Dark Money Flows into Cobb School Board Race

The Cobb County school board has been a flashpoint for political confrontations in Georgia's education system. The board, which has had a 4-3 Republican majority since 2019, has drawn attention for conservative decisions about curriculum and discipline that are more hardline than in many redder districts. This year, control of the board will come down to a single race. Vice Chair David Chastain, a Republican who serves in the District 4 post, faces Micheal Garza, a Democrat, in a bid for a fourth term, while Democrats are guaranteed to keep the other two seats up for election. Now, a dark money group under the name “Keep Cobb Schools Strong” has dropped $46,000 and counting to keep Republican control of the board. That group has close ties to both of the attorneys who drew the 2022 school board map, which the current map is based on.

Chastain, who was first elected to the school board in 2014 as a Republican, was previously the Libertarian nominee for State School Superintendent in 2006 and for Secretary of State in 2010. The Libertarian Party described him as a “long time Libertarian” at the time. Note that the Cobb County School District excludes the city of Marietta, which has its own school district. CCSD nevertheless has had a consistent blue lean since 2016, but the district map favors Republicans.

The narrow Republican majority on the Cobb County Board of Education has taken a hard line on social issues. Perhaps most famously, in 2023 they fired a fifth grade teacher for reading a book about gender identity to students, overriding their own hearing panel. Earlier this year, they threatened to suspend students who participated in a walkout to protest ICE, and they appear to have followed through. Just last month, Superintendent Chris Ragsdale announced the district would pull a Toni Morrison novel from library shelves. The board also recently decided to stop broadcasting the public comment portion of its meetings. All these policies are at stake in this year's election.

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The last time a Cobb school board seat flipped was in 2018, when Democrats flipped two seats, drastically narrowing what had been a 6-1 Republican majority. Republicans didn't even bother to try holding the District 2 post, which went uncontested, and Democrats narrowly flipped District 6, but Chastain held on by a 7% margin in District 4. Since then, Democrats have repeatedly fallen short in their efforts to flip a fourth seat, even as the school district remains blue overall. Republicans narrowly held all three competitive districts in 2020 and 2024, and Chastain won by just under 8% in 2022. In 2024, County Commission Chair Lisa Cupid won 55% of the vote districtwide. Across the three Democratic-held seats, she won 69% of the vote, while she won 47% of the vote across the four Republican-held seats and carried none of them, although she did run ahead of the Democratic nominees in the three seats that were contested that year.

In 2021, the Republican majority on the school board retained law firm Taylor English Duma LLP to redraw the school board districts. Critics noted that Earl Ehrhart, a former state representative from Cobb, led the firm's consulting division at the time; Ehrhart, a hardline conservative, is known for his involvement in education policy and once held so much influence over the University System of Georgia that he was known as the “twentieth Regent”.¹ Taylor English developed three maps, one for then-Chair Randy Scamihorn and two for Democrats who requested their own maps. In a presentation on the proposed maps, Taylor English indicated that questions should be directed to their attorneys Bryan Tyson and Loree Anne Paradise, both of whom currently reside in Cobb. Notably, when I requested details of the proposed maps beyond the low-resolution JPG files that had been publicly shared, the school district attempted to claim attorney work product privilege; however, after I explained to them that the requested documentation “does not appear to be privileged”, they reversed course and released the files. I have included below a copy of the presentation; the full files are available on my legacy website.²

The map drawn by Taylor English for Scamihorn was later introduced as legislation by Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, Earl's wife and successor in office. That map was adopted by the Georgia General Assembly along partisan lines and helped Chastain win the 2022 election; however, a federal judge later found the districts to be racially discriminatory and ordered a new map. The General Assembly then passed the revised map proposed by Sen. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth) in early 2024, again along partisan lines; given the short timeline, I suspect this map was drawn by the nonpartisan Legislative and Congressional Reapportionment Office, but it was directly based on the Taylor English map. Taylor English has since dissolved; of the two named attorneys from the redistricting presentation, Tyson went on to cofound the firm Tyson Younker, while Paradise now works for Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones. Her husband, Scott, is the officer of record for an obscure firm called Mine Creek Strategies and is a partner at P2 Public Affairs. Scott was Herschel Walker's campaign manager, and both Scott and Loree Anne have worked for now-Sen. Josh Hawley.

Despite the difficult map and past difficulties, Democrats have good reason to be optimistic. Trump carried District 4 by a mere 245 votes in 2024 out of 57,569 ballots cast. In the July 31 campaign filing, which covered the period from May 1 to July 31, Garza reported raising $20,643.70 to Chastain's $5,465, and Garza spent $13,332.32 to $4,604.74 from Chastain. Garza also outspent Chastain 4:1 from February 1 to April 30, although Chastain did outraise Garza 2:1 during the same period. As of July 31, Garza led in cumulative funds raised and spent – and even more incredibly for a challenger, he only had a few hundred dollars less on hand. And this is the first midterm election under a Republican president since 2018, the last year Democrats flipped a Cobb school board seat.

On October 9, a man named Brett Durham registered an independent committee – commonly known as a super PAC – called “Keep Cobb Schools Strong, Inc.” Durham is the chairperson and treasurer of the committee, but it is registered at the address of Tyson Younker. In fact, Tyson is the sole named incorporator and filed articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State on October 6.³ Tyson also serves on the executive board of the Federalist Society's Atlanta chapter and is a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association and the American Enterprise Institute Leadership Network. He is perhaps best known for his work on redistricting and elections, which spans a quarter-century and has primarily been for Republican clients.

Through October 21, Keep Cobb Schools Strong has reported spending $25,000 on digital ads and $21,306.58 on direct mail, all to stop Garza from winning the election and flipping control of the school board. They are also maintaining a website, where they directly quote Garza and paint his views as “far left” and unacceptable. On Facebook, where the organization has spent at least $6,000, several of the digital ads they are running are simply screenshots from the website with accompanying text, but there is also a brief video ad where a narrator quotes Garza on school safety. (The organization is not a listed advertiser in Google's Ad Transparency Center.) WHOIS records indicate the website was registered on October 8 at 6:50 p.m.

Notably, they omit Garza's full answer on school security, where he criticizes the school board for a pattern of contracts with “secretive” companies and spending on “unproven, flashy solutions” and goes on to advocate for state legislation around safe gun storage.

All funding for Keep Cobb Schools Strong thus far has come from the “Georgia Issues Forum, Inc.” Unlike Rhode Island, Georgia does not require groups like the Forum to disclose where their money is coming from, allowing donors to disguise their spending on elections; conduits like this are widely known as dark money groups. However, while we may not know who is providing this funding, I can look at who's directing it.

The Georgia Issues Forum was incorporated in 2023 as the DeKalb Issues Forum, Inc., with named incorporator Mitchell M. Hunter and registered agent Carey Miller. Miller served as Executive Counsel for former Gov. Nathan Deal, while Hunter is a partner at Public Strategies 360, LLC. Despite the original name of the Forum, Hunter has close ties to Cobb County Republicans: he managed Phil Gingrey's first congressional campaign in 2002 and has also worked for former Attorney General Sam Olens. He also helped lead the successful 2012 campaign for a pro-charter school ballot measure, and he is a registered voter in the city of Marietta. I could not find any state or local filings indicating political activity by the DeKalb Issues Forum prior to this year, but the organization's IRS filings indicate that it has previously sent “factually neutral voter education materials” about SPLOST (local sales tax) votes in DeKalb County and Fulton County, and Hunter briefly operated a different group that advocated for approval of the DeKalb SPLOST.

A similarly named organization, the Fulton Issues Forum, sent direct mail to voters regarding the 2021 Fulton County T-SPLOST vote (a T-SPLOST is a sales tax dedicated to transportation purposes), which did not directly advocate for or against the tax. As I observed after receiving that mail myself, the Fulton Issues Forum was registered by Loree Anne Paradise and shared an address with Public Strategies 360, LLC, where Mitch Hunter is a current partner. That organization dissolved shortly after the 2021 T-SPLOST was approved.

Hunter was removed from the DeKalb Issues Forum's paperwork in 2024, with “James Millican” then named as CEO, CFO, and Secretary. In 2025, Samuel Lancaster was named as Secretary, and Tyson replaced Miller as the registered agent. On July 30, the Forum changed its name to the Georgia Issues Forum, Inc., and on September 14, the address on file for Tyson was updated to the business address of Tyson Younker. The most recent detailed IRS filings by the organization, from 2024, list three directors: James S. Millican, Samuel Lancaster, and David Hunter. (David Hunter is the name of Mitch Hunter's father, although I have no way of knowing if this is the same David Hunter.)

The Forum's articles of incorporation and current annual registration are below. Although all addresses within appear to be corporate, I have nevertheless redacted them. The unredacted original documents are available from the Secretary of State.

J. Seth Millican, who is currently President and CEO of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association, doesn't go by his first name, which happens to be James. However, the association's affiliated nonprofit lists “James Seth Millican” of Marietta as CEO. Furthermore, in 2016, Gov. Deal appointed a Seth Millican to the Georgia Athletic and Entertainment Commission, listing the same downtown Atlanta office address for Millican that is associated with him on the Forum's current filings; the 2023 reappointment order states that Millican is a Cobb County resident. As it happens, a James Seth Millican is registered to vote in Marietta.

Furthermore, Millican served for over a decade as executive director of the Georgia Transportation Alliance. In that role, he was involved in T-SPLOST campaigns across the state and in shaping policy around T-SPLOSTs (a SPLOST is an optional local sales tax, and a T-SPLOST is specifically dedicated to transportation). Mitch Hunter's biography states that Hunter “has been a lead strategist on every successful T-SPLOST campaign across the state”, so it is highly plausible that Hunter and Millican would know each other.

Like Bryan Tyson, Millican has ties to the conservative American Enterprise Institute's Leadership Network, where he “serves in a volunteer public affairs capacity”. He also has substantial work experience in the policy and political realm, apparently even beyond his time at the Transportation Alliance. What about Samuel Lancaster? Well, a “lifelong Marietta resident” named Sam Lancaster wrote to the Marietta Daily Journal in 2024 in support of legalizing gambling in Georgia, arguing that it would enable the state to better combat illegal gambling. A Twitter profile for Sam Lancaster, using a handle that suggests a middle name of Adam, shows several tweets supporting Burt Jones's primary campaign. A Samuel Adam Lancaster is registered to vote in Cobb County, one of only two Samuel Lancasters registered to vote in Georgia. And a Sam Lancaster maintains a LinkedIn page stating he is an Associate at Mine Creek Strategies, the obscure firm operated by Scott Paradise.

Mine Creek Strategies is incorporated in Scott Paradise's home state of Kansas – at least, it was. The Kansas Secretary of State currently lists it as having forfeited its charter for failure to timely file. (In Georgia, this is an easily curable defect, but I am not familiar with Kansas's policy.) Its original registered agent in Georgia was Tyson, but currently the registered agent is Loree Anne Paradise. The firm's listed “office” seems to be the Paradises' home address, which would be highly unusual if it were a large organization. Notably, during this year's Republican primary, both Lancaster and Loree Anne Paradise mocked pro-Jackson tweets posted by Brian Robinson, a Republican consultant who is well known in political circles; the Robinson tweets in question received little other engagement. (Lancaster and both Paradises have been rather quiet on Twitter since Burt Jones lost the runoff.)

Mine Creek Strategies, like many political consulting firms, has an extremely limited digital footprint and seemingly few clients. I could only find two reported payments to them this cycle in Georgia, one of which was a large May 27 payment from Supreme Court Justice Charlie Bethel's reelection campaign ($31,996.72 for GOTV texts). Bethel also paid P2 – where Scott Paradise is a partner – $10,000 for consulting on May 26, and he paid Tyson Younker for legal fees on June 1. (I do not believe Bethel has any involvement here, to be clear.) The other Georgia payment I found was a Jan. 16 payment from the American Conservative Fund ($1,050.17 for SMS).

Adding federal records to my search, I found only one more payment to Mine Creek Strategies, on August 14. It came from a super PAC called “Gulf Coast Conservatism”, which paid them $2,336.96 for two rounds of political texts, seemingly to support Jim Norton's congressional campaign in Florida; this was one of only three disbursements made by the super PAC before it dissolved.⁴ Of course, it is possible the firm might have clients running in non-federal elections outside Georgia.

I have included selected corporate filings for Mine Creek Strategies below, with addresses redacted.

For what it's worth, Millican, Lancaster, and Paradise all live in Marietta proper, outside the Cobb County School District's boundaries, with only Tyson actually living within CCSD. It seems clear enough that Tyson, Millican, and Lancaster have close ties to Republicans both in Cobb and statewide.

But what about Brett Durham, the named treasurer of Keep Cobb Schools Strong? He doesn't appear to be a political consultant or attorney, unlike the others. Durham, who lives in Marietta (again, not in CCSD) and is in his late 40s, is only the officer of record for a single Georgia business or nonprofit, which is not of a political nature, and he holds a master's in divinity.

Where did Durham go to divinity school, you might ask? From 2007-2010, he attended Talbot School of Theology, a evangelical Christian school of Biola University known for its conservatism. Kristina Karamo, an alumna of Talbot, was the Republican nominee for Michigan Secretary of State in 2022 and is a noted 2020 election denier. Both during Durham's time at Talbot and today, Biola's doctrinal statement denied human evolution⁵, proclaimed the text of the Bible to be “without error or misstatement”, and referenced the role of Israel in bringing about a “millennial reign of Christ”. There are many Christian viewpoints that are either fully compatible with science or at least not hostile to it, but outright denial of evolution isn't one of them. This might seem like a settled issue today. But as recently as 2002, during my lifetime, the Cobb County Board of Education required a sticker be placed in its biology textbooks that stated:

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Evolution is a theory in the same way that gravity is a theory: both explain the world and are supported by mountains of hard facts. It is one thing to argue that a divine creator had a hand in shaping evolution; it is another to entirely deny it. In a similar vein, while Christians believe in the accuracy of the Bible generally, Biola takes a much stronger position:

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts. They are without error or defect of any kind.

This position is influential in evangelical Christianity, but it stands in conflict with scientific evidence about the age of the Earth, among other things. Again, it is very much possible to be Christian and believe that certain elements of the Bible are metaphorical or that some of its teachings were fashioned for their particular societies. Even among evangelicals, a belief in the total inerrancy of the Bible is only one major position.

The millennialism espoused by Biola University is a belief in a literal future thousand-year Messianic age. It should not be confused with millenarianism, the related belief that such an age is imminent. Biola does not explicitly endorse millenarianism, but they do state, “The time of this ‘rapture’ is unknown, and thus believers are to live constantly watchful and ready.” Their belief about Israel's role in a millennial age is similarly associated with millenarianism.

Perhaps less surprisingly, Biola's current doctrinal statement includes opposition to abortion and any marriage not between a man and a woman, and further states that sex outside of their concept of marriage is unacceptable.⁶ In the educational context, this position is closely associated with abstinence-only sex education. Research has shown that abstinence-only sex education has no effect on STD transmission rates and is associated with an increase in teen pregnancy, while comprehensive sex education, which provides age-appropriate instruction to teens about safe practices, is effective at improving health outcomes.

All this being said, I again note that Durham is not a political figure and does not appear to have publicly expressed stances on political or educational issues, including sex education and the teaching of evolution, or even on theological issues. The other people linked to Keep Cobb Schools Strong, by contrast, all have clear ideological and personal ties to the Georgia Republican Party and to Cobb Republicans in particular.

Another group, New Southern Majority, is making direct mail and text expenditures in support of Garza, totaling $11,583.81 on direct mail and $588.88 on text through October 23. This group is funded by the SPLC Action Fund. I chose to focus in this newsletter on Keep Cobb Schools Strong because New Southern Majority has been active in school board races since at least 2024, because SPLC employees' involvement in Cobb school board races has been highlighted elsewhere, and because the Action Fund has a more detailed 2025 form 990 on file with the IRS. (The Action Fund's EIN is 83-1085161, and the Forum's EIN is 93-3936039.)

You might be wondering what you can do about all this. Well, if you're registered to vote in District 4 – which you can check here – you can research the candidates directly, rather than relying on outside sources like Keep Cobb Schools Strong or, well, this newsletter. David Chastain's website is here; Micheal Garza's is here. The Marietta Daily Journal ran a voter guide earlier this month featuring responses from both candidates about key questions like Superintendent Ragsdale's future, the removal of books from school libraries, and public comment at Board meetings. (If you are a District 4 voter and you cannot read the voter guide due to the paywall, email me – eli@elium2.com – and I would be happy to provide you with a gift link.)

Another thing you can do is advocate for the legislature to enact campaign finance reforms. Of course, the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which authorized super PACs in the first place, limits the government's ability to regulate campaign spending, as does a broader line of cases stretching a half-century, from 1976's Buckley v. Valeo to this year's decision in NRSC v. FEC. But the reason we don't know who's paying for this mail is that conduit entities like the Georgia Issues Forum aren't required to disclose donors. Rhode Island, by contrast, has a law that requires conduit entities to themselves disclose their donors, shining a light on dark money.

Georgia's campaign finance laws and enforcement are quite weak – as a campaign treasurer myself, I would know – and there is substantial room for stricter requirements, especially around disclosure, even within the scheme the Supreme Court has imposed on our elections. You can check your State House district here and find contact information for your State Senator and State Representative on the General Assembly's website.

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¹As an aside, my first time contacting my legislators was a call to my state senator to oppose legislation authored by Ehrhart that would have interfered with the Title IX process. (The legislation failed.)

²I would usually consider redacting the emails for the attorneys, but given Taylor English no longer exists, I imagine the emails do not work.

³Tyson is currently the registered agent for over a hundred Georgia organizations, which appear to almost all be conservative political campaigns or issue-based lobby groups.

⁴The super PAC originally filed with the prohibited name “Friends of Jim Norton”.

⁵Statement that humans do not “share a common physical ancestry with earlier life forms”.

⁶Marriage and sex were not included in the university's 2010 statement. From at least 2013-2019, Biola stated that “Biblical marriage consists only of a faithful, heterosexual union between one genetic male and one genetic female, and biblical marriage is the only legitimate and acceptable context for a sexual relationship.” Biola now states that “God’s intent for sexual intimacy is to occur only in the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.” I suspect this evolution is a response to the increased prominence of relationships that do not fit their model, rather than an actual change of position.

Edit: Added the paragraph about Millican's tenure at the Georgia Transportation Alliance.

You can contact me for corrections via eli@elium2.com.

© 2026 Eli H. Spencer Heyman. If you would like to reprint part or all of this, please credit me by linking to the post.