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Why are Republican donors, including a Bush Pioneer, contributing to Ember Reichgott Junge’s campaign for Congress?

For some of Ember’s Republican supporters, including Bush Pioneer J.C. Huizenga , the answer may lie with Junge’s position as a nationally recognized proponent of charter schools.

In 1991, Junge made history by authoring and passing the nation’s first charter school legislation.

J.C. Huizenga is founder and chairman of National Heritage Academies (NHA), a for-profit educational management company based in Grand Rapids, MI. NHA was sued by the Michigan ACLU who accused NHA for evangelizing in the classroom and teaching creationism as science.

John Sackler, a Republican donor who has given considerable funds to George W. Bush, the RNC, Ted Stevens, Joe Lieberman and Ember Reichgott Junge can be seen here testifying for Connecticut’s General Assembly in support of charter schools.

In the “Education” section of Junge’s campaign website charter schools are never mentioned. Under the section labeled “The Gift of Public Service”, charter schools are mentioned once in item 6.

However, the section used to link to this page which featured charter schools prominently.

Why is Junge actively downplaying her support of charter schools?

UPDATE: MN Publius has their take here.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 21st, 2006 at 12:35 pm and is filed under MN House 2006, Finance, Political Web Design, Communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.