How did they do*? 7 lost, 2 very narrowly, but 19 will advance to the general election, including 11 teachers. While Eric Spicer lost, so too did his opponent, the SB5 voting incumbent Rep. Jarrod Martin.
We have previuosly covered some of the (evolving) positions on education of the Republican Presidential candidates, but with the Super Tuesday primary tomorrow in Ohio, we thought we'd take a look at the current state of play. Current polling averages have a very tight race: Mitt Romney at 36.2%, Rick Santorum at 36.1% and Newt Gingrich bringing up the rear with 16.1%.
Rick Santorum still holds a slim lead over Mitt Romney in the latest Ohio polls, but win or lose on Tuesday, the results of the primary are almost certainly going to give way to an ugly fight over delegates that has the potential to last for weeks.
Santorum failed to submit the required paperwork in three of the state’s congressional districts to be eligible to win any delegates and only partial paperwork in six other districts. And it’s in those six where things start to get complicated.
The former Pennsylvania senator’s campaign needed to come up with at least three names in each of the state’s 16 congressional districts for full delegate eligibility, but his failure submit full slates in some places will result in “unbound” delegates, which will be up for grabs after Super Tuesday.
Take the state’s fourth congressional district, for example. There Santorum submitted the name of one delegate, but left two other lines blank. If Santorum were to win the district, the state party would award him one delegate with the other two remaining officially un-allocated.
Rick Santorum faces other problems too. Santorum has some old fashioned ideas about education, and by old fashioned we mean pre-1785. Even Fox news, bastion of far right reporting, began to notice how extreme, and in some cases, hypocritical his positions have become.
Reporting from Bowling Green, Ohio -- Rick Santorum repeatedly fumbled on Sunday morning, with statements from his 2006 Senate campaign contradicting his current views on No Child Left Behind and placing him squarely in agreement with President Obama's call for post-high-school education or training.
On "No Child Left Behind," President Bush's signature education reform law that is now deeply unpopular among GOP voters, Santorum told Fox News' Chris Wallace that he voted for it because he supported increased testing provisions for schools, but did not like the increased spending.
Wallace highlighted a statement on Santorum's 2006 reelection website that noted Santorum's support for the act and called it "the most historic legislative initiative enhancing education opportunities to pass Congress in decades." Wallace also noted that Santorum later said he "took one for the team" in voting for the act, and Santorum denied making such a statement. [...] Santorum backed down over a statement he made recently that called President Obama a "snob" for saying all Americans should attend college. Wallace noted there was no evidence that the president had made such a statement, and rather had called on all Americans to do something after finishing high school, whether college, vocational training or an apprenticeship, a statement similar to what Santorum has said.
Close in the polls, lacking delegates, and attacked by the Republican party media machine, Rich Santorum is spread very thin in Ohio, and elsewhere.
Last week we took a look at the union members who have decided to run for the Ohio House of Representatives. With so many there's a good change you have a union member running to represent you! You can check them out at the following links. Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
Today, the day before the primary, we turn our attention to the four union members running for the Ohio Senate. Where the Ohio House has 99 seats, the Ohio Senate has only 33, with only half up for reelection every two years. This year those districts with even numbers are up for reelection.
It should be noted that the districts listed below are new as a consequence of the legislative redistricting process that happened last year.
Senate district 6 - Rick McKiddy (D) Rick is a retired member of the UAW. Rick is running unopposed in the primary. Paul Isaacs is challenging Lehner for the GOP nod to face Rick in November. Lehner was appointed to succeed State Sen. John Husted when he assumed the office of Ohio Secretary of State. Sen. Lehner voted for SB5 and the budget.
Senate district 20 - Teresa Scarmack (D) Teresa is a member of OEA. Recognized as a Master Teacher, with 23 years of teaching experience, she is running uncontested in the primary and will face Troy Balderson in the general election. Sen. Balderson was appointed to the Senate in 2011 form the House, where he voted for SB5 and the budget. You can learn more about Teresa, here.
Senate district 24 - Tom Patton (D) Tom is a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States (IATSE), President of Treasurers and Ticket Sellers Local 756 and AFL-CIO delegate. He was one of the few Republican senators to vote against SB5. He faces Jennifer L. Brady in the general election. You can learn more about Tom, here.
Senate district 26 - Tanyce Addison (D) Tanyce is a member of OEA. Tanyce is a recently retired Elgin teacher of the year. Her opponent, David Burke, voted YES on SB5. He was appointed to Karen Gillmor's Senate seat after she voted YES on SB5. You can learn more about Tanyce, here.
“Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America?” he said. “Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.”
“Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added. “But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly — much less that the state government should be running schools — is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools.
Mr. Santorum isn't just wrong, he is absurdly wrong. The Ohio constitution enshrines the provision of public education by the state. It's a defining core value, not some new fangled government edict dreamed up by supporters of bureaucratic big government 50 years ago. This was written into our constitution before US industrialization began and factories were built, it was written in our constitution in 1851.
Mr. Santorum seems to want to take us back to before 1851.
Update
B Herringten on twitter digs into the even further distant past and notes that funding of public education in Ohio began with the Land Ordinance of 1785 before Ohio was even a state
The ordinance was also significant for establishing a mechanism for funding public education. Section 16 in each township was reserved for the maintenance of public schools. Many schools today are still located in section sixteen of their respective townships, although a great many of the school sections were sold to raise money for public education
With congress unable to pass any meaningful legislation, the executive branch has wielded ever greater power in the education policy setting realm, most notably using Race to the Top to bribe cash strapped states to compete with each other in a race to implement all manner of unproven education reforms.
No doubt then, whomever wins the voters approval this coming November to become President, will have a large impact on public education and education policy for at least the next 4 years.
So it is, that tonight is the first step in selecting the next President, the Iowa caucuses. Where members of the Iowa Republican party will select their preferred candidate to face President Obama in November. (the Democrats will select a candidate too, but President Obama is unchallenged). For how this caucus works, the Desmoines Register has a handy guide.
We thought it would be useful to provide a guide on what each of the main GOP Presidential candidates have put forth as their education agenda.
Mitt Romney
A quick look at Mitt Romney's campaign website reveals that education isn't a priority. Under his issues tab he lists only jobs, healthcare and foreign policy. We have to turn to third party reporting then to discern his intentions. A reading of various articles reveals a candidate who falls in the corporate education reform camp. More testing, teachers with less influence, pay for test results. While he once supported the abolition of the Department of Education, he has since changed that stance.
Ron Paul works towards the elimination of the inefficient Department of Education, leaving education decisions to be made at the state, local or personal level. Parents should have the right to spend their money on the school or method of schooling they deem appropriate for their children.
It was arduous researching into Ron Paul's political positions as one quickly descends in to a carnival of the bizarre. This post sums up the problem quite well.
Education reform has been a top priority for Governor Perry during his 20 years of public service. He has worked to raise the overall quality of education in Texas by aligning the higher education standards more closely with the needs of business, balancing accountability with incentives for teacher and school performance and increasing the emphasis on core subject areas like math, reading and science.
One of the most memorable policy positions Rick Perry has put forth has been his desire to abolish the Department of Education
Rick Santorum doesn't have any education policy listed on his campaign website. This seems to be an evolving theme of the Republican candidates, and one we find troubling.
Perhaps his largest contribution to education policy was the "Santorum Amendment", which Wikipedia describes as follows
The Santorum Amendment was an amendment to the 2001 education funding bill which became known as the No Child Left Behind Act, proposed by then-Republican United States Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania, which promotes the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in U.S. public schools. Though the amendment only survives in modified form in the Bill's Conference Report and does not carry the weight of law, as one of the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns it became a cornerstone in the intelligent design movement's "Teach the Controversy" campaign.
On Friday, he said people often ask what he would do at a federal level to promote his education ideas.
"I say darn little, other than talking about it. One of the things a president can do and it's important for a president to do is lead a discussion about important things in America," Santorum said.
Those are the positions, as best as we could discern, of each of the current top tier candidates in the GOP primary as they head in to tonight's Iowa caucus. According to the reputable polling prognosticator, 538, here's the current polling state of play
We have now had a series of polls, from different polling firms that all confirm Ohioans overwhemingly support the repeal of SB5 by double digit margins.
Kasich has slipped a bit to 33-56, tying him with Florida’s Rick Scott for the most reviled governor in the country. Unlike Scott Walker, Kasich’s agenda has not at all rallied his base. He has plummeted with Republicans, from an already somewhat weak 71-18 approval margin two months ago to an abysmal 58-28 now
