Betsy DeVos

Betsy DeVos represents the financial wing of the Religious Right's education strategy: the decades-long effort to redirect public education funding into private and religious institutions through vouchers and charter schools. Where Rushdoony provided the theology and Farris provided the legal and institutional infrastructure, DeVos provided the money and political machinery. Elisabeth Prince was born in 1958 into a Dutch Calvinist family in Holland, Michigan, whose wealth derived from the Prince Corporation auto parts company. She married Richard DeVos Jr. in 1979, heir to the Amway (later Alticor) fortune built by his father Richard DeVos Sr. — co-founder of Amway and owner of the Orlando Magic, a significant Republican donor in his own right. The combined DeVos and Prince family fortunes made Betsy one of the most powerful political donors in Michigan and, eventually, the country. By 2017, the DeVos family had contributed over $200 million to Republican and conservative causes over their lifetimes. DeVos's Christian Reformed Church background is directly theologically relevant. The Dutch Calvinist tradition, as she has described it, teaches that education is fundamentally the responsibility of family and community — not the state. She has described this view as rooted in her faith tradition. In 2001, at The Gathering — an annual meeting of wealthy Christian donors — DeVos and her husband were recorded discussing their failed 2000 Michigan ballot initiative to amend the state constitution for school choice. She explicitly described school choice as a means to 'advance God's Kingdom' and spoke of public funding for private education producing 'greater kingdom gain.' The recording makes the religious motivation for the policy position explicit in her own words. Her Michigan record includes: working for the successful passage of Michigan's first charter-school legislation in 1993; leading the failed 2000 ballot initiative; serving as chair of the Michigan Republican Party 1996–2000 and 2003–2005; and founding the Great Lakes Education Project PAC after the 2000 defeat to continue lobbying for charter schools. Her mother, Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, was a member of the Council for National Policy's board of governors, connecting the family directly to the CNP coordination network. As U.S. Secretary of Education from January 2017 to January 2021 — confirmed only through Vice President Mike Pence's tie-breaking vote, the first time in American history a VP's vote was required to confirm a cabinet member — DeVos used the federal apparatus to advance school choice policy, redirect federal student loan oversight, and weaken Title IX enforcement. Critics documented that her voucher proposals consistently directed public funds toward private religious schools with no accountability requirements, including schools teaching young-earth creationism and anti-LGBTQ curricula. DeVos resigned from the cabinet on January 7, 2021, the day after the January 6 Capitol attack, citing her belief that Trump had 'enabled' the rioters.

Themes this entry appears in

• Christian Nationalism
• Political Strategy
• Education
• Anti-Democratic
• Race & Civil Rights

Connections from Betsy DeVos

• influenced → The School Voucher / School Choice Movement (1993) — DeVos was the school choice movement's most powerful political operative and donor for three decades: championing Michigan's 1993 charter school law, leading the 2000 Michigan ballot initiative, founding the Great Lakes Education Project PAC, donating tens of millions to Republican causes (school choice as central priority), and finally wielding federal power as Education Secretary 2017–2021 to advance the agenda nationally.

Connections to Betsy DeVos

• Richard DeVos Sr. influenced (2017) — The school voucher strategy that Richard DeVos Sr. and his son Dick DeVos Jr. had funded for four decades as an outside advocacy project was implemented as federal executive policy when Betsy DeVos — Dick's wife and Richard Sr.'s daughter-in-law — became Secretary of Education in the Trump administration in 2017. What the family had invested in through Michigan ballot campaigns, national advocacy organizations, and state legislative lobbying, Betsy DeVos pursued through the Department of Education: expanding school choice programs, promoting charter schools, rolling back public school protections, and redirecting federal education funding toward private and religious institutions. Critics read the trajectory as private political funding turned into direct institutional power.

Sources

• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 96–130
• Betsy DeVos: A Win for the Christian Right — Rolling Stone (2016)
• The Miseducation of Betsy DeVos — Dissent Magazine (2017)
• Betsy DeVos and the Threat to Separation of Church and State in Education — Century Foundation (2017)
• The Hidden Roots of Betsy DeVos's Educational Policies — University of Chicago Divinity School / Sightings (2017)