Who Gave the Green Light to the Tim Bee Ad?

by David Safier

If you’re hoping to get an answer to the headline question, “Who gave the green light to the Tim Bee ad?” you won’t find it here. Sorry. Today I tried, unsuccessfully, to answer it.

I called the office of Joel Wirth, the Chief Financial Officer of Chandler School District, whose office number is listed on the Arizona Secretary of State’s website as the contact for the Educational Financial Reform Group. That’s the lobbying group behind the ad “thanking” Tim Bee for being a friend of education. I left a message on his machine and talked to his assistant, who said he would return my call. He hasn’t.

To be fair, Mr. Wirth is probably a busy guy, and he may not consider me worthy of an immediate response. But in Daniel Scarpinato’s original article on the topic in the Star, he wrote, “The spokesman for the Chandler Unified School District, which oversees the finances and founded the group, did not return phone calls.” So this seems like a pattern of ducking questions. And in the long run, he’s not doing himself any favors. He’s raising suspicions about his actions, and my hunch is that true impetus behind the ad lies elsewhere.

Since I lack the hard information I wish I had, I’m going to use my 30 years of experience in public schools to take a venture into “creative journalism,” which means I’m going to make stuff up that I think explains how this ad came about. If I’m wrong, I will be happy to have someone correct me, and I will gladly print the real story. That’s what I want, the real story.

I don’t think the school districts that pooled their lobbying funds to create EFRG had the intent of skirting the law to create a political ad for Bee, even though that was the result. That’s not the way school district administrators work, in my experience. They’re looking out for what they think is best for their districts. Even though I disagreed with my administration on a regular basis, I never saw them pull this kind of a stunt.

The districts pooled their money to lobby for the Career Ladder Program for their districts. It was a reasonable investment — a few thousand dollars each with a possible return of higher salaries for their teachers.

They hired the lobbying firm, Public Policy Partners, headed by John Kaites, to carry the ball. Kaites is an ex-legislator who is a big Tim Bee supporter. Here’s where I think the problem arose. Kaites decided he would try for a two-fer. First, he would score the Career Ladder legislation for the districts, which is what he was paid to do. Then he would give Bee all kinds of public recognition that would help him in his campaign against Giffords. I have no idea whether Bee had any knowledge of what was going on.

I can almost hear Kaites saying to EFRG, “Get some of your people up to Phoenix. Bee will address them. We’ll film it, cut it into an ad and give Bee a big public thank you. It’ll build you some good will you can use to your advantage in the future.” The district reps said, “Sure,” and the ad came together.

I doubt the school people considered the ramifications of creating a political ad with school monies, which is a violation of state law. If they had, I think they would have nixed the idea. School districts tend to be very sensitive about bad press, so I can’t imagine they would take this kind of risk knowingly. Actually, it was Kaites’ job to warn them of the danger and caution against the ad. Instead, I think he pushed it, then had the clever idea of leaving the group’s name off the ad so there were no fingerprints.

Let me repeat, the sequence of events I’ve presented is pure conjecture. But it fits the facts. I hope someone will come forward and clear this up. I don’t think this story is over yet. We need the people involved to clarify what parts they played in this ill-conceived, publicly funded campaign ad for Bee.