Right-wing brings dark money to campus elections
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/pro-israel-and-conservative-operatives-crush-free-speech-campus“What we’re doing in states like California, Massachusetts and New York, is we’re starting...a rather undercover, underground operation that is designed for one purpose only,” Kirk explained. “And that is to run -- and win -- Student Government Association races the same way we look at Congressional campaigns. If we can successfully retake the student governments...on these really, really far left campuses such as UC-Irvine, UCLA, and we run the student government association races with the same money, time, energy and resources as we do a Congressional campaign, then we can start to see...an effective, neutralizing factor on these campuses. You can control student funding, you can censor professors, you can get rid of free speech zones, you can then balance the curriculum, you then can use your student government post as a bully pulpit.”
Kirk pointed to BDS as a key target of his surreptitious takeover plan. “Who here has heard of BDS?” Kirk asked his audience, prompting a chorus of groans. “Every BDS resolution is passed because of student governments...They use student government associations to push this radical agenda on to these campuses…The only vulnerability there is, the only opening, is student government associations races and elections, and we’re investing a lot of time and energy and money in it. And you’d be amazed. If you spend $5,000 on a student government race, you can win. You could retake a whole college or university -- we did it at Arizona State University.”
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Pro-Israel money is flowing disproportionately into the coffers of right-wing groups that are not only determined to obstruct Palestine solidarity efforts, but which are organizing on firmly partisan lines. The initiative devised at Adelson’s casino last June is a prime example: Its first administrative hire was David Brog, the Executive Director of the Christians United For Israel organization that supports the Israeli settlement enterprise and whose almost evangelical Republican membership advances the End Times as the solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis. And the national student network he would preside over was named the “Campus Maccabees.”
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This was actually a race for city alderman; New Haven is divided into 30 wards, a lot for such a small city, and the First Ward consists entirely of 8 of Yale's 12 residential colleges (glorified dorms). So it's generally student against student. This was the mid-'80s, right when conservatroids were starting to pop up on campuses in large numbers (up at Dartmouth around that time, Laura Ingraham was infiltrating LGBT meetings and outing those who attended to their parents!). So here comes Slade Mead, your stereotypical big-bucks Ivy Leaguer 
, buying ads in every conceivable space, basically blanketing the campus with "Slade Mead. For Yale." despite the fact that this was a city election. It was estimated that he spent six bucks per student in the ward.
He lost. Rather handily. 
