Betsy DeVos just got confirmed as the Secretary of Education. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Betsy DeVos just got confirmed as the Secretary of Education. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

On one side, you have a groundswell of grassroots action a phone campaign that clogged office lines on Capitol Hill, and an all-night speech marathon on the Senate floor. On the other, there’s boatloads of cash.

Money won the day on Tuesday, with an assist from Vice President Mike Pence, who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to confirm Betsy DeVos as the secretary of education. This was the first time a vice president ever had to break a tie for a cabinet nomination. (According to The Washington Post, a vice president in 1925 was going to issue a historic tie-breaking vote … but then he took a nap instead.)

Two Republican senators—Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine—broke ranks with their party to vote “no” on DeVos, citing an outpouring of constituent calls to reject her. But opponents couldn’t flip a third, despite their efforts.

DeVos, a billionaire from Michigan who advocates for “school choice,” has a storied history of contributing what amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars to the senators who voted for her, in addition to millions to the charter school movement and the GOP.

She does not, however, have much of a history in the way of public education. Neither she nor her children ever attended public school, and she has never been a teacher or administrator.

Instead, the sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince is “a lobbyist — someone who has used her extraordinary wealth to influence the conversation about education reform, and to bend that conversation to her ideological convictions despite the dearth of evidence supporting them,” according to the Detroit Free Press.

During her confirmation hearing, DeVos faced harsh questions from Democrats that illustrated she knew little about most of the basic issues in the world of education.

She does, however, think federal money should go towards funding Christian schools through vouchers and that guns should be allowed in schools in case a grizzly bear comes in. Her performance at the hearing has been widely panned, and mocked on Saturday Night Live last weekend.


DeVos also appeared to plagiarize from a former Education Department official in her Senate questionnaire, generally an academic no-no.

None of it was enough to stymie her nomination.

Filed Under: betsy devos, donald trump, meanwhile on capitol hill, mike pence,