School Choice Opponents Increasingly Face Electoral Repercussions

Along with property tax relief, the other top 2023 priority for Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) is enactment of school choice, which the Lone Star State currently lacks. Despite polling that shows widespread and bipartisan support for school choice in Texas, the regular session of the Texas Legislature adjourned at the end of May with no deal on school choice.

The Texas Senate passed legislation in April, Senate Bill 8, creating an education savings account (ESA) program that would provide parents with $8,000 annually to send their kid to a private school, should that be the best option for them. The Texas House, however, failed to follow suit. As a result, Governor Abbott has already made clear he’ll be convening a special session later this year to get school choice enacted.

Aside from the substantive policy arguments and favorable polling cited by Governor Abbott and other champions of school choice, Republican legislators in Texas should be aware of the potential negative electoral ramifications for GOP opponents of school choice, for which there is mounting evidence. In fact, this new dynamic has been demonstrated recently in several other red states.

Take Iowa, where Governor Kim Reynolds (R) enacted the first school choice bill of 2023 in January when she signed House File 68, legislation that will provide ESAs to Iowa families. Families enrolled in the ESA program will receive $7,598 annually. Any money remaining after tuition is paid can be used to buy text books, school supplies, and cover other education-related costs. Enactment of a universal ESA program has long been a goal of Governor Reynolds. But in order to achieve it, she first had to work to defeat a number of Republican legislators in primaries.

In Iowa’s 2022 Republican primary, held nearly one year ago, Governor Reynolds worked to successfully beat nearly half a dozen incumbent Republican legislators. Governor Reynolds targeted those now-ousted incumbents due to their opposition to ESAs.

“I’ve been very clear that it’s critical we have a strong public school system,” Reynolds said during a June 7 radio interview, adding that “parents deserve the choice of what environment is best suited for their children to thrive.”

The American Federation for Children (AFC), a non-profit that works to expand school choice, has been highly influential on this front. AFC’s political affiliates deployed resources in a number of states last year in order to defeat state legislative candidates who oppose school choice and to back those who support school choice. Of the 40 incumbent state legislators that AFC’s political affiliates targeted in 2022, seven were in Iowa, the most of any one state.

“The Iowa school-choice story is instructive for every state with an uphill climb against entrenched special interests,” Tommy Schulz, CEO of the American Federation for Children, noted in an article published in the New York Post. “For most of recent history, parents and school-choice champions faced incredibly strong headwinds from better-funded, ruthless opponents who dominated legislatures and election campaigns.”

“During the last two legislative sessions, Iowa Republican lawmakers stood with Democratic colleagues to block the education savings account’s passage,” Schulz added. “This dynamic was not new or unique to Iowa — GOP legislators are often a key barrier to educational freedom across the country.”

In fact, the dynamic Schulz describes is at play now in the Texas capitol. Some in Austin foresee a similar scenario to Iowa possibly playing out in Texas, should Republicans thwart attempts to pass ESA legislation during the upcoming special session. A University of Texas-Austin Texas Politics Project poll conducted in April, like previous polls, found significant bipartisan backing for ESAs in Texas. The poll found overall 60% of Texans support ESAs, with backing from 75% of Republicans surveyed and nearly half of Democrats. The UT-Austin poll also found 64% of black voters and 56% of hispanic voters support ESAs.

Iowa isn’t the only state where Republican opponents of school choice went on to suffer electoral defeat last year. In Tennessee, two incumbent state legislators who voted against Tennessee’s ESA pilot program were targeted by AFC’s political affiliates. Those two incumbents were subsequently defeated in Tennessee’s August primary.

Representative Bob Ramsey (R), one of the two incumbents defeated in the 2022 Tennessee primary, expects school choice advocates who spent money to defeat him will have more clout moving forward. “The fact that they won so many elections will put the fear in some members, and my guess is they’ll be quite a bit more influential,” said Ramsey.

Texas legislators can also look neighboring Oklahoma for an example of the electoral risk that now comes with opposing school choice in a red state. In the 2022 Republican primary elections in Oklahoma, two challengers endorsed by Governor Kevin Stitt (R) defeated incumbent legislators who oppose school choice.

AFC’s political affiliates have already made a seven figure commitment to defeating anti-school choice incumbents in the 2024 primaries. Georgia, where ESA legislation was introduced but fell three votes short of passage this year, is a state where resources will likely be deployed to support school choice proponents and defeat opponents in 2024. Should an ESA bill not make it to Governor Abbott’s desk this year, Texas will likely become another state where school choice supporters engage Republican primaries.

The filing deadline to run for a Texas state legislative seat in 2024 is this November. It will not be lost on many legislators that, since the special session on school choice will have occurred well before then, it means Governor Abbott, AFC, and others will have plenty of time to find pro-school choice challengers to run against anti-ESA incumbents next year.