How Wall St. billionaires built charter movement in Conn. Bought a governor.

Gov. Malloy speaks at charter rally paid for by hedge-funders

The recent pro-charter school rally in Hartford was organized by ConnCAN and Families for Excellent Schools — two of the top lobbying spenders this year. Tax filings and donor reports reveal that both groups receive funding from people who spent on Connecticut Democratic campaigns in the past election cycle. Also, Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-charter school political action committee primarily funded by hedge fund managers contributed heavily to the campaigns. 

Gov. Malloy’s insistence on increasing funding for charter schools has more than a dozen Democratic legislators questioning whether they can support the next state budget if it means their neighborhood public schools are flat-funded or cut.

Malloy's campaign is already under state investigation for misuse of campaign funds. The State Elections Enforcement Commission has issued subpoenas to the Democratic State Central Committee as it investigates the committee using money from a federal fund to pay for a mailer benefiting Gov. Dannel Malloy’s re-election race.

The Hartford Courant's Jenny Wilson reports:

Wall Street billionaires who have invested heavily in the expansion of charter schools contributed more than $200,000 to Democrats in the 2013-14 election cycle, helping Gov. Dannel P. Malloy secure re-election.

The campaign contributors earned their fortunes as hedge fund managers and private equity investors before earning reputations as "education philanthropists." They have helped bankroll charter school movements throughout the country, spending to influence elections and to support advocacy movements.

The campaign contributions last cycle came from board members at and top donors to pro-charter school groups such as the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), Achievement First, Families for Excellent Schools and others that have spent nearly $800,000 lobbying the legislature this year.

Malloy pushes charter expansion in CN legislature.

They include hedge-funders and Wall Street-ers like:

•Jonathan Sackler, an investment manager from Greenwich, the founding chairman of ConnCAN, and an Achievement First Inc. board member. Sackler, his wife, and his mother and father gave a combined $91,000 to state Democrats last cycle in contributions to various party and political action committees.

•Greenwich hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel, the founder of Lone Pine Capital, and his wife gave a combined $40,000 to the state Democrats' federal account in the past election cycle. Mandel, a Teach for America board member, is a top donor to local and national charter school advocacy groups through his Lone Pine Foundation. The Lone Pine Foundation funds three public policy fellowships in Malloy's office; it also has awarded grants to Families for Excellent Schools.

•Alexandra Cohen gave $20,000 to state Democrats in the past cycle. Cohen is the wife of embattled hedge fund manager Steve Cohen, whose SAC Capital paid $1.2 billion in a security fraud case last year. The couple's Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation is a top donor to ConnCAN.

•Arthur Reimers, a former Goldman Sachs partner who is on the ConnCAN board of directors, gave $20,000 to the state Democrats' federal account.

•Another ConnCAN board member, Andrew Boas, gave Democrats $10,000 last year to the state Democratic account.

•Petra Real Estate CEO Andrew Stone, a board member at the Success Academy, a New York-based charter school management company, gave $10,000. The Success Academy has worked closely with Families for Excellent Schools; it closed all of its schools in New York earlier this year to bus students and parents to a rally.

•ConnCAN donor Mariana McCall, a trustee in the McCall-Kulak Foundation, gave Democrats $10,000.

Connecticut is not the only target of these lobbying efforts: Some of the same donors contributed to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign prior to a record-expensive charter school lobbying push they helped fund in that state.

Billionaire corporate school reformer Mandel, buys a 'pipeline' to CT Gov. Malloy

Stephen Mandel, Jr. Net Worth $1.8 B (Forbes)

If you're a billionaire hedge-funder and corporate school reformer like Stephen Mandel, and you want a direct line to the governor's office, you buy one.

Mandel, the founder of the Lone Pine Capital hedge fund in Greenwich, is one of the biggest financial backers of CT Gov. Malloy, having  spent over $500,000 supporting the governor's agenda.

He's also chairman of the board of trustees at Dartmouth College and a member of the Harvard Business School’s board of dean’s advisers as well as member of the board of directors at Teach for America. Mandel, a one-time Goldman Sachs analyst, became a managing director at Tiger Management, a now-closed hedge fund whose especially high returns often made headlines. Business writers as a result often have referred to him as a “tiger cub” since his founding of Lone Pine Capital in 1997.

Gov. Malloy

His private foundation is paying three “fellows” to develop public policy in Malloy's office and two state departments. The foundation and its executive director, Meghan Lowney, has played a major role in shaping Connecticut’s education policy — particularly in the state’s failed takeover of the Bridgeport Board of Education.

That's the one that led to the illegal hiring and then un-hiring of Paul Vallas.  

Writes Wait, What? Blogger Jonathan Pelto:

Mandel and his aide, Meghan Lowney, played the pivotal role in the creation of Excel Bridgeport, Inc. the corporate funded education reform advocacy group that supported Malloy’s education reform bill, worked to pass Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch’s failed charter revision proposal to do away with an elected board of education in Bridgeport and has been the biggest boosters for Paul Vallas and Kenneth Moales Jr, the disgraced former chair of the Bridgeport Board of Education.

Lowney, together with Nate Snow, the executive director of the Connecticut chapter of Teach for America, had founded Excel Bridgeport, a proponent of the state takeover. One of the biggest opponents of that move, retired state Superior Court Judge Carmen L. Lopez, dubbed Lowney “the conspirator in chief”’ of the “coup that led to the illegal removal of a democratically elected Board of Education by the state.” 

The foundation claims its fellowship program is designed to select “emerging leaders from across the nation” so that they can have “the opportunity and support to further develop leadership skills while working in high-level projects in Connecticut.”

Those chosen receive annual salaries of between $50,000 and $70,000 plus medical and other benefits and function as “employees on loan, in-kind to the partnering public office,” according to the foundation. 

“Fellows work with senior officials on policy projects that address ever-changing issues and challenges,” it says, adding that they “may perform research relative to legislation, serve as an intermediary between different agencies or offices, or lead special projects.”

The foundation adds that one of its goals is to “develop a sustainable public leadership pipeline in Connecticut,” and that another is to “provide ad hoc support for the office in which they are placed.”

Yes, sustainable -- big time.