We were able to take school boards that had leftist majorities – people that wanted to indoctrinate your kids – and replace them all across the state. We were able to replace union-backed candidates with conservatives.
Governor Ron DeSantis (FL) on Wednesday
This week, three personal observations suggest abortion may be supplanted by education as the up close and personal issue with women in elections to come:
- Matrons were half of a wedding procession last Saturday
- Where education dominated, Republicans prevailed in Tuesday’s elections
- The Democrat marriage to teacher unions was irrefutably confirmed
There are now, of course, motivated pro-choice voters after the Dobbs decision, and several blue states are putting it on the ballot to ensure pro-abortion turnout in November. Democrats added a ballot measure to amend California’s constitution to explicitly enshrine the right to abortion and contraceptives, urging other states to take similar action. Vermont now has a “personal reproductive autonomy” amendment on the ballot, and Michigan is close to adding a similar ballot measure.
As a practical matter, these Democrat-led states are just doing what two red states have already done. Kansans voted to preserve their high court’s 20-week legal abortion ruling. Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts (R) stopped a stricter-abortion bill (from 20 weeks to 12 weeks of pregnancy) because too many GOP legislators balked.
As a political matter, when every poll finds at least 75% of voters think America is on the wrong track, Democrats are right to fire up their base by awfulizing Republicans as anti-women. It worked in a special House election last week, where Pat Ryan (D-NY) ran on abortion against Marc Molinaro (R-NY), who focused on crime and inflation – not education – and lost. Democrats claim Ryan’s win is predictive, and why not? Still, it’s too early to suggest a wave of single-issue elections in November.
An axiom of conservatism is to acknowledge human nature, which was on full display at a wedding last Saturday. Half the 35-year-old bride’s college-educated and career-oriented attendants were expecting, and the women were as “girly” as any I’ve observed in five decades of wedding-going; reminders that millennials are not bucking evolutionary science by rejecting love and maternity. This conclusion is supported by four facts.
A national survey of millennial women found 72% “always wanted to be married” and only 11% “never wanted to get married” (source: Brides magazine). In poll after poll, the main pro-abortion voting bloc is still single, college-educated women. In 2021, for the first time in seven years, US births rose and 3.7 million new Americans were born (source: CDC). The birth rate in 2022 (12.02 per 1,000 women) marks the fifth annual increase in a row (source: Macrotrends).
My inner Churchill believes if you’re not pro-choice at 18, you have no libido, and not pro-parent at 40, you have no children. It’s just common sense that 12 million obstetric ultrasounds per year are moderating millennial abortion views (source: UNC). It’s also common sense to believe the innocence of a mom’s kindergartner today trumps “woke” curricula, which she might have supported in college. It’s called good parenting.
When local business and civic leaders ran school boards, the politics ran from conservative to moderate. Then, progressives saw an opportunity, elected majorities onto school boards, and hoisted woke policies onto the then-silent majority. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) and Ron DeSantis (R-FL) saw the madness and pushed back. As the latter put it, “parents are tired of this crap!”
Governor Youngkin proved top-down politics works; linking his Democrat opponent to woke school boards and public teacher unions, and campaigning as the pro-parent governor in 2021. Governor DeSantis re-opened schools during COVID so moms could go to work and students would not fall behind. He shot up in the polls. Then, he beat Democrats at their own game (bottom-up politics).
This summer, DeSantis backed 30 school board candidates. On Tuesday, 20 won and 5 are headed to run-offs. His logic was simple: there are more good parents than woke voters, even in Miami-Dade (now the largest US school district with a GOP-led board). And, his challenger, Charlie Crist, just picked a teacher union board chair as his running mate.
This GOP success exposed the too-cozy relation between public teacher unions and the Democrat Party, because the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president, Randi Weingarten, campaigned against Youngkin and openly attacked DeSantis. Not only did she not help Terry McAuliffe (D) become Virginia’s governor in 2021, she’s issued one toxic (and unbecoming) statement after another.
After Youngkin reported school boards had lowered Virginia’s proficiency standards, he proposed parental-choice legislation. In response, Weingarten called the proposal “propaganda, misinformation, (and) the way in which wars start, the way in which hatred starts.” Last week, she re-tweeted “Florida’s Anti-Woke banned book list.” Except it was counterfeit; thereby eliciting a Twitter spanking. After a mea culpa (“I should have double-checked…books weren’t banned”), she deleted the tweet.
The AFT (American Federation of Teachers) is nothing but a PAC. 90% of its 2022 resolutions promote compensation and socio-political policies. Its 2021 lobbying budget was $1.6 million. It has already given $14 million to campaigns this year, and promised 1,600,000 union votes in November.
The good news for progressives is 96% of the AFT’s money and votes go to Democrats. The bad news is this monopoly spawned grass-roots opposition; such as Moms For Liberty, which successfully backed 43 conservatives in Florida’s school-board elections.
In this election cycle, the silent majority will decide. Are the many polls right that Americans are ambivalent toward abortion? How do average Americans view the crackpots outside the homes of Supreme Court justices? Do they believe the GOP will outright ban all abortions – or are Kansas and Nebraska the truth?
And, what of the many polls that show at least 70% of Americans support parents having a say about what goes on in their children’s school? Will they believe a fact-free teacher like Weingarten or 200,000 Moms For Liberty in November?
Above all, what do suburban moms fear more – restrictions on legal abortions OR woke educators indoctrinating their young children in public schools? The view here is that common sense and a good GOP message will prevail.