A Reading Program's Powerful Patron

By that time, Best had hired a Washington lobbyist and was looking for a way to get pilot programs in some schools without going through the process of selling curricula district by district. He signed up with the firm of former U.S. representative Bob Livingston, a Louisiana Republican and former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Livingston began seeking "federal funding support for Voyager educational programs," according to his lobbying disclosure form.

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"I'd never heard what an earmark was before," Best said.

Earmarks for curricula are rare, said Keith Ashdown, who tracks such appropriations at the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. Federal law prohibits the Department of Education from dictating curricula, requiring such decisions to be made locally. No such law restricts Congress.

On Sept. 24, 2001, the House Appropriations Committee included $1 million for Voyager in the District's spending bill. A clause required the city to match it with another $1 million. But Livingston did not produce a similar earmark out of the Senate, Best said. So Voyager hired another lobbying firm, O'Connor & Hannon, which arranged a meeting for Best with Landrieu, the ranking Democrat on the D.C. appropriations subcommittee.

Landrieu was "supportive of the idea" of federally funded pilot programs for Voyager, Best said. "The data we had was persuasive."

The Fundraiser

Shortly after the meeting in Landrieu's office, Best said he was called by someone in her office to ask whether he would throw a campaign fundraiser. On Oct. 19, 2001, at Best's residence in the Claridge, a high-rise condominium complex overlooking the Dallas skyline, Landrieu gave a short talk on the importance of reading, Best said.

The campaign contributions from Voyager employees and their relatives were enough to put the company on Landrieu's all-time Top 20 list of donors for people affiliated with an organization or company, a review of federal election records showed. Voyager employees, families and political action committees have given more to Landrieu than companies such as BellSouth and Tenet Healthcare.

The donors included Randy Best and his wife, Nancy, in addition to least six other Voyager executives and Voyager's Senate lobbyist, Roy C. Coffee Jr., who said he remembered making a $500 donation but declined to discuss it. Most had never before given to a Democrat running for Congress.

Most of the donors declined to discuss the donations or the fundraiser. Jeri Nowakowski, the Voyager executive vice president for product development who led the team that developed the company's reading programs, and her husband donated $4,000. Nowakowski said Landrieu was one of the few Democrats to whom she had given campaign money because "I've just known that she has been a supporter of education."

Campaign finance records indicate that Landrieu received contributions of about $30,000 on or about Nov. 2. Four days later, she went to the Senate floor and offered an amendment to the House bill with the $1 million Voyager earmark. Landrieu jettisoned the matching money requirement and doubled the federal portion to $2 million.

"I am concerned about the current financial and management challenges of the schools and hope to work with the city on this front more specifically," Landrieu said in a speech to her fellow lawmakers. "We have to think outside of the box, in a new way."

"Sometimes," she said, "I think our District has been treated as a national guinea pig instead of the nation's capital."