Ohio state auditor: Money, gerrymandering and charter schools key issues for Democrat Zack Space
By Demitri Cullen
Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Zack Space has been campaigning for the position of state auditor in Ohio, and says he hopes to use the position to focus on charter schools, the effects of money on politics and gerrymandering, among other goals.
Space grew up in a Greek family, his grandparents having immigrated from Greece, eventually settling in Dover, Ohio. There, a young Space cultivated an interest in law, which he would go on to practice for nearly 20 years with his father.
Space says he has always felt a need to help people, which led him into the political world. In 2006, he won a seat in Congress and went on to serve two terms before his defeat in 2010.Now he’s using his experience in Congress to work towards what he sees as positive change in Ohio’s government by running for state auditor.
His time in Congress “gave me a close-up perspective of how bad it is when it comes to the ruling interest of money on policy,” Space says. “What ends up happening is that those that give a lot of money to campaigns … end up having undue influence on how policy gets made.”
In his first ad to air on television for this election—labelled “Crossroads”—Space says that corporate money has far too much influence and ability to rig the system, and that Ohioans should choose a new direction. He says he “won’t take orders from the highest bidder,” and will answer to citizens.
In a short interview conducted at the beginning of October, Space said he wants to use the position of auditor to ensure that elected officials aren’t swayed in their decisions by the dollar, instead putting the citizens of Ohio over monetary gain. He prides himself on hearing the common people and being a candidate for the average citizen, and he wishes to take focus away from corporate ties to government.
“We’d better give people a reason to believe in [democracy] again, and the best way to do that is to mitigate the interest of money on policy so that people matter more than money,” he said in a personal interview, adding that it’s time “to stop allowing politicians to choose their voters.”
As auditor, Space would sit on the state’s Redistricting Commission (click the link to see who’s on the commission), allowing him to contribute to enacting one of the main points of his campaign: ending gerrymandering, a term that means, according to Dictionary.com, the dividing of a state, county, etc., into election districts so as to give one political party a majority in many districts while concentrating the voting strength of the other party into as few districts as possible.
The redistricting of voting districts is done every 10 years, in accordance with the latest U.S. Census. Since the next census takes place in 2020, redistricting will be done within Space’s four-year term if he’s elected auditor this year.
“I’ll be at the table when the lines are drawn,” Space says. “I’m going to insist that we pursue representational fairness, representational competition, maintain respect for territorial boundaries, and geographic integrity.” He rallies behind the idea that everyone’s vote matters, and that whether someone happens to fall in a certain voting district should not diminish the weight of their vote.
Nathan Cotton, the political and communications director for Space’s campaign, recently recounted how he got involved in the campaign. “I made clear my interest in working for Zack because his passion for fixing our broken political system was obvious,” Cotton said in an email interview. “Soon after, I was offered a job and left the Statehouse to join Zack’s campaign full-time.”
Since he was brought on board, Cotton said he has been able to work closely with Space on a day-to-day basis. He also spoke about Space’s character:
“Aside from having an integrity and humility that are extremely rare for political candidates or elected officials at this level, Zack has proven he’s willing to risk his career for causes he believes in.”
One of the other pillars of Space’s campaign is a closer inspection of the auditing of charter schools. Space believes that charter schools, paid for by taxpaying citizens, are “the largest political scandal in Ohio history. Hundreds of millions of dollars are unaccounted for. We intend to find out just how deep this problem runs, how much money taxpayers have been fleeced out of, whether that money can be recovered, [and] what we can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
As auditor, Space would audit these schools to better regulate their income, so those that aim to discreetly pocket money from unsuspecting Ohioans would be met much closer inspection than in the past.
PolitiFact, the journalistic fact-checking organization, noted on May 17 that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow — formerly one of the leading online charter schools in Ohio before its sponsors pulled out of their dealings, forcing a closure — had received more than $1 billion from the state of Ohio, and its founder, William Lager, went from being financially insecure to a millionaire. They had gained this money by claiming to have enrolled more students than they realistically had, a lie they were able to obscure due to the fact that they were an online establishment. News5 Cleveland noted that they were only able to provide actual documentation for roughly a third of what they had presented.
Republican candidate Keith Faber, Space’s opponent, claimed to have a large part in the dissolution of the school. Space quickly spoke out against this claim of Faber’s, saying that by being complicit in the ECOT scandal, Faber should not be eligible to run for auditor.
Faber claims partial responsibility for ECOT’s closure, citing charter school laws passed under him involving stricter keeping of attendance records for online schools, but PolitiFact says the he is overstating his involvement, going as far as to note the claim as “Mostly False.”
The main cause for the downfall of ECOT was when the Education Department required online schools to keep track of student log-ins, which in turn proved that over half of ECOT’s claimed students could not be accounted for. This was being put in place before the bills passed under Faber required “an accurate record of each individual student’s participation in learning opportunities each day”, which is what he cites as his hand in taking down ECOT.
In a recent interview on Kent State’s NPR station, WKSU, Space proclaimed his desire to create a “Stop Charter Abuse and Malfeasance Unit” if elected auditor. This SCAM unit would investigate charter schools pulling unnecessary money from taxpayers and and how for-profit companies could have managed, and in some cases abused, that income. Space says he wants every dime of this “stolen” money taken excessively from taxpayers to be returned, and that the children of Ohio can go to schools where they are given the opportunity to excel.
David Shutkin, an education professor at John Carroll University, says he agrees with Space on some points. He believes that money unjustly taken from taxpayers that has gone towards charter schools should be returned.
“Even though it (the charter school) is classified as public,” Shutkin said in a telephone interview, “you have public dollars going into the pockets of private persons.” In reference to William Lager, Shutkin said, “I think he should have to give the money back.”
Shutkin is opposed to public charter schools, which he views as unethical. He explained why, saying tax money that is diverted to charter schools is one reason public schools across the state are failing, as they do not have enough funding. Because of this, he notes that the American schooling system is being pitted against itself, because some schools are benefitting from the failures of others.
“As soon as we start talking about winners and losers in terms of school, and not just winners, it becomes unethical,” Shutkin said.
Space also wants to make use of the auditor’s position to utilize performance audits in alleviating the opioid crisis.
“I intend to use [the auditor’s] power to do a performance audit on Medicaid, specifically with respect to the money Medicaid is spending on the opioid epidemic, to help ascertain what’s working and what’s not working,” Space says. “Because our general assembly has been gripped by extremism which is attributable to gerrymandering … it has been rendered dysfunctional, in this fight and many others.”
Space believes that once the issue of gerrymandering has been sorted out, the way Ohio’s government can approach and deal with the opioid crisis will be sped up tremendously.
Space is appearing on the ballot Nov. 6, and he encourages everyone, regardless of party, to make their way to the polls.
“Everybody matters,” he says. “Encourage your friends and family to vote. Doesn’t matter who you vote for— just vote.”
