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Capitol View®
Catharine Richert

Liberal group launches post-session education ad buy

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Less than a day after the 2015 session ended, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, one of the most well-funded liberal political groups in the state, is launching a digital ad buy targeted at more than 20 Republican legislative districts.

"Minnesota Republicans -- especially in the House -- need to be held accountable for putting corporations ahead of working families' priorities," says Alliance for a Better Minnesota Executive Director Joe Davis. "The GOP repeatedly pushed for special treatment for big business, but shortchanged our schools."

That's a message you can expect to hear a lot of from the left leading up to the 2016 election, and one that's already been repeated by Gov. Mark Dayton as he considers vetoing an education funding bill that he says doesn't put enough money into schools.

Of course, this being politics, the story the Alliance for a Better Minnesota is trying to tell in its ads is more complicated than that.

House Republicans and Senate Democrats agreed to put $400 million more into K-12 education. Dayton wants $150 million more than that to fund pre-kindergarten in public schools, and says he will veto the bill as a result.

With roughly $1 billion left over from this year's $1.9 billion surplus, Republicans say they want to try again in 2016 to cut taxes and have so far declined to give Dayton the additional $150 million he's looking for.

Dayton said he plans to hit the road to build support for additional education funding prior to calling a special session to renegotiate the bill.

An Alliance for a Better Minnesota spokesperson would not say how much they're spending on the ads or provide a sample.