Join Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free day by day e-newsletter to maintain up with Memphis-Shelby County Faculties and statewide schooling coverage.
Gov. Invoice Lee says he’s OK with outdoors teams spending huge on Tennessee legislative races that includes candidates who help his common personal college voucher plan.
Final month, the Republican governor took the weird step of wading into native races and endorsing some Republican candidates in Thursday’s main election based mostly on their voucher positions.
“We now have a extremely good voters, and I imagine within the energy of individuals to kind via the data, so long as it’s correct,” Lee mentioned on Friday after talking at a workforce improvement occasion in rural Perry County, west of Nashville.
However some native officers say cash from teams reminiscent of American Federation for Kids, Individuals for Prosperity, and the College Freedom Fund is bringing misinformation into a number of key races.
“The truth that out-of-state curiosity teams would spend that a lot cash in a neighborhood Home seat election ought to give us all concern,” says a July 23 letter to Williamson County voters from retiring Rep. Sam Whitson and 4 native metropolis and county mayors.
The surface teams – which aren’t required to reveal their donors — are paying for mailers, tv commercials, and different adverts looking for to affect voters who will choose a successor for Whitson, a four-term Republican lawmaker who opposes vouchers. Related particular curiosity group actions search to favor pro-voucher candidates in different components of the state.
The strain comes as voters put together to select Republican and Democratic nominees to run for the statehouse on Nov. 5 earlier than a crucial legislative session for the way forward for Tennessee’s schooling system.
The governor, who desires to offer public funding to any household statewide who desires to ship their youngsters to non-public college, says his administration is already crafting a brand new plan after his 2024 invoice stumbled in committees in the course of the current legislative session.
“It’s a course of that takes a number of months, however we’re engaged on it proper now,” Lee advised Chalkbeat in Perry County.
He didn’t present particulars however promised “a dedication to common college alternative.”
Lee additionally pledged to “absolutely vet this system’s value” when requested about current feedback by Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican voucher ally from Maury County, who known as the governor’s schooling scholarship proposal a “horrible” plan that will have plunged Tennessee into dire monetary straits.
“That’s part of this course of,” Lee mentioned of learning the proposal’s monetary feasibility.
Lee’s slate of most popular GOP candidates embrace Lee Reeves, a Williamson County actual property investor and legal professional who helps personal college vouchers, over fellow Republicans Brian Beathard and Michelle Foreman.
Beathard, who chairs the Williamson County Fee and opposes the governor’s plan, has been endorsed by most high domestically elected leaders within the Republican enclave south of Nashville. Mailers and adverts funded by outdoors teams have depicted him as anti-conservative and supportive of upper taxes and labor unions.
However Beathard’s supporters are pushing again.
“All of us are used to some ‘puffing’ and exaggerations on the subject of political mailers, however the detrimental messages geared toward Brian Beathard cross the road of decency,” says the letter to voters from Whitson, the outgoing Republican legislator, and different native officers.
They are saying a number of the marketing campaign supplies embrace deceptive coverage statements, innuendo, and outright lies, in addition to manipulating images to distort Beathard’s look. The letter didn’t give particular examples.
Chalkbeat didn’t instantly obtain responses from leaders with a number of organizations behind the adverts. A spokesman for the College Freedom Fund, a pro-voucher group tied to Membership for Progress and New York-based funding billionaire Jeff Yass, requested for particular examples however didn’t reply on to the claims.
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
