THE S.C. SENATE District 22 race is not about Ken Wingate and Joel Lourie any more.

That’s because an out-of-state group with an extreme agenda has dumped what looks like more than $100,000 into the race in the last week. (That’s $80,000 we know about in TV ads, plus a couple of mailings that likely cost more than $10,000 each.)

Even when it was just between Mr. Wingate and Mr. Lourie, two men I’d known and respected for some time, I had already made up my mind that I preferred Joel Lourie. So had our editorial board. We had good things to say about Mr. Wingate, but had to go with Mr. Lourie’s stellar record.

Also, while we thought Mr. Wingate might be OK on education, we knew Mr. Lourie would be one of the Senate’s staunchest advocates for schools.

Mr. Wingate has good things to say about his support of schools, but also has a disturbing affinity for the “choice” movement. That, combined with his close association with Gov. Mark Sanford — for whom “choice” is the only kind of education reform — gave us pause.

It also attracted the support of the Michigan-based All Children Matter. This group doesn’t care about Ken Wingate or Joel Lourie or you or me or any of the people of South Carolina. It cares only about advancing its agenda. And since it doesn’t mention its agenda in its ads (for the good reason that it is unpopular), I’ll define it: Advancing a national movement away from the notion that states have a responsibility to provide good, accountable public schools. In South Carolina, the group backs the governor’s proposal to take money that would otherwise go to run public schools and use it to pay some parents to send their kids to private schools.

It doesn’t want to do this through open debate, because it would lose. Instead, the group uses stealth tactics in an attempt to stack the Legislature with people who will do its bidding. It believes, with good reason, that Mr. Wingate will be more malleable to its purpose. By contrast, there is probably no one running for legislative office this year who is less likely to do this Orwellian-named group’s bidding than Joel Lourie.

It doesn’t matter to All Children Matter that few Senate districts in South Carolina are more supportive of public education than District 22 (and with good reason, given the excellence of the schools in the district). That just gives the group more motivation to talk about something other than its real agenda in its ads.

It is clearer than ever that Mr. Lourie is the better candidate for District 22 (as Republican Barney Giese asserted in endorsing the Democrat last week). I already had reasons to believe that. To those I must now add my disappointment with Mr. Wingate.

Several weeks ago, Mr. Wingate told me that if All Children Matter weighed into this race, he would denounce it. He now refuses to do so, using the Clintonian logic that since All Children Matter has a South Carolina presence, this does not constitute an incursion by outsiders. Yet the group had two South Carolinians representing it before he made his promise. I asked him if he had any evidence demonstrating that “All Children Matter of South Carolina” today consists of anything more than a Post Office box and the two individuals he and I both knew were involved before. “I am under the impression that there is more of a presence than that,” he said. “I’m not going to start reeling off names.”

But set that aside, because this is no longer about Ken Wingate and Joel Lourie. It’s about whether the voters of District 22 will be persuaded to go along with a group that would undermine their public schools.

Mr. Lourie believes that if that happens, it will not only mean his defeat. It will be a huge boost for the narrow agenda of All Children Matter. If it can use its money to defeat one of the strongest advocate of public schools in one of the most pro-school districts in the state, it will intimidate the rest of the Legislature into supporting it.

I’m afraid he’s right. And for the sake of the rest of South Carolina, I sincerely hope the people of District 22 won’t let that happen.

Write to Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.