Last month, Republican candidates who were backed by teachers unions or opposed school choice suffered major defeats in primaries in Idaho, Kentucky and Texas.
This is part of a larger trend happening across the country, and it should be a wake-up call for candidates running for office: Support from teachers unions is politically fatal for the Republican Party.
Power-hungry teachers unions are the enemy of parents and children.
Our public school system has been hijacked by extremists who want to impose their radical ideology on the children of other countries.
They have essentially ruined American education and made it very clear that they are more focused on trapping kids in failing public schools than on giving kids the quality education they deserve.
Throughout the pandemic, unions have been at the forefront of fighting school closures and serious learning losses.
Becky Pringle of the National Education Association and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers have lined their own pockets while fighting tooth and nail to keep schools open, making more than $500,000 a year — nearly nine times the average teacher’s salary in the United States.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, while union-controlled public schools continue to fail students in nearly every major city, Stacey Davis Gates of the Chicago Teachers Union sent her own son to a private school, arguing that school choice is racist.
But parents are waking up.
Families know that unions are trying to take away their right to raise their children and that their children are not getting the education they need.
From school board meetings to the voting booth, parents and their advocates are taking the issues into their own hands, supporting candidates and policies that advance educational freedom.
For too long, union-controlled politicians from both parties have caved to teachers unions and spoken out against school choice, despite the wishes of the communities they were elected to represent.
But this year’s Republican primaries in Idaho, Kentucky and Texas proved that parents are united behind school choice candidates and are willing to defeat politicians who don’t support their rights.
The three Republican members of the Idaho House of Representatives who had the most support from teachers unions all lost their primaries to pro-school choice candidates.
Republican opponents of school choice in Texas faced additional opposition from disgruntled families.
Twenty-one of them voted with all Democrats in the Texas House last year to block school choice, and 14 of them are now gone.
For the first time in Texas history, parents have the power to vote to pass school choice legislation.
Nine of the 13 anti-school choice Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives targeted by my organization’s school choice super PAC, AFC Victory Fund, were defeated in this year’s elections.
These victories represent a 69% win rate against incumbents, which is the hardest thing to do in politics: incumbents typically get re-elected 95% of the time.
The same was true in Kentucky, where the two Republican state legislators who received the most funding from teachers unions suffered utter defeats, losing by 44 and 48 points to opponents who supported educational freedom for students and parents.
These victories are not unique to this year: In 2022, 40 of the 69 legislators challenged by my organization and state chapters across the country lost their seats.
That year, 10 Republicans running for the House of Representatives in Tennessee were backed by teachers unions. Nine of them lost.
The school choice issue has become a test case for Republicans and emerged as a political win-win issue as parents hold politicians accountable.
The harsh truth is that these public sector unions aren’t just trying to control education and trap parents and students in failing schools;
They also want to force labor unions into every aspect of American life, increasing progressive influence and control over the American people.
But if recent primary elections across the country have taught us anything, it’s that parents, families, and ordinary Americans are tired of union overreach and their attempts to control our core institutions.
Let this election trend be a warning to them: Enough is enough.
Corey DeAngelis is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and author of “Parent Revolution: Saving Our Kids from the Extremists Ruining Our Schools.” This op-ed originally appeared in the New York Post on June 5, 2024.
