Gov. Greg Abbott is making due on his commitment to back Republican candidates who support school choice, making a campaign stop on Friday in Amarillo to support medical claims professional Caroline Fairly’s bid for a Texas House seat.
Fairly is running in Texas House District 87 to replace Rep. Four Price (R-Amarillo), who decided he would not seek re-election last July. Price was one of a number of anti-school choice Republican House members who voted against the education reform during the last legislative session.
“No one knows better about the unique needs of their child than a parent does,” said Abbott at the campaign event, according to MyHighPlains. “Now, this is not a new concept to the people who vote in Republican primaries right here in Amarillo.”
“Two years ago, there was a ballot initiative asking people who voted in Republican primaries ‘Do they support school choice’ in the district that Caroline is going to be representing — 87% of those Republicans voted in favor and said yes, they want school choice right here in Amarillo, Texas,” the governor said.
Fairly is running against three other candidates in the Republican primary on March 5: Richard Beyea, Cindi Bulla, and Jesse Quackenbush.
Beyea, an oil and gas businessman, serves on Perryton ISD’s school board. His campaign website suggests he is in favor of school choice but is not especially explicit:
“Parental Choice offers us a chance to reform public education while preserving and protecting our existing infrastructure. Dollars should follow the student and fund the classroom, not the bureaucracy. Empowering parents and students with options is essential to ensuring leftist indoctrination, critical race theory, and inappropriate content stay out of the classroom.”
Bulla, a local realtor, was more explicit in her platform, appearing to stake a position against school choice on her campaign website:
“Schools should be places for education, not indoctrination. Schools must teach our children how to think critically, not what to think. Cindi Bulla will prevent woke agendas from being introduced into classrooms by giving parents more control over their child’s school curriculum and educational journey. She will also provide public schools with more resources to ensure the high quality of education. Bulla knows our rural schools are the center of their communities, and those communities are the lifeblood of our value system and much of our economy. She will always support our local schools, whose students and teachers are the foundation of our society.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, a common refrain expressed by anti-school choice Republicans has been that such a policy would redirect tax dollars away from public school systems in rural Texas districts, undermining the fabric of such communities where schools serve as bedrocks. Two dozen House Republicans from rural districts — including Price — voted alongside Democrats to prevent school choice legislation from advancing last year.
For his part, Quackenbush, a screenwriter and self-described “Constitutionalist,” listed school choice on his campaign website but declined to expound on his position.
Curiously, Fairly’s campaign website did not put school choice front and center. However, as Amarillo Globe News reports, Fairly’s father, Alex Fairly, has allegedly donated considerable sums to advance the governor’s efforts to secure school choice for Texas families.
