How much money has supported Amendment 2…and by who?
Kentucky’s battle over a proposed constitutional amendment on whether or not public dollars should go to private schools is shaping up to be incredibly, incredibly expensive.
More than $12 million has been raised across a series of political issue groups in Kentucky aimed at advocating for or against Amendment 2, according to the most recent state campaign finance numbers.
And that’s just what is coming from Kentucky-based groups. Add in millions from federal PACs, and Amendment 2 is easily on track to be the most expensive constitutional amendment fight in Kentucky’s history. (For reference, the 2022 abortion amendment ended up costing somewhere around $7 million or so.)
How much has been raised in Kentucky’s Amendment 2 fight?
For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to focus mainly on state-level issue committees registered to raise and spend money on Amendment 2 with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance, aka KREF, for much of this article.
But it is important to note right off the bat that the Protect Freedom PAC, a conservative federal PAC, has spent around $4 million on ads in favor of Amendment 2 thus far — making it one of the biggest spenders in the race. Those exact numbers, though, are much harder to track because the PAC and others like it don’t have to register and provide updated numbers to KREF, where you can search through campaign spending records in Kentucky.
You can read more about outside spending from Kentucky Public Radio and the Kentucky Lantern.
Ahead of Election Day, there are 10 state-level issue groups registered in Kentucky, but one appears to be created just to donate to a different group, so I’m going to focus on the other nine.
Between those groups, $12,140,516.83 has been raised. About two-thirds of the money raised comes from groups opposed to Amendment 2, with the remaining third from supporters.
Of that, $10,035,649.97 has already been spent. Supporters have spent more of their money thus far, spending about 88% of their donations, while opponents have spent around 80%.
Who are the players in Kentucky’s Amendment 2 fight?
The folks supporting Amendment 2 — so the ones who want to see public dollars go to private schools — are:
- Kentucky Students First
- Citizens Alliance For Better Schools
- Americans For Prosperity – Kentucky
- Empower Kentucky Parents
And the ones against Amendment 2 are:
- Protect Our Schools KY
- Democratic Socialists Against Amendment 2
- What About Us
- Kentuckians For Public Education, Inc.
- The People’s Campaign
That’s a lot — which ones are, like, the main players?
Not all of those groups have raised much money, even this close to the election. Some haven’t raised or spent anything at all.
Here are the top groups ranked by how much money they’ve raised:
- Protect Our Schools KY — against — $7,057,037.48
- Kentucky Students First — for — $2,525,525.00
- Empower Kentucky Parents — for — $1,250,001.00
- Kentuckians For Public Education — against — $975,025.00
- Americans For Prosperity Kentucky — for — $327,828.35
But raising money and spending it are two different things. Some groups report spending almost every cent, while anti-Amendment 2 group Protect Our Schools KY still has more than $1 million left in the tank.
OK, but who are these people?
Americans For Prosperity — Kentucky is an issues committee, unsurprisingly, tied to Americans For Prosperity, a libertarian political advocacy group.
Kentucky Students First comes from Charles Leis, a well-known school choice advocate who leads EdChoice Kentucky. EdChoice played a critical role in getting education opportunity account legislation passed a few years ago. That bill would create a tax loophole for those who donate to third-party groups who provide private school scholarships to middle- and low-income students. The courts later decided it was unconstitutional.
Empower Kentucky Parents is tied to the American Federation for Children, which calls itself “the national leader in school choice.”
Protect Our Schools KY is tied to several folks in Kentucky’s public education landscape. Its leader is Tom Shelton, a former superintendent who plays a critical role with the Council for Better Education, a group representing Kentucky school districts that has successfully sued to block previous attempts at school choice measures.
Kentuckians For Public Education, Inc. is run by Eric Hyers, one of Gov. Andy Beshear’s top political strategists. Beshear’s PAC, In This Together, is one of the few donors to this group, as is a pro-Beshear PAC called Heckbent. Hence maybe why the governor has appeared in TV ads and mailers for them.
Where is the money coming from?
When you look just at the state-level groups, a whole lot of the money is coming from teachers unions.
Actually, the National Education Association is the top single donor across all groups with nearly $5.7 million donated. That’s about 47% of all money raised before factoring in any federal PAC money. Add in Kentucky-based teachers unions and that figure jumps up to $6.3 million — 52% of the total.
A pro-school choice group also tied to Leis, the leader of EdChoice Kentucky, called the Kentucky Education Freedom Fund came in a distant second for state-level groups, spending nearly $1.4 million.
Of course, don’t forget the roughly $4 million the Protect Freedom PAC has spent, which would alone be good enough for second place in spending in this race.
But what about the regular people?
Individuals collectively donated nearly $1 million at the state level, making up 8.2% of all donations.
There are two ways to look at this: by dollars and by people. We’re going to do both.
Nearly all of the individual donations came from supporters of Amendment 2 — we’re talking, like, 93% of the money. But, based on the number of donations, there are way more opponents to Amendment 2 than there are supporters.
Talking dollars, the average individual Amendment 2 supporter gave $12,274. The average Amendment 2 opponent gave about $107. (Even when you look at the medians, there is still a big difference: $100 vs. $25.)
That’s because the pro-Amendment 2 side saw some massive donations. William Yung, the leader of NKY-based hotel company Columbia Sussex, for example, single-handedly donated half-a-mil. And Matth Toebben, the founder of a NKY construction company, spent $100,000.
Toebben has also apparently gone off on his own to personally sponsor ads in newspapers in favor of Amendment 2. When you click on the online version of the ad, it takes you to an op-ed he wrote in late October in favor of the measure, where he says the future of Kentucky without school choice will be “bleak.”
Meanwhile on the opponents’ side, the largest single individual donation was $10,000 from Jennifer Moore, the founder of a Louisville law firm.
And then talking people, there were around 74 folks donating individually to support Amendment 2. As for the opposition? Around 484 folks.
Basically, it is a battle between a smaller group of wealthy men who can drop five- or six-figures for political causes and hundreds of more middle-class folks who don’t really have that kind of money.
How do I find election finance numbers in Kentucky?
Want to go through the numbers yourself? Here’s a quick runthrough of how to find and search campaign donations and expenses in Kentucky:
- You’re going to start by heading to the KREF website.
- On the left hand panel, you’re going to find the link that says “Search Election Finance Statements.” Click on that.
- It should hopefully take you to a page with a line of search options at the top. You can search by candidate, organization, office, donor and expenses.
- From there, just plug in what you’re looking for in the side panel. You can fill out as much or as little of it as you want.
- Then go through the results to your hearts’ content. Want to download the data into a spreadsheet? There should be a small export link on each page on the right hand side.
- If you want to go through Amendment 2 spending, you should go to the organization tab, set the search functions to focus on active organizations and ones labeled as issue committees. Then find the ones that say they’re advocating for or against Amendment 2 — they should be clearly labeled in the group descriptions.
Obviously, there is a lot of information available and the platform can get a little wonky sometimes, but this is the general overview of finding election finance numbers.
When do election finance numbers come out in Kentucky?
It is important to note that groups are supposed to turn in their final pre-election finance numbers in mid-to-late October, so both the amounts raised and spent are expected to go up considerably by Election Day.
Candidates and organizations don’t have to report any more campaign expenses or donations before Election Day, but they have to report stuff following the election:
Everyone has to post a financial report by Dec. 9. This is called the 30-day post-General report.
If a candidate has debt and/or leftover money on that report, they also have to file a report by Jan. 7, 2025. This is called the 60-day post-General report.
You can see a full schedule of when reports are due on KREF’s website.
