Since there was not a Reagan-type candidate in the race, I did not pay any attention to the presidential primary contests yesterday.
Instead, I was focused on state legislative races in Texas. There was a concerted effort to replace 21 Republicans who sided with the education establishment during a battle over school choice last year.
The good news is that five of those Republicans didn’t run for reelection and at least four of them will be replaced with supporters of school choice. And it may be five based on the upcoming results of a run-off election.
The better news, though, is that many of the pro-establishment GOPers who ran for reelection were defeated yesterday. In some cases, decisively.
And in other cases, they will probably lose their run-off elections.
Here are some headline results, as shared by Corey DeAngelis of the American Federation for Children.
These results are very good for two reasons.
- First, it almost certainly means school choice will become law in Texas next year. Proponents thought they needed to win six races, and that’s already happened.
- Second, the Texas results send a big message to Republican lawmakers in other states where school choice is on the agenda. Simply stated, if you side with union money over student opportunity, you may lose your seat (same thing happened in Iowa in 2022, leading to school choice in 2023).
I’ll close by noting that Texas GOP voters also were asked their opinion on school choice yesterday. Here are the results.
No wonder school choice is going from fantasy to reality.
P.S. One of my hopes for 2024 already has partly materialized.
