In this year’s election we have seen an unprecedented amount of third party money being spent on all sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, our local state senate race has been no exception. In Kim LaSata’s quest to represent us in the Michigan Senate for the 21st district, she has taken in massive sums from the DeVos family and their pro-charter school front group, the Great Lakes Education Project. In fact, she has taken in more money from DeVos interests than any other state level candidate.

According to filings from the Secretary of State, the Great Lakes Education Project alone spent in excess of $30,000 to help her defeat state representative Dave Pagel. Conveniently, they reported spending only $5,172.66 before the pre-primary filing deadline. After voters had their say, a post primary report was filed showing an additional $26,125.12 spent.

One may argue that this kind of thing happens in politics all of the time, but do voters in our district really want our state senator to be most expensive cog in the DeVos political machine? Do we really want a state senator who has more ties to interests outside our own district?

LaSata’s challenger, Ian Haight, has accepted no such contributions. Ian has run a people funded campaign focused on fixing our roads, lowering car insurance premiums, and lowering healthcare costs — issues that are actually important to all of us. I’d hate to think that further rolling out the red carpet for for-profit charter schools to crush the public teacher unions is actually a bigger priority for Kim LaSata than these issues.

James Tyler

Watervliet