John DeBerry Jr., a veteran House member in Tennessee, has never been fond of fundraisers.  Handshakes, not dollars, make the difference in his stretch of Memphis, where he has been campaigning the old-fashioned way for nearly 20 years.  DeBerry’s low-budget operation collects about $20,000 each election and centers on door-to-door visits.  The past year’s redistricting, which forced him into a tough primary with a colleague, didn’t change any of that, he says. 

“I’m 62 years old,” DeBerry says. “ I walked, in one-hundred-degree heat, from nine to five with a crew of five people.  We rolled around with my Suburban with the car filled with water and juice.  And we knocked on every door in every district.” 

But he also had backup.  Michelle Rhee’s education lobbying group StudentsFirst dropped $110,000 on canvassing and phone banking to ensure that DeBerry, a rare Tennessee Democrat who supports vouchers and charter schools, would prevail.  It was a record-setting sum, locals said, and even DeBerry called it “flabbergasting.”  He defeated his rival 4,084 to 2,125—that is, Rhee spent $27 per vote—and went on to win the general election uncontested. 

Ever since she resigned as chancellor of Washington, D.C. public schools in 2010 and started StudentsFirst, Rhee has raised millions of dollars from rich donors, which she funnels to local lawmakers who support her policies.  Nowhere has her influence been felt more acutely than in Tennessee, where campaigns are a bargain and where legislators eager to amend the state’s dismal record on education have made it a mecca for reformers.  To Rhee the mission also has a personal angle: Her ex-husband, Kevin Huffman, is commissioner of the state Department of Education and her two daughters attend school in Nashville. 

In 2011-2012, her group spent $533,000 on over 60 local politicians, outspending the main teachers’ union by a third and becoming Tennessee’s biggest source of campaign money outside of the party PACs, according to election filings.  Added to the $200,000-$300,000 that allied groups like Stand for Children and the Tennessee Federation for Children paid out, the result has been a gush of education-reform money taking over the state’s politics.