Abbott Receives Big Bucks From Voucher Advocates

In June, Greg Abbott released a semi-annual campaign finance report that showed eye-popping figures from two school voucher advocates: Jeff Yass and Jim Walton. The donations, totaling $4.2 million, are a continuing saga in Abbott’s overtures towards school choice backers. 

Texas is the largest red state that has yet to pass school choice legislation. That looks likely to change in November after Abbott and his allies launched primary attacks on Republicans who resisted passing legislation that could take away funds from their public schools, which are often the biggest employers in rural Texas. Abbott’s quest to pass voucher reform went through four special sessions in the last legislative cycle. After the May runoff elections Texas is poised to fall in line with other red states, a major achievement for billionaires like Yass and Walton. 

According to Forbes, Yass has a net worth of $28.5 billion. Yass was a cofounder of Susquehanna International Group, a trading firm that has invested heavily in the TikTok parent company ByteDance. Last year, Abbott received a $6 million donation from Yass, which was the largest ever single donation in the state’s history.

Yass penned an op-ed earlier this year for The Wall Street Journal where he claimed he would not donate to Donald Trump, but that Biden was the worst candidate for school choice. He outlined his commitment to the school choice cause, as well. “For several decades my wife and I have tried to make that ideal a reality by concentrating our philanthropy and political donations on advancing school choice,” he wrote in April.

Walton, who is an heir to the Walmart fortune, has similarly cemented his billionaire legacy by championing school vouchers. His $200,000 donation to Abbott earlier this year falls in line with his vision of education. Walton, who has a net worth over $78 billion according for Forbes, has pledged to spend $1 billion on expanding charter schools through his family’s namesake foundation. In May he donated $500,000 to defeat a potential ballot measure that would imperil charter school funding in Arkansas.  

ProPublica published a piece examining Abbott’s recent turn towards school choice. When he started his career in Texas politics, the issue seemingly never came up for him. That all changed last year and was turbocharged in the primary attacks on members of his own party who did not want to pass a school choice law.

State Rep. Steve Allison, a staunchly conservative Republican, was one of the members who lost their primary after Abbott endorsed a voucher-friendly challenger. “Ever since I’ve been in the legislature, he’s never shown any interest in private school vouchers,” said Allison to ProPublica. 

While Abbott waits until the next legislature meets next year, he continues to align himself with the school voucher wing of the Republican party. He has appointed several school choice backers to prominent roles on education agencies in the state.