Spending on the Central Bucks school board race surpasses ‘quite extraordinary’ $600,000

Political action committees backing and opposing candidates in the intense battle for control of the Central Bucks school board have raised more than $600,000 — a stunning amount of money for a local school board race.

As of Oct. 23 — with more than two weeks to go before the Nov. 7 election — Democrats vying to take over the board had raised $317,649, while Republicans, fighting to maintain their majority, had raised $224,230. A PAC attacking Democrats raised an additional $40,000.

The spending totals are incomplete, because the reports only run through Oct. 23. But at least one large donation came in a week later — $52,000, from the donor providing the vast majority of the Republican side’s spending, Paul Martino.

School board spending figures are hard to come by: In Pennsylvania, campaign finance reports are filed at the local level, and many are undigitized. But political observers say typical spending is much smaller: A 2018 survey conducted by the National School Boards Association found that 75% of respondents spent less than $1,000 on their most recent school board election, while only 9% spent more than $5,000.

In Central Bucks — which at 18,000 students is the third-largest district, and one of the wealthier ones, in Pennsylvania — 2021′s elections already saw far greater spending, with Democrats and Republicans raising a total of more than $200,000, according to an analysis by one of the involved PACs.

But with reported fundraising of more than $600,000, this year’s campaigns are far eclipsing that.

“That number for a school board race is quite extraordinary,” said Vince Galko, a Republican strategist who has worked on Pennsylvania campaigns from the local to the presidential level.

Joe Corrigan, a Democratic strategist in Philadelphia, said he’s involved in a school board race in Delaware County where Democrats are trying to raise $5,000 — “pretty typical” of these races, he said.

Most of the money going toward Republicans came from one man: Martino, a venture capitalist and GOP donor who poured $500,000 into school board races across Pennsylvania two years ago. This year, Martino appears to have doubled down on Central Bucks, where his wife, Aarati Martino, is running as a Republican for the board.

Martino gave $187,000 to Bucks Families for Leadership, the PAC he created supporting the five Republican candidates. He also gave $40,000 more to Stop Bucks Extremism, which mailed thousands of homes controversial fliers depicting explicit images from books the district pulled from library shelves earlier this year — calling on voters to “protect children” against “extreme Democrats” who oppose book bans.

Martino previously said he gave Bob Salera — a GOP strategist based in Alexandria, Va., who was tapped to run Stop Bucks Extremism — a “seed check to get his new PAC off the ground.” Martino was the source of almost all the PAC’s money, however. Beyond Martino’s contribution, the PAC raised just $485.

Martino gave an additional $52,000 to Bucks Families for Leadership on Oct. 30 — a donation filed at the state level that came in past the Oct. 23 deadline period.

Martino declined to comment on his donations, instead noting Democrats’ spending.

As of Oct. 23, Neighbors United, a PAC supporting the five Democrats, raised $194,686, with its largest donation — $40,000 — coming from Turn Bucks Blue, a PAC that has supported Democrats throughout the county.

That PAC also gave more than $8,000 to individual committees supporting each of the Democratic candidates — who raised an additional $122,963 on top of the Neighbors United group.

“The sentiment was that what’s happening in Central Bucks and the nearby school districts in Bucks County is very, very alarming,” said Bonnie Chang, the chair of Turn Bucks Blue. The PAC’s biggest donor this year, Jill Kearney, founder of the ArtYard in Frenchtown, N.J., gave the committee $100,000. A message left with ArtYard for a comment was not returned.

Since the pandemic, the Central Bucks school board has been at the center of bitter culture war arguments: from masking and other COVID safety measures, to book bans and the treatment of LGBTQ students. Over the last two years, Republicans on the board have passed policies banning Pride flags and other classroom “advocacy” and prohibiting “sexualized content” in library books; last month, the board advanced a policy that would bar transgender students from playing on sports teams aligned with their gender identities.

The board has drawn intense pushback from community members — and advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of LGBTQ students; the claim has been under investigation. (Lawyers from Duane Morris hired by the district — at an estimated cost of more than $1 million — found no evidence of discrimination, instead accusing the ACLU and Democrats of “weaponizing” the allegations to undermine the board.)

The 2021 election, which cemented the GOP majority on the board, also followed a fraught campaign season that featured large donations from Martino, who formed a Back to School PAC that was giving $10,000 checks to candidates statewide who said they supported keeping schools open. Democrats noted that most of Martino’s checks were going to Republicans, at a time when conservatives were targeting schools with accusations of teaching critical race theory.

Last year, Martino gave a presentation to the school board that noted Democrats outspent Republicans in 2021 — raising $123,000 to Republicans’ $95,000, of which he gave $60,000.

With the prospect of Martino again spending big this year, Democrats say they were motivated to counteract him.

“Martino set a precedent,” said Diana Leygerman, a Neighbors United volunteer who ran unsuccessfully for the Central Bucks school board two years ago, and was the subject of an attack website set up by Martino’s PAC. “We knew it would cost a lot to fight the lies and the smears and the spinning he purchased from D.C. political firms.”

Among more typical school board campaign expenditures — such as lawn signs and mailers — Bucks Families for Leadership paid $43,000 to Breakwall, a political consulting firm founded by a former communications director for the National Republican Campaign Committee. (Stop Bucks Extremism, the Martino-funded PAC behind the explicit mailers and an attack website dubbing Democrats “The Corrupt Five” who want to serve “smut” to children, paid Breakwall $23,000.)

Bucks Families for Leadership also paid $35,000 to a Connecticut-based LLC for canvassing.

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Besides Turn Bucks Blue, the second-largest donation to the Democrats’ Neighbors United PAC came from the political action committee of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, which gave $27,000. A spokesperson for the union declined to comment.

Leygerman said that Neighbors United had more than 500 individual donors. “Our support really does come from the community, rather than one man spending,” she said.

Chang, of Turn Bucks Blue, said the PAC believed that “Democrats were behind the eight-ball” when it came to Martino’s investment in school boards in 2021. “This can’t happen again,” she said.

Anecdotes of heightened spending on school board races have become more common nationally, as conservatives, in particular — who have pushed a “parental rights” agenda — target boards as “a larger avenue to recapture voters,” said Julie Marsh, a professor at the University of Southern California who focuses on K-12 education policy.

”You can build a bench of candidates and win an election for a lot less” than higher-level races, Marsh said.

The surge in campaign spending reflects not just the hotly contested nature of the Central Bucks race, but a broader trend of nationalized politics shaping local races, said Christopher Borick, political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College.

Politically divided suburbs such as Central Bucks are “going to be some of the most coveted political real estate in the country in 2024,” Borick said, and races as local as school boards may be seen as bellwethers.

Staff writer Julia Terruso contributed to this article.