Pence’s big donors include charter, voucher advocates

As the Indianapolis Star reported last week, Gov. Mike Pence raked in more than $800,000 in large campaign contributions in the weeks leading up to a July 1 fundraising deadline.

The bulk of the money came from wealthy business officials, many of them with ties to the coal, utility, road construction and nursing home industries. But some big donations came from supporters of education policies that Pence has championed. They include:

• $25,000 from Fred Klipsch of Carmel, founder and chairman of Hoosiers for Quality Education, a leading pro-voucher organization. Klipsch boasted in 2012 that he had put together the campaign funding to overcome teacher opposition and push through legislative approval of the Mitch Daniels-Tony Bennett education agenda, including vouchers and charter schools.
• $25,000 from John D. Bryan of Lake Oswego, Ore., a retired business executive known as a major donor to national conservative PACs like Freedom Works and the Club for Growth. He is founder and director of Challenge Foundation, which operators several charter schools, including the Indianapolis Academy of Excellence. He has given nearly $600,000 to Republican campaigns in Indiana, including $145,000 to Pence’s campaigns for governor.
• $10,000 from Roger Hertog of New York, former chairman of the Manhattan Institute and a donor to national conservative causes. Hertog has contributed to Success Academy and other charter schools and commissioned a study of benefits of New York charter schools.
• $10,000 from Robert L. Luddy of Raleigh, N.C., who runs a group of private schools and who provided much of the campaign financing for school board candidates who overturned a model school desegregation program in Wake County, N.C., schools.

Three Democrats, former House Speaker John Gregg, Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz and state Sen. Karen Tallian, are seeking to challenge Pence. Gregg raised over $400,000 in large contributions in the weeks leading up to July 1. Tallian listed only a $20,000 transfer from her state senate campaign fund. Ritz reported no large contributions.

Candidates are required to file reports of their complete campaign fund-raising and spending for the first half of 2015 by July 15. Large donations – those of $10,000 or more – must be reported within a week of when they are received.