A Loose Coalition Is Coming for Dan Patrick And Its Not a Bunch of Democrats
Last edited Tue Jan 16, 2018, 09:26 AM - Edit history (1)
With a wireless microphone attached to his striped tie, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was striding across the stage at a Texas Public Policy Foundation event in Austin, describing a legislative agenda that ranged from pushing a bill to limit access to gender-specific bathrooms to efforts to limit property tax increases by capping local government spending. Sitting in the audience, listening intently, was Kristin Tassin, a long-time Republican and president of the Fort Bend ISD school board. When Patrick got to the part of his speech where he talked about public schools and his private school voucher plan of special needs children, he suddenly said something that was like a slap in the face to Tassin. “We’re having a bit of a battle with educrats,” Patrick said. “That’s not teachers. That’s not even principals or good superintendents. It’s educrats who have forgotten that it should be about the kids and not about the adults.”
Leaving the meeting angry, Tassin stormed up to her hotel room and dashed off an open letter to Patrick for the Houston Chronicle, declaring that she was a mother of three children in public schools, an elected official, and—“contrary to what you may believe”—she and people like her are not “educrats.” She blasted Patrick for a school finance system that favors the state Legislature over local taxpayers. Tassin said she and her husband have been advocates for mainstreaming special needs children, because one of their daughters was born with Down syndrome. Patrick’s proposal was for a private school voucher program for special needs children. Tassin said most private schools do not accept special needs children, and the ones that do accept only that population so that the children do not receive a mainstream education. “As a parent of a child with a disability, I am frustrated when I hear start leaders use my child as an excuse to support school vouchers,” Tassin wrote. As lieutenant governor, Patrick is the presiding officer of the state Senate, and Tassin told him, “I’ll see you in Austin.”
A year later, that may become more true than Patrick would have imagined. Tassin is now running for a seat in the state Senate, and she is just one candidate in a growing coalition of education and business groups that want to roll back the social conservative agenda of Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott. And recognizing the ineffectiveness of the Texas Democratic Party, they are concentrating their efforts on the upcoming March Republican primaries instead of betting on candidates in the general election. “There is a perfect storm brewing, and it goes a lot deeper than just a vouchers vote,” Tassin told me. “What really led me to step into this race is I really see this past session as an indicator of failed leadership and, often, particularly in the Senate.”
This is, at best, a loose coalition. Some by law are restricted to urging people to vote based on certain issues, while others are gathering money to put behind candidates who will clip Patrick’s dominance in the Senate. If they just pick up a few seats, Patrick will no longer be able to steamroll controversial bathroom bills and school voucher bills through the Senate, because he will lack the procedural votes needed to bring the legislation to the floor for debate.
Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/dan-patrick-coalition/
