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Gov. Bill Lee says he is OK with outside groups spending big on Tennessee legislative races featuring candidates who support his universal private school voucher plan.
Last month, the Republican governor took the unusual step of wading into local races and endorsing some Republican candidates in Thursday’s primary election based on their voucher positions.
“We have a really smart electorate, and I believe in the power of people to sort through the information, as long as it’s accurate,” Lee said on Friday after speaking at a workforce development event in rural Perry County, west of Nashville.
But some local officials say money from groups such as American Federation for Children, Americans for Prosperity, and the School Freedom Fund is bringing misinformation into several key races.
“The fact that out-of-state interest groups would spend that much money in a local House seat election should give us all concern,” says a July 23 letter to Williamson County voters from retiring Rep. Sam Whitson and four local city and county mayors.
The outside groups – which are not required to disclose their donors — are paying for mailers, television commercials, and other ads seeking to influence voters who will pick a successor for Whitson, a four-term Republican lawmaker who opposes vouchers. Similar special interest group activities seek to favor pro-voucher candidates in other parts of the state.
The tension comes as voters prepare to pick Republican and Democratic nominees to run for the statehouse on Nov. 5 before a critical legislative session for the future of Tennessee’s education system.
The governor, who wants to give public funding to any family statewide who wants to send their children to private school, says his administration is already crafting a new plan after his 2024 bill stumbled in committees during the recent legislative session.
“It’s a process that takes several months, but we’re working on it right now,” Lee told Chalkbeat in Perry County.
He did not provide details but promised “a commitment to universal school choice.”
Lee also pledged to “fully vet the program’s cost” when asked about recent comments by Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican voucher ally from Maury County, who called the governor’s education scholarship proposal a “terrible” plan that would have plunged Tennessee into dire financial straits.
“That’s a part of this process,” Lee said of studying the proposal’s financial feasibility.
Lee’s slate of preferred GOP candidates include Lee Reeves, a Williamson County real estate investor and attorney who supports private school vouchers, over fellow Republicans Brian Beathard and Michelle Foreman.
Beathard, who chairs the Williamson County Commission and opposes the governor’s plan, has been endorsed by most top locally elected leaders in the Republican enclave south of Nashville. Mailers and ads funded by outside groups have depicted him as anti-conservative and supportive of higher taxes and labor unions.
But Beathard’s supporters are pushing back.
“All of us are used to some ‘puffing’ and exaggerations when it comes to political mailers, but the negative messages aimed at Brian Beathard cross the line of decency,” says the letter to voters from Whitson, the outgoing Republican legislator, and other local officials.
They say some of the campaign materials include misleading policy statements, innuendo, and outright lies, as well as manipulating photos to distort Beathard’s appearance. The letter did not give specific examples.
Chalkbeat did not immediately receive responses from leaders with several organizations behind the ads. A spokesman for the School Freedom Fund, a pro-voucher group tied to Club for Growth and New York-based investment billionaire Jeff Yass, asked for specific examples but did not respond directly to the claims.
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
