Two Republicans who were elected to the Texas Legislature by voters in north central San Antonio held a rally in support of the Democratic candidate for state representative in that district on Wednesday.
Outside the voting location at Brook Hollow Library, State Rep. Steve Allison and former state senator Jeff Wentworth said they’re endorsing Democrat Laurel Jordan Swift for House District 121.
Allison currently represents House District 121, but he lost the Republican primary.
“I’m very sensitive to make sure that we have someone who’s honest, shows integrity, has a good reputation, commands respect, receives respect, and that’s Laurel,” Allison said.
“I don’t come to that lightly,” he added. “I’m very passionate about education. My view, that’s the most important issue we have. It’s the development of our workforce, development of our economy.”
Allison lost the Republican primary after Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed Marc LaHood and gave LaHood thousands of dollars in campaign donations.
Abbott endorsed more than a dozen Republican challengers for the Texas House of Representatives as part of a plan to replace anti-voucher Republicans with pro-voucher supporters and pass a voucher bill in the next legislative session.
Democrats need to flip about three House seats if they want to block the governor’s plan.
Wentworth said before this election that he had never voted for a Democrat to be in the Texas House of Representatives.
“What is really on the ballot on Nov. 5 is public education in this state,” Wentworth said. “I served in the [Texas] Legislature for 25 years, five years in the House and 20 in the Senate. The two most important things we do in the legislature is fund schools and roads, and yet we’re failing in our most important responsibility, and that is public education.”
Allison and Wentworth said they are backing Swift to protect Texas from school vouchers. The rally outside the busy early voting place focused on the issue.
Early voting ends on Friday, Nov. 1. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.
Vouchers give parents public dollars help pay for education expenses, including home schooling and private school. The version backed by Abbott is called an Education Savings Account.
“I say if there’s that much money available in the [state’s] general fund, it should be used to improve public schools,” Swift said at the rally, as her supporters applauded and cheered.
“The conservative option would be to invest in the system we have. Invest in the institutions that we already have created. The radical idea is to implement a voucher program,” she added.
Swift supporter Diane Montalvo took the opportunity to vote after attending Swift’s rally. She said it’s the down ballot races she’s most concerned about this election.
“The House District 121 race — that’s my big thing,” Montalvo said. “I’m a retired teacher. I have first-hand experience of how it’s important to fund our public schools, and so that’s, to me, the number one issue.”
Texas House District 121 is a traditionally Republican seat, but Democrats are hoping the voucher issue will help them turn the seat blue. As Montalvo spoke, a man walking toward the polling place said, “Go Trump.”
Dueling rally
Abbott stopped by San Antonio on Wednesday to campaign for LaHood at a dueling rally.
The governor spoke to supporters at the Angry Elephant bar near Stone Oak. He repeated a story he often shares to illustrate his belief that public schools are indoctrinating kids.
“The Dallas Independent School District, for example, a huge school district — they had an education guide informing families and students in that district how they can change their biological sex,” Abbott said. “If your child were in a school like that, do you think you should have the right to be able to move your child to another school?”
LaHood gave a similar reason for supporting vouchers: “We need to make sure that, if we want to keep our state free, that we raise children that can think for themselves.”
Even without public dollars to pay for private education, Texas families can choose to send their families to charter schools if they prefer them to the traditional public school in their neighborhood.
Both Swift and LaHood characterized the opposing argument on vouchers as false on Wednesday.
“The voucher plan is being touted as a way to help kids in poor performing schools go to private schools,” Swift said at her rally. “This is false. The vouchers are not enough to pay for any private schools that exist, and if new ones are built, they would be likely for-profit entities that would spend even less on educating kids.”
LaHood told his supporters that supporting vouchers is supporting an excellent education for all kids. “There’s a lie that they’ve been saying: That if we empower parents, if we give parents the right and the freedom to do what’s best for their children that is at odds with educating all of our children. That’s a lie,” he added.
Opponents of vouchers say they divert state funding to families who can already afford private school tuition, giving states less funding for public schools.
This summer ProPublica reported that Arizona is facing a $1.4 billion budget shortfall after implementing a universal school voucher plan that has been touted as a model for other states.
