Arizona senator offers what school boards really need ... more partisan fights
One of our leading lights has figured out what’s wrong with Arizona’s public schools.
It’s politics.
We need more of it.
Seriously.
Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson, has proposed that we make school board elections partisan affairs. And that, she said, would be only a start.
“We should have partisan, maybe, partisan judges, maybe we should do partisan everybody, because right now the world is split, I think, and you have people that want to live their lives by one ideology and others that want to live by another, and they get to choose,” Wadsack told the Senate Education Committee this week.
“Where they want to be, where they want to live, where they send their children, which fire district they go to; all of that is determined by political ideology.”
Wadsack obsesses over all things 'woke'
Heaven help the Democrat who shows up at Wadsack’s house to fight a fire.
Or the judge who pledges allegiance to the law rather than to his or her campaign backers.
Wadsack is one of a bumper crop of culture warriors dispatched to the state Capitol last year, obsessed with waging war on all things “woke.” She quickly became a standout, posing in front of the Capitol with her trusty AR-15-style rifle — in high heels, no less — and liking social media posts suggesting 9/11 was a government conspiracy.
In her zeal to protect children from drag queens, she introduced a bill that would have criminalized parents who let their kids watch “Mulan.” (She insisted the bill didn't do what it did, then quietly amended it to keep parents out of the pokey.)
Another of her bills, seeking to ban books about transgenderism and sexuality, was so poorly worded it opened the door to banning any book that included the words “he” or “she.”
She barely won her seat in 2022
Naturally, the Arizona Republican Party named her “Freshman Senator of the Year.”
This year, however, Wadsack has thus far seemed less, well, wadsacky. I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that she has a date with voters later this year.
She moved out of her family’s central Tucson home in 2022, renting a room in a safe Republican district in northern Pima County and proceeded to knock off incumbent Sen. Vince Leach, a traditional business conservative, in the GOP primary. Now, Leach is coming for her.
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Even if she gets by him, it’s worth noting that she beat her Democratic opponent with just 51.2% of the vote. This, in a district that favors Republicans by 10%.
So, yeah, these days she seems uncharacteristically muted.
Mostly.
Politicizing school boards is all the rage
Her Senate Bill 1097 would require school board candidates to run as Republicans or Democrats (or independents), listing their party affiliation on the ballot.
Arizona is among the 41 states that have nonpartisan school board elections. Just four require partisan campaigns, as Wadsack wants to do. The rest leave it up to local communities.
Politicizing school board elections has become all the rage in conservative circles, as sleepy school board meetings have erupted into cultural battlegrounds and low-budget school board races have been contentious referendums on “parents rights.”
Here in Arizona, the movement got a boost last spring after the Washington Elementary school board voted unanimously to bar student teachers from Arizona Christian University because they don’t support same-sex marriage.It was breathtakingly illegal and the board quietly backtracked to settle the resulting discrimination lawsuit.
Wadsack’s bill is supported by the conservative Arizona Free Enterprise Club. It’s opposed by all the various education groups, including the Arizona School Boards Association, the Arizona Association of County School Superintendents and Save Our Schools Arizona.
The world doesn't need more partisan splits
“If you have a partisan designation, it restricts you because you become slavishly devoted to your partisan base, and it restricts you on coming up with consensus on issues, and school board issues should be consensus issues, not partisan battlegrounds,” Barry Aarons, a lobbyist for county superintendents group, told the board.
Wadsack said her bill is “not about politicizing education” but about arming voters with information and increasing voter participation.
“This reform is not about playing party politics,” she said. “This reform is about giving voters the information that they need to make the best decisions for their children and their schools.”
So says the woman who believes “we should do partisan everybody, because right now the world is split.”
Republicans passed this “nonpartisan” bill on a 4-3 partyline vote.
Yeah, because if there’s one thing we need, it’s more government bodies that function like the Legislature.
Or Congress.
Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona senator would turn school board elections into partisan fights