"Voucherfying" Douglas County School Board Endorses Romney

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by: Colorado Pols

Check out the press release we just received from Mitt Romney’s campaign:

Boston, MA – Mitt Romney today announced the support of the members of the Douglas County Colorado Board of Education.

“I’m truly grateful to earn the support of the members of the Douglas County Board of Education for my education reform agenda,” said Mitt Romney. “They share my vision of taking control of our children’s curriculum out of the hands of the federal government. Our kids are served best when these crucial decisions are made at the local level.”

Announcing his support, Douglas County School District Board of Education President John Carson said, “We are very proud to be supporting Mitt Romney. He is committed to making our education system more effective by reducing needless federal intrusion, empowering local officials, and promoting choice and competition. He is also a proven leader who has shown time and again that he can turn around troubled enterprises. That is exactly what the bureaucratic U.S. Department of Education needs today. I look forward to having a President Romney in the White House and unleashing our schools and our students to achieve their full potential.”

For starters, we didn’t know that Colorado public school boards could legally do such a thing–oh, wait up folks, that’s why it says “board members” instead of, you know, the Board as a unit. The fact that it is all of the Douglas County Board of Education members endorsing, though, lets the release be worded in such a way that this distinction doesn’t really matter!

Seriously, that’s clever. We’re acknowledging the cleverness.

And as Colorado’s most politically controversial public school board by orders of magnitude after instituting a religious school voucher program (halted for now by court injunction), the endorsement of Mitt Romney, and Romney’s warm thanks from Boston HQ for their endorsement, might indeed affect next Tuesday’s GOP caucuses. Although the Douglas County school board’s support could be considered politically toxic in a general election, as some Jefferson County school board candidates discovered last fall, on the right these people still enjoy a folk-hero kind of status for leading the state into a litigious school voucher showdown.

Relax, queasy moderates, there’ll be plenty of time to drop them like a hot brick before the fall.

5 thoughts on ““Voucherfying” Douglas County School Board Endorses Romney”

MADCO says:

February 1, 2012 at 8:39 pm

Sure they can drop just another bunch of private citizens. Not so easy to drop their nominee after say….August.

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DougcoDem says:

February 1, 2012 at 8:55 pm

They have the mandate thing going for them. They believe they can act with impunity. Never mind that their mandate came in a County where the GOP is dominent and they outspent their opponents 10-1. Edward McVaney and friends opened their checkbooks and bought the best Board for their interests.

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GalapagoLarry says:

February 1, 2012 at 9:00 pm

must make more than the district spends on its students, vouchers and all. But, you’ve got to admit: they earn it, reviewing press releases, defending corporate power grabs and all. They’re as busy as Denver’s city attorneys defending cops.

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Early Worm says:

February 1, 2012 at 9:21 pm

I understand that school board elections are non-partisan (as are most municipal elections). Is that a law, a regulation, a suggestion, or a custom? It would appear that the school board elections are no longer non-partisan (at least in JeffCo and Douglas), but is there any consequence?

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1. gaf says:
  
  February 2, 2012 at 6:43 am
  
  political parties can endorse candidates in non-partisan races, by a vote of the Executive Committee. With the recent JeffCo, Douglas and Denver elections, people might forget that the first million dollar school board election in Colorado was in the Colorado Springs Public Schools back in 2003. Edward McVaney and friends were involved in that, too.
  
  Three candidates claimed endorsement of the Republican party–without getting that formal endorsement. The El Paso County Republican party had to call an emergency meeting to make it official.
  
  There is a law against claiming or giving a political party endorsement without a vote of the Exec Committee–but there is no penalty specified in the law. So it is up to integrity and honor. In the Springs case, they were a few days late and a vote short of achieving that.
  
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