Mike Pence's Secret Santas

by Doug Martin

As we enter an election year here in Indiana, it is time for all of us to start peering in on the campaign records of our beloved state politicians and the front groups that are their publically-secret Santas.  So here are a few of Gov. Mike Pence’s, and they are many of the same people and corporations who funded former Indiana and Florida supt. of education Tony Bennett.

ELI LILLY: SWINGING BOTH WAYS

Eli Lilly’s PAC, this October, gave Govt. Mike $10,000. Lilly, in its various shapes and forms, has been a big player in privatizing Indiana public schools and claims to support gays and lesbians fighting against Pence’s quest to hammer a ban on gay marriage into the state constitution.

Former Eli Lilly bigwig, Randall Tobias paid family man Mike Pence $10,000 in May (see page 2 in the PDF).  Best known for his role in George W. Bush’s administration promoting a religious right anti-AIDS  and anti-prostitution public policy while he himself was sleeping with prostitutes, Tobias is a friend of Christel DeHaan who runs the now-graded “F” charter school Tony Bennett rigged an earlier grade for.

ANGIE, AIN’T IT GOOD TO BE ALIVE?

William S. Oesterle—Angie’s List’s co-founder and CEO—has loaded Mike Pence’s campaign chest with $300,000 (see pages 2 and 3) recently.

If you support Indiana public schools, steer clear of Angie’s List and its corporate “word-of-mouth wisdom.” A mega-donor to Tony Bennett, Oesterle is a former partner of the venture capital firm, CID Equity Partners and helped manage Mitch Daniels’ 2004 campaign. In the 1980s, he led the right-wing Hudson Institute, a then Indy-based pseudo-research group closely tied with ALEC and funded by the anti-worker Koch brothers.

THE WHITE KNIGHT

Tony Bennett’s buddy Dean White gifted Mike Pence $250,000 in September of this year.  Now a billionaire, White inherited his father’s mega-billboard business. For fun, White, now in his 80s, dabbles in real estate deals and develops hotels. White earlier gave Mike Pence $100,000 in donations to run for Indiana governor.  White is listed #281 on Forbes’ list of America’s richest.

A BIG AND RICH PAIN IN THE YASS

And Pennsylvania hedge fund manager and national corporate school funder, Jeff Yass, another shady figure in my upcoming book Hoosier School Heist and in my article on Bill Gates in Philadelphia, gave big, big, and big to do his part in privatizing Indiana education, even handing Pence $20,000 in 2012 (see this , and this).  All in all, Yass (who is just one out-of-state hedge fund manager behind the Indiana corporate school movement, by the way), dished out just shy of $1 million recently to destroy Indiana teachers, students, and public schools.

School Choice Indiana’s Fred Klipsch (also a millionaire) gave Mike Pence’s campaign $25,000 in May (page 2 in PDF,) and libertarian national and Indiana charter school operator John Bryan slid Pence $50,000 in June (page 3 in PDF). 

There’s many, many more corporate school people I could expose here who are in bed with Mike Pence, but it is getting late, and I am tired.  Happy New Year.  It's going to be a long and hard one.