Did you receive a flyer in the mail or a text, or see the website portraying Colorado Springs District 11 school board candidate Charles Johnson, a young black man, as a dangerous criminal? How about the mailer that characterizes three conservative D11 school board candidates as responsible for alleged failures of the current school board, even though none of them are incumbents?
Two independent expenditure committees on opposite sides of the Colorado Springs District 11 school board race are distributing negative electioneering materials to convince voters that the opposing candidates are bad for students.
Independent expenditure committees are not allowed to coordinate directly with a candidate, or the candidate’s campaign team or political party – they can, however, spend unlimited funds on their own electioneering campaigns. While independent expenditure committees must publicly report who donates to them, the donors may be organizations that do not disclose who donates to them. Political donations that are not traceable are known as “dark money.”
(If you want to learn more about dark money, the Center for Public Integrity’s “What is political dark money – and is it bad?” provides a history, and weighs pros and cons.)
The committee behind those ads focused primarily against Charles Johnson (not to be confused with another D11 school board candidate, Jeremiah Johnson) as well as candidates LeAnn Baca Bartlett and Michael Carsten – and in favor of Jeremiah Johnson, Bruce Cole and Michelle Ruehl – is D11 Parents and Teachers.
The committee behind the ads against conservative-leaning candidates Jeremiah Johnson, Cole and Ruehl – and for Charles Johnson, Baca Bartlett and Carsten – is Students Deserve Better.
Charles Johnson, Baca Bartlett and Carsten’s endorsements include the local teacher’s union, the Colorado Springs Education Association; Jeremiah Johnson, Cole and Ruehl’s endorsements include the Gazette Editorial Board, who cheered the current school board’s decision to end the master agreement that had been in place since 1968. The end of the master agreement was a driving force behind the recent one-day teacher strike in D11.
D11 Parents and Teachers
Colorado TRACER, the public disclosure website for campaign finance in Colorado, lists one donor to D11 Parents and Teachers on the committee’s Oct. 14 report: $125,000 from Advance Colorado Action, which shares a name and logo with Advance Colorado.
On its website, Advance Colorado Action says it is an “issue advocacy organization that believes in a smaller, more accountable government.” Advance Colorado describes itself as “an action-based organization focused on reversing radical policies that are harming the state and restoring common sense values and principles in Colorado.”
The Colorado Times Recorder recently published “The Redprint: How Advance Colorado and Anonymous Donors Shape the Political Landscape,” an ultra-deep dive into how Advance Colorado’s power functions through “a network of satellite groups which Advance employs to shape political narratives, and from the anonymous donor or donors pumping millions of dollars per year into the system” to influence ballot initiatives, school board races and state-level legislation. According to the article, it is an “open secret” that billionaire Phil Anschutz is a main anonymous donor to Advance Colorado – though due to lack of transparency in current campaign finance laws, “we may never know” for sure. Anschutz’s business portfolio includes Clarity Media which owns The Gazette.
While expense reports show D11 Parents and Teachers spent Advance Colorado Action’s money on electioneering communications both for their preferred candidates and against the union-backed slate, several line items were for communications specifically against Charles Johnson, with similar messaging to the dangerford11.com website.
Charles Johnson’s campaign put out a press release in response to the negative campaigns.
“Many community members have been receiving texts about Charles Johnson, 25, District 11 School Candidate. Johnson was considered a central figure in numerous Colorado Springs protests in 2020 and 2021 when he was 20. Johnson was charged with several crimes in connection with those protests, including theft, aggravated assault, resisting arrest, and more,” the release said.
The press release said Johnson first pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a highway or passageway in connection with a June 30, 2020, Black Lives Matter protest that stretched across Interstate 25, stopping traffic. The second charge Johnson pleaded guilty to was a federal count of attempted theft in which Johnson attempted to take the phone of someone who confronted him during a protest. All other charges were dropped in 2022.
The registered agent for D11 Parents and Teachers is Caden Salladay. While Salladay declined to answer questions for this story, he did provide a comment:
“Every word that our committee has shared is true,” he wrote via text. “That stands in contrast to the dark-money committee Students Deserve Better, which is disseminating mailers and digital ads pretending our candidates are incumbents on the board now so as to blame them for problems that in reality they have nothing to do with.”
D11 Parents and Teachers is registered to an address shared by West Group, a law and policy firm that “provides clients with comprehensive legal and government affairs services,” according to its website.
D11 Parents and Teachers’ financial institution is a bank in downtown Colorado Springs, just a few steps from the registered address of Springs Opportunity Fund, another independent expenditure committee that promotes conservative candidates in local school board elections. A phone call to the registered agent of Springs Opportunity Fund inquiring about any connection between the committees was not returned.
Students Deserve Better
As Salladay noted, material put out by Students Deserve Better implies that Cole, Jeremiah Johnson and Ruehl are incumbents – which they are not.
A recent mailer states, “As our schools cracked and crumbled, the school board hid the truth, played political games, and betrayed the trust of Colorado Springs families.”
“Our kids deserve leaders who build, not politicians who play games,” the flyer reads. “Bruce Cole, Jeremiah Johnson, and Michelle Ruehl: Administrative spending increased by over $9 million – a more than 20% increase! Money didn’t go to the classrooms, and schools, like Jenkins Middle, falling into disrepair or closing for lack of funding. Handed out questionable no-bid contracts that were criticized by publications like the Colorado Springs Business Journal.”
As an annotation to that last statement, the flyer cites the article “Dark Money and the School Board Industrial Complex” by Heidi Beedle, who has written for a number of outlets including the Pikes Peak Bulletin. Beedle’s article reports on a $40,000 no-bid contract related to board communications that was sole-sourced by D11 Superintendent Michael Gaal to a recently formed company with little experience but rumored, unspecified political ties. However, she wrote that article for the Colorado Times Recorder, not the Business Journal. And, as it is an article and not an opinion piece, it does not criticize the contract but rather quotes people who did.
Interesting side note: Beedle’s article identifies the company that got the no-bid contract as Tsogt Research and Consulting, owned by Michael Tsogt, who is a policy analyst for Advance Colorado.
An Oct. 27 report of donations and expenditures showed Students Deserve Better received $550,000 from Colorado Fund for Children and Public Education. TRACER shows Colorado Fund for Children and Public Education is based in Denver and has been around for decades. It has made numerous donations for a variety of causes including school board races in various Colorado cities, Democratic candidates and ballot initiatives.
The Bulletin reached out to Students Deserve Better’s registered agent, Ashley Stevens. She did not return phone calls or texts. The group’s registered address is a UPS Store.
