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Republican Tiffany Smiley speaks at an Election Day event in Issaquah, Wash., Aug. 2.
Photo:
Ted S. Warren/Associated Press
American Federation of Teachers President
Randi Weingarten
is many things, though some Republicans hope that this midterm she’s the gift that keeps on giving. Let’s see if the broader GOP realizes the continued huge potential to tap angry parents as a swing voter bloc in November elections—and blunt the left’s abortion message.
In Washington state, five-term Democratic Sen.
Patty Murray
may finally have a race on her hands—with a poll this week showing her leading Republican
Tiffany Smiley
by only 3 points. Education is very much on voters’ minds, especially after Seattle schoolteachers voted this week to go on strike, leaving 50,000 kids and their parents in the lurch. The dispute is over a new contract, though many parents see it as the latest in a series of rolling closures.
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Ms. Murray did nothing to diffuse the frustration during a train wreck of a Sunday CNN interview, in which she refused to criticize school shutdowns. “Was it a mistake to keep children home from school so long during the pandemic?” she was asked. Ms. Murray excused the “local school officials” and “our scientific experts,” who she said were trying “to protect their children” from a pandemic “that was killing millions of Americans” (the official U.S. death toll is slightly over one million).
Ms. Smiley responded by highlighting the steep learning losses and releasing her own reform plan, which would expand school choice for low-income families, provide curriculum transparency, and reroute some U.S. Education Department dollars to higher teacher pay. The broader Smiley message is that educators need to get back to teaching “the basics” rather than “divisive” topics—a sentiment that polls show resonates loudly with parents across the political spectrum.
The question: Where’s the rest of the party? Republican
Glenn Youngkin
proved the power of furious parents a year ago, when he channeled anger over Covid school policies into an unexpected Virginia gubernatorial win. And Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis
re-highlighted the potency of that voting bloc this year, turning a fight over sexual ideology in the classroom and school choice into a GOP advantage. Mr. DeSantis only a few weeks ago used continued parental anger—and his endorsements—to help flip control of several large school boards that had put unions ahead of kids.
Here and there, candidates are taking an education stand. In Kansas, Republican gubernatorial nominee
Derek Schmidt
is hammering Democratic Gov.
Laura Kelly
for school shutdowns. Florida Republicans are gleefully highlighting Democrat
Charlie Crist’s
decision to pick a teachers union boss as his gubernatorial running mate. The Republican National Committee released a video hitting Democrats for “woke ideology” in classrooms and school vaccine mandates, but it’s not getting much play.
The GOP is rightly focused on the economy, but it will need more to keep suburban and swing voters on its side in the face of Democratic scaremongering over abortion and
Joe Biden
speeches about “semifascist” Republicans. Education is the powerful rejoinder, a reminder that conservative candidates are the ones who have all along been on the side of parents and common sense.
Democrats want to close this disgraceful school chapter, but parents aren’t nearly so willing to move on. They didn’t require last week’s official news that national testing scores have dropped to their lowest level in decades; they’ve been living that education horror. And still are. Philadelphia schools again mandated kids show up in masks, in contravention of science and parental preference. Newark, N.J., schools, ditto. The District of Columbia is attempting to bar unvaccinated kids from in-person learning, and school districts around the country have mismanaged their $190 billion federal Covid-relief windfall. Ms. Weingarten’s lame attempt to blame Republicans is the latest insult.
Pew polling from August shows that education is a top issue for nearly 60% of registered voters, coming in ahead of abortion, energy and immigration. Numerous polls show Democrats have erased their huge and longstanding advantage, with more voters now trusting Republicans than Democrats to handle education.
More striking is the voter passion education inspires. A spring Harris poll of more than 5,000 parents of school-age children found that 82% said they’d be willing to cross party lines for a candidate whose education platform aligned with their own views. That included significant numbers of minority parents, who also expressed a growing interest in school choice.
The enthusiasm and turnout potential aren’t merely theoretical. The past year has featured a stream of elections in which parents marched to the polls to flip school-board control, recall members and demand a voice in their kids’ education.
Any Republican who isn’t making criticism of failed Covid education decisions—and promises of school choice and parental involvement—a lead message is committing an election foul. American parents remain primed for a sea change in education, and the GOP dare not miss its moment.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the September 9, 2022, print edition.
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