Gov. Greg Abbott must have a new person on his social media staff. Not being a donor or registered Republican, I never hear from the governor, who has an aversion to conversations of any kind with big city media.
Until last week.
Suddenly, multiple daily emails from the governor started landing in my in-box, trumpeting Abbott’s agenda and his record as he sees it. Four emails alone on Thursday, all asking for money to urgently address looming threats. The email campaign coincides with the governor going all-in with his demand (or else!) that the Texas House, now meeting in this year’s third special session, approve the Senate’s proposed school voucher bill allowing families to pull their children out of public schools and use $8,000 in annual government stipends to enroll them in Christian schools and other K-12 schools that operate without any state-mandated performance standards.
Every one of the emails from Abbott stokes fear of Democrats, outsiders, immigrants and others and seeks political donations, large and small. Reelected last year, Abbott has amassed a war chest of tens of millions of dollars and faces no credible political opposition to remaining in office. His deluge of money pitches seems craven.
One email he sent out last week was headlined, “Education, Not Indoctrination.” Abbott’s misrepresentation of what students are taught in public schools betrays his own bias toward them. I see only one statewide problem with our public schools, and that is the woefully inadequate state funding they receive, even in years when legislators have tens of billions of dollars in surplus funds to distribute. Abbott, while denying public schools the funds they need to thrive, calls it a “God-given right” for parents to choose to send their children to religious and other private schools at taxpayer expense.
What a wacky belief.
I am fine with the many Christian evangelicals in the state of Texas. Freedom of religion is enshrined in the First Amendment, but as noted later in this column, you are not free to use taxpayer funds to cover the costs of your children attending Christian or other sectarian schools.
Yet the Texas Senate under Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has sent such a bill to the Texas House, where wary Republican members are joining with Democrats intent on seeing it fail. The current House bill, unlikely to come up for a vote, links any voucher program with teacher pay increases and greater funding for the state’s 1,250 public school districts. Arriving at a compromise bill is complicated by the reluctance of rural Republicans to support Abbott’s scheme, and by the verbal missiles Patrick has launched at House Speaker Dade Phelan in the wake of the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Phelan threw some fuel on the fire when he called on Patrick to return $3 million in campaign funds he received from the right-wing Defend Texas Liberty PAC, whose then-president, Jonathan Stickland, hosted antisemitic white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his office building for nearly seven hours three weeks ago, a story first reported by the Texas Tribune.
“This [is] not just a casual misstep,” Phelan said in a statement. “It’s indicative of the moral, political rot that has been festering in a certain segment of our party for far too long. Anti-Semitism, bigotry and Hitler apologists should find no sanctuary in the Republican Party. Period. We cannot — and must not — tolerate the tacit endorsement of such vile ideologies.”
Patrick promptly called on Phelan to resign, just as he earlier called on Rep. Andrew Murr (R-Junction) to resign after he served as the House impeachment manager. Republican dysfunction, so evident in Washington over the last three weeks, is alive and well in Austin, too.
And through it all, Abbott seems to be embracing a more public evangelical bent in insisting that legislators pass the voucher bill — or, he has declared, they will face a fourth special session in November and come the 2024 primaries, political retribution. As noted, one email from the governor’s office sent my way Wednesday echoed an earlier tweet in which Abbott stated, “Parents have a God-given right to decide what is best for their child’s education. Texas has an obligation to provide the best possible education for each child.”
That’s hyperbole and cliché at best. The Texas Constitution, Article 7 — not God — makes access to public education for all Texas children, including those with disabilities, a right. Article 7 states, “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.”
There is nothing in the Texas Constitution about the right of citizens to have taxpayers foot the bill for their private and religious school tuition. Abbott campaigned earlier this year for his voucher legislation in a series of appearances at Christian evangelical schools. If there is one core tenet of American democracy that Abbott ignores, it’s the Establishment Clause of that earlier-referenced First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Seems pretty clear to me and, I hope, House members in both parties who have shut down voucher schemes for several decades. Public school advocates need them to keep doing their jobs. Bullies are best met with an unyielding defense.
