Gates, Broad to Push Education in Presidential Campaign

As education competes with a host of other issues for attention during the 2008 presidential-election season, two prominent foundations unveiled a plan today to spend up to $60 million on an ambitious campaign to ensure strong billing for education, and to help shape debate on the issue.

The nonpartisan effort, backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, appears to be one of the most costly single-issue campaigns undertaken during a presidential race. The 18-month campaign is being announced today in South Carolina to coincide with tomorrow’s debate there among Democratic presidential candidates.

The philanthropies have tapped some political heavyweights from both major parties to help get the message across. Former Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado, a Democrat, is the campaign’s chairman, and its executive director is Marc S. Lampkin, a Republican lobbyist who was deputy campaign director for George W. Bush...