultural issues such as gender, social justice and equity,” over academics.
“In many districts, there is more focus on critical race theory than critical thinking,” Barke wrote. “Although we are seeing expanded school choice in many parts of the country, the majority of students are stuck without options in local districts under their local school board.”
Where Did the Money Come From?
While the county board of education has long been a bastion for charter school advocates, every current member is now backed by charter school proponents after Beckie Gomez resigned rather than give up her seat on the Tustin City Council in 2022.
Her replacement, Jorge Valdes, is running for office for the first time with over $150,000 in support from charter school operators and advocates, which makes up around 85% of his campaign account tally.
The rest of the board follows a similar pattern, taking anywhere from $80,000 to over $180,000 of support in their last elections from various charter school political action committees and activists, according to campaign disclosures reviewed by Voice of OC.
The largest single donor was the statewide Charter Schools Political Action Committee, which spent over $320,000 across the five board members’ campaigns from 2022 to the present.
In addition to their direct spending, they also funded a separate committee dubbed Orange County Advocates for Great Public Schools, which donated an additional $50,000.
Orange County’s Lincoln Club, one of the biggest conservative fundraising groups locally, also spent $130,000 on the same slate of candidates.
The largest individual donor to all five board members was Bucher, a past board member of the Lincoln Club and CEO of the California Policy Center where Barke also works.
Much of that money either came through direct loans from Bucher himself or from Service First, a contracting company he owns stock in according to state disclosures.
Altogether, Voice of OC found $165,000 of funds connected to Bucher, most of which was in loans to the campaign accounts of candidates running for the board of education.
Mike Moodian, a political science professor at Chapman University, said he’d never heard of candidates receiving direct contributions or loans in such a size before that.
“It shines a light,” he said, “On the fact that special interests have a lot of control in elected politics.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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