Mystery Mail

The races for Nashville School Board are heating up and there appears to be a new player on the scene. A group called the Nashville Parents Committee is sending out mailers in support of Brian Hubert in the 3rd District race.

What’s interesting about the Nashville Parents Committee is that a google search for them yields no results. The group also hasn’t filed campaign finance disclosures with either the Davidson County Election Commission or the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance. There’s no Facebook page or Twitter feed for this committee of parents.

So, let’s take a look at these pro-Hubert mailers and see if we can find some clues.

Let’s take a look at the return address for “Nashville Parents Committee.”

Well… this is interesting. Look who has the same address:

Yes, that’s right. The Tennessee Charter School Center. That’s the group started by former Nashville Mayor and charter school backer Karl Dean. I wonder how many Nashville “parents” make up this committee. Also, the Tennessee Charter School Center is not registered as a PAC or disclosed (so far) as a donor to Hubert.

Will we ever know who is pumping tens of thousands of dollars into this race in order to move the ball for charter schools? Possibly not, as the mailer doesn’t explicitly say to “vote for” Hubert. It’s pretty damn clear that those behind the mailer want you to vote for Hubert, though.

Should dark money like this be a driving force in our elections? Did Hubert know about the mailer and coordinate with the pro-charter group? Why is a charter school group backing Hubert?

As voters head to the polls, these are important questions that Hubert and his financial backers should answer.

16 thoughts on “Mystery Mail

  1. “…these are important questions that Hubert and his financial backers should answer.”

    Had you actually bothered to ask Brian those questions, you’d have learned that he has no idea who Nashville Parents Committee is and is not happy about them using his family’s picture and his cell number without his knowledge or consent.

    I recommend that you give Brian a call – you have his phone number – and talk to him. He is an honest, upstanding guy and definitely no supporter of charter schools. I’m

    • I welcome the opportunity to publish a statement from Brian denouncing the tactics of NPC/TSCC as well as any possible explanation as to why this group believes Brian backs charters.

  2. The Hubert campaign did not authorize this mailer and we do not have any association with this “committee”. We have not been in contact or received donations from anyone tied to this group, as far as we know. We do not know the goals and values of this committee and therefore have not been able to vet whether or not they align with our campaign’s. While we appreciate whenever we can get support, we would have preferred to find out about this some other way than finding this article on twitter.

    Thank you,

    Alex Hubert
    Treasurer

  3. Brian Hubert has been my friend for years. He is an absolutely outstanding human being and a person of the highest integrity. I understand that at this moment in our politics it can be hard to know what to believe, but I ask you to believe me when I tell you what I know for a fact: Brian had nothing to do with these mailers. The whole situation is bizarre, and whatever the agenda is of the group that sent them, they did so without asking and against his wishes.

    • That’s great and I’ll happily publish a statement from Brian denouncing the mailers and the group behind them.

  4. I read this article on Friday, and, reading the comments and looking at Brian Hubert’s assertions on Twitter, I find it increasingly troubling.

    Firstly, I am not a supporter of Hubert’s campaign—neither financially nor electorally. I have studied both campaigns, and, barring any new information, my wife & I will reluctantly vote for Emily Masters.

    Secondly, the Hubert campaign, in the comments to the article, has categorically denied any association with this mailer or the group behind it. The author of the article, in reply, states that he/she will “happily publish a statement from the campaign”, but does not do so, letting the innuendo remain.

    Thirdly, the author apparently did not contact either the Hubert campaign, the Masters campaign, or the Tennessee Charter School Center for this story. It appears that the author did nothing more than a Google search. This is very low-quality journalism, and an editor should not have printed the story in its current state.

    Fourthly, the author is using a pseudonym, Ed Reporter, which raises more doubts about the story—and is quite the misnomer, since the story didn’t fill the requirements of reporting.

    There are few compelling reasons to vote for either Masters or Hubert. An unresearched piece that is tantamount to a hit-job on one of the candidates does not make our task as voters any easier.

    • Appreciate your feedback. I have not published a statement from Hubert b/c I still have not received a formal statement from Hubert. The piece is based on the actual mailers, included with pictures. If Hubert wants to deny this or denounce NPC or TSCC, I’m ready to receive and publish such a statement. Neither the Davidson Co. Election Commission nor the TN Registry of Election Finance have any record of PAC/campaign finance filings for NPC… this is noted in the article.

      • Ed Reporter – have you reached out to the Hubert campaign to request a statement? In addition to his statement on the mailer and his association with it, how about asking for his views on Charter Schools? Have you reached out to the TCSC to get their statement on it and if so, what did they say. If not, why not? This article needs more info and facts to got with it. Otherwise, it is just gossip.

        • It’s a little late for this critique at this point — the campaign is over and Mr. Hubert was soundly defeated. Nice to see that you are engaged in the process MONTHS after the election is over, way to go, citizen!

  5. As far as I have ever known, in my nearly 60 year of life, no story is ever printed or put out on any news show before the reporter actually has gotten the full story. To put an article out under a pseudonym that only reports certain selected facts, without giving the person you are reporting those facts on a chance to reply to such a scurrilous, scandalous accusation tells me you were more interested in gaining some kind of attention for your pseudonym than you were actually interested in reporting a full news story. The scandal here is that ANY group or any individual would send out mailers and spend thousands of dollars doing that without the consent and knowledge of the candidate they were claiming to represent. This has the faint but recognizable stench of dirty politics, those kind of methods and dirty tricks employed by some unethical people in an attempt to misrepresent Mr. Hubert’s stance toward charter schools, an attempt to slander him by associating him with whoever did this. That you willingly played a part in putting out half of a story without even giving the man a chance to comment on this whole thing, yet you’ve named yourself Mr. “Reporter”, makes me wonder what your relationship is with the group who did this? It was needlessly one sided and seems you intended to be hurtful to the man and his campaign.

  6. The following statement is issued by Dr. Maya Bugg, CEO, Tennessee Charter School Center, in reference to Tennessee Education Report’s accusation of the Tennessee Charter School Center being involved in a mailer campaign supporting Brian Hubert:

    On July 24, 2020, the Tennessee Education Report wrote a post accusing the Tennessee Charter School Center of involvement with a mailer that was sent out by a group called the Nashville Parents Committee in support of Metro Nashville Public School Board candidate Brian Hubert in the 3rd District race.

    The accusation was false and based on the Parents Committee’s address being the same office building as the Tennessee Charter School Center operates from. That address is for a large office building in downtown Nashville that, in addition to a number of independent businesses, also houses a coworking space occupied by more than 100 businesses, organizations and individuals including the Tennessee Charter School Center and many others.

    The Tennessee Charter School Center is in no way affiliated with the Nashville Parents Committee or the mailer in question. As a 501(c)3 non-profit advocacy organization, TCSC abides by the legal requirement that it is prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.

    It is the responsibility of a site which aims to provide “relevant education news and in-depth analysis of education policy impacting our schools” to also provide accurate information. As always, we at the TN Charter School Center are available to address any questions about our organization’s work or public charter schools in Tennessee. We fully condemn the sharing of false information to the public and hope that the parties involved will post a public correction to statements promptly.

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