Red State Rab­ble took the time to fol­low the mon­ey. There’s a com­pli­cat­ed web of PACs which fun­nel mon­ey around cam­paign finance laws and into the pock­ets of ide­o­log­i­cal extrem­ists. Mon­ey far in excess of the $500 lim­its went from the same office to sev­er­al con­ser­v­a­tive cam­paigns, skirt­ing if not break­ing cam­paign finance laws.

This is more from the same line of evi­dence that may be show as John Calvert buy­ing him­self a seat on the sub­com­mit­tee, and the con­ser­v­a­tives buy­ing the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s support.

“But Josh,” you may say, “did­n’t peo­ple do the same for the sen­si­ble, pro-sci­ence candidates?”

The four sit­ting sen­si­bles are Bill Wagnon, Sue Gam­ble, Janet Waugh, and Car­ol Rupe.

Most, if not all, of this group gave at least once to Gov­er­nor Sebe­lius’ cam­paign in 2002. That does not seem to have bought them much vocal sup­port. (Cor­rec­tion: Sev­er­al of the minor­i­ty mem­bers gave small amounts to David Adkins, Phill Kline’s oppo­nent. I was stu­pid and mis­re­mem­bered the race. Thanks to a com­menter for the tip).

Over many years, Bill Wagnon has received mon­ey from these promi­nent groups or peo­ple: Kath­leen Sebe­lius, the Social Work­ers’ Union, the Kansas branch of the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, and the Main­stream Coali­tion. Sebe­lius gave $100 in 2003. 

The only con­tri­bu­tion to a school board race from the Main­stream Coali­tion in 2004 was $500 to Tim­o­thy Aiken, who lost.

Kansas Cit­i­zens for Sci­ence is a 501©3, so it does not endorse or finance candidates.

KCFS Pres­i­dent Har­ry McDon­ald gave $100 to For­rest Wed­dle in 2002. Vice-pres­i­dent (and sci­ence stan­dards com­mit­tee mem­ber) Jack Krebs gave $100 to Wayne Holt in 2000. Nei­ther is a sit­ting Board mem­ber. Embat­tled sci­ence stan­dards com­mit­tee chair Steve Case nev­er gave to any candidate.

Kathy Mar­tin, a woman who can’t spell “scan­dal”, and can’t rec­og­nize one that’s in front of her face, raised $23,462.

She beat sit­ting can­di­date Bruce Wyatt in the pri­ma­ry. He raised $15,606. How much would he have need­ed to win? How hard would it have been to raise $8,000? How much effort would we have saved ourselves?

Car­ol Rupe raised $6946, all but $200 from indi­vid­u­als. Unit­ed Teach­ers of Wichi­ta gave $100 in the pri­maries and $100 in the gen­er­al election.

Bill Wagnon raised $18164.99, almost enough to take on Kathy Mar­tin. Aside from con­tri­bu­tions by Janet Waugh, Gov­er­nor Sebe­lius, and David Wit­tig (!), that all seems to have come from pri­vate cit­i­zens.
In short, the sci­ence com­mu­ni­ty not only has­n’t abused the sys­tem, they’ve bare­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed. Could a cou­ple hun­dred dol­lars have beat­en one of the con­ser­v­a­tives? Hard to say.