Jane "Queen of Bad Ideas" Cunningham is running for Missouri Senate, and she's found an anti-schools sugardaddy to sling a little wingnut welfare in the direction of her campaign. While Cunningham raised only $19,010 over the last reporting period [1], $15,000 of that total --a whopping 79% of her entire haul-- came from one man: Barry Conner of Gainesville, Georgia.

Conner is a real estate developer who runs the Georgia-based homebuilding outfit called America's Home Place, but his sidelight is far more illuminating. Conner is heavily engaged as a funder and supporter of a fringe movement [2] whose goal, by its own admission, is to end public education as we know it. Conner is a key funder of an entity called Alliance for the Separation of School and State, and is a signatory to that organization's proclamation [3], which states:

"I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education."

Now that's some top-shelf wingnuttery.

Add it up. Jane Cunningham, already notorious for her opposition to full funding of Missouri's public schools, is now funding three-quarters of her state senate campaign with dollars from an out of stater whose pet project is to remove every last public dollar from our school system. When Cunningham raised barrels of cash from pro-voucher group All Children Matter, she came back to the legislature pushing plans to slide state education funding into the pockets of private and religious schools. Just imagine what her legislative agenda in the Senate would look like with a patron who believes that the state should put zero dollars into education.

This is, to put it nicely, insane. The fact that candidates like Cunningham --who accept large checks from kooks like Conner who want to end our system of public education-- are even viewed as marginally viable is a symptom of just how cracked our system is.

Jane Cunningham has always been a bad joke. With her new act she risks turning our entire state into a punchline. Better legislators, real solutions on education, and an end to Queen Jane's political career, please.