A bitter, intensely local fight has erupted in Utah over whether public money should be used to send children to private schools, turning ordinarily quiet neighborhoods into hotbeds of political activism.

Parents have been walking door-to-door, from soccer games to baseball games, hoping to persuade their friends and strangers that Utah is either helping children by giving them money to attend private schools or hurting them by taking away money that could be spent on all the state's children.

It's a debate that will likely play out in neighborhoods nationwide as voucher proponents use Utah's new school voucher program as an example to get legislation passed elsewhere. That is exactly what national voucher groups and their donors had in mind when Utah and its conservative Legislature were targeted with more than $500,000 in campaign donations last year.

Utah has the nation's broadest school voucher program, which allows parents between $500 and $3,000 for their children to attend a private school. It passed in the state House by one vote.

"This is the camel's nose under the tent," said Patrick Byrne, who is CEO of Overstock.com, an online shopping site, and gave $70,000 to the local pro-voucher group Parents for Choice in Education. "If it takes hold here and proceeds here it will have a demonstrative effect that no other states can afford to ignore."

Byrne is Parents for Choice in Education's largest donor from Utah. Nearly half the money the group spent on legislative campaigns came from a political action committee called All Children Matter based out of Alexandria, Va., that has its headquarters in Grand Rapids, Mich. All Children Matter donated $240,000 to Parents for Choice in Education in 2006 and about $250,000 during the 2004 campaign cycle, finance reports in Utah show.

Utah was one of 10 states that All Children Matter has targeted to affect state elections, spending about $8 million nationwide in the 2003-04 election cycle. It is an organization dedicated to supporting candidates who favor charter schools and voucher programs.

It's largely financed by heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune and the founders of Amway, according to finance reports in Virginia.

In 2004, Jim Walton and John Walton, children of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, each donated more than $3 million to All Children Matter, the reports showed.

In 2006, the estate of John Walton donated another $4.1 million, the reports showed.

"It's certainly not a grass-roots operation. These are heavy hitters," said Rich Robinson, director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, a nonpartisan organization that tracks campaign spending.