Hey Detroit look at DeVos and his team before you get fool

http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp... DeVos team: Race-baiters, Women-haters Right wing hopes Detroit joins effortBy Bankole ThompsonThe Michigan CitizenDETROIT — Republican billionaire candidate Dick DeVos does not say he is Republican in his TV ads, appearing as a successful businessman who is poised to turn around Michigan’s ailing economy if elected governor.But a look at DeVos’ background, and the makeup of his campaign inner circle reveals a candidate that has bankrolled ultraconservative causes, worked to privatize public education and pursued ideological goals aligned with the religious right. With a ‘money is might’ philosophy, and poll numbers in his favor, the GOP gubernatorial flag bearer is defining himself as a political novice with business acumen to solve the state’s economic woes.“Dick DeVos is not a political novice. He and his family have spent more money on politics than on any other form of philanthropy,” said Rich Robinson executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network. “Whatever it is that he has done, he has not supported public education. I think it is important for people to know that.”DeVos and anti-public education Betsy DeVos, wife of candidate DeVos and former head of the Michigan Republican Party, now heads one of the biggest PACs in the country, All Children Matter. The PAC, which prides itself as an educational reform group, is based in Virginia but operates from Grand Rapids. It spends thousands of dollars in political campaigns around the country to promote vouchers and charter schools.In 2004, All Children Matter, according to MCFN data, spent more than $8.2 million in at least 10 states including Florida, South Carolina, Washington and Virginia in its “education choice” campaigns against public education. On its website, an All Children Matter report reads: “Works in some states to communicate with citizens about issues that are important to them, encouraging them to contact their candidates and legislators about these important issues.” Education choice has been the signature issue for the DeVos family for years now. They promote tax credits for private and parochial school tuition and charter schools, Robinson said. In 2000, the DeVos family spent more than $5 million on the failed voucher campaign in Michigan. “Given that education is a complicated issue I think voters should be aware of what his [DeVos] track record is,” Robinson said. “This is an important preview of what will happen if he is elected governor.” Presently an education bill in South Carolina called “Put Parents in Charge” is languishing in the General Assembly where Democrats and some Republicans have opposed the legislation. The bill would create tax cuts for middle and upper class parents of children attending private schools. According to Metro Beat, an online news site in South Carolina, All Children Matter spent $150,000 in the campaigns of GOP political candidates Steve Parker in Spartanburg and Ken Wingate in Columbia for their endorsement of this school choice legislation. “Donors include such six-figure contributors as Richard DeVos, Jr. [Dick DeVos] of Michigan who has used his Amway fortune to promote school choice, and John Walton of Arkansas, son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and one of five billionaires,” Metro Beat reported. “The tenor of the campaign revealed the sharp ideological bent of All Children Matter. For many years, ultraconservative groups and free-market economists have pursued an agenda to privatize public education in the United States to pursue their ideological goals. This necessarily requires a broad-based campaign to discredit public schools, a strategy that has been present in the current struggle in South Carolina.”Mixing religion, politics and women’s issues DeVos does not compromise his faith. He makes that clear in his public speeches and reaffirmed this point recently during an appearance before the Council of Baptist Pastors in Detroit.However, DeVos has had a long history supporting right wing religious organizations in the country. Through the Richard and Helen DeVos foundation, named after his parents, religious right groups like Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Coral Ridge Ministries, Traditional Values and Traditional Values Coalition receive funding in part from the DeVos family. “They are top major funders,” said Cynthia Cooper a New York based journalist with Women’s E-News wrote. “Dick and Betsy too have a foundation which bears their name and invests heavily in the same theocratic causes, in particular religious educational training.”The National Right to Life Committee is the foremost religious anti-abortion group in the country seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade. “Betsy DeVos is active with the National Right to Life Committee, serving as a founder of a sub-group called the James Madison Institute of Free Speech which has made opposition to campaign finance laws its mission and mantra,” Cooper said. “Nowhere do I see the media in Michigan discussing DeVos’ right wing ties and financing of the radical religious right that is trying to roll back America.”Cooper said that while there are 36 states whose governorships are up for grabs, many are watching Ohio instead of Michigan.“Few are watching the Wolverine state next door, where the effort is underway to install a conservative religious right candidate and drive out a liberal/moderate Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm,” Cooper said. “The religious right is aiming for a takeover.”Michigan is major this election year, Cooper said. Should DeVos get elected, Cooper said, “women and gays will suffer. DeVos is a diehard religious right candidate of the theocratic bent.”DeVos’ kitchen cabinet To run an effective and formidable campaign in this gubernatorial election, DeVos has some advisers who worked for the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2004. Others worked in key positions during the 12-year reign of former Republican governor John Engler. Matthew Dowd, a nationally known GOP strategist and ally of Bush confidant Karl Rove, is currently working on the campaign of DeVos. “Granholm, 47, is up against a well-financed campaign by multimillionaire challenger Dick DeVos, who is getting free political help from Matthew Dowd, one of President Bush’s senior campaign advisers,” the Associated Press reported in a July 10 article. Dowd, a former Democratic consultant was the chief campaign strategist for Bush/Cheney 2004 and head of the polling and media planning during Bush’s first election in 2000. Dowd told Frontline on PBS in a Jan. 4 interview last year that while the Florida recount was ongoing he and Rove were thinking about the next Bush reelection campaign. Greg Palast of BBC television reported that about 1.9 million votes cast in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, mostly by African Americans, were not counted.John Truscott is the DeVos’ campaign communication director.He was the former press secretary under Engler responsible for the governor’s communication with the media and the country. Truscott was the spokesman for the Bush/Cheney campaign in Michigan, and a member of the Bush/Cheney recount team in Florida. He also served as committee chair for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano’s transition teams. Alex Castellanos is a renowned communication consultant who has worked for five U.S. Presidential campaigns, helped elected six governors and eight U.S. senators. Fortune magazine referred to him as a “new style media master.” At MichiganLiberal.com, an online diary written by Hy Dudgeon cited some of Castellanos’ infamous ads used in elections around the country. As part of the George W. Bush, 2000 campaign, Castellano’s company, National Media produced an ad making fun of former Vice President Al Gore’s position on prescription drugs. The ad ended by flashing the word “RATS” on the screen. Under fire, the Bush campaign took it off air.In the North Carolina Senate race, 1990, as part of Senator Jesse Helm’s re-election team, Castellanos did what Salon.com called, “the most racially divisive TV ad in campaign history.” The ad called “White Hands,” took a swipe at affirmative action showing an angry white worker upset about being turned down for a job that was given to a minority. Helms won the election. In the Florida Governor’s race, 1994, Castellanos worked on Governor Jeb Bush’s campaign featuring an ad that accused Florida’s first Democratic governor incumbent Lawton Chiles of being too liberal on crime for not signing the death warrant of a convicted murderer. It later turned out that the court was still hearing the killer’s appeal. “One thing is certain is that DeVos has the financial resources to hire the most expensive talents available,” said Robinson of MCFN. “The reality is that these people are at the heart of the religious right.”Political Contributions According to the Center for Public Integrity, DeVos and his wife, Betsy were the nation’s fifth-largest individual campaign donors to state parties and committees during the 2003-2004-election cycle in the country.“Richard and Elizabeth donated $981,486 to state parties,” said Alex Knott CPI political editor in a phone interview. “Every cent was to a Republican.”The DeVos family donated $2,000 to Indiana, $1,200 to Wisconsin and the rest of that money to GOP candidates in Michigan. Truscott, his communication director did not return request for interview. The Detroit factor—the Black voteDetroit voters are key in any Michigan election because it is the state’s Democratic stronghold. An analysis from the public files of 28 commercial broadcasters across Michigan and Comcast cable’s central sales office shows that DeVos is spending more money on Detroit television than in any other city in the state. Some analysts say if DeVos can break ground in a heavily Democratic constituency like Detroit, he can present a serious threat to Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s return to office in November. The Michigan Campaign Finance Network reported that DeVos spent $5.4 million on ads, more than any gubernatorial campaign committee in the history of Michigan politics.