Editorial Roundup: Indiana

Terre Haute Tribune-Star. Dec. 10, 2021. Editorial: Keep partisanship out of school board races Among all of the wrong-headed pieces of legislation concocted by the extreme partisan wing of the Indiana General Assembly’s ruling Republican Party, it is hard to label the GOP plan to politicize Hoosier school board races as the worst. It faces stiff competition, after all, making it hard to choose just one. There is RFRA, the 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act – the antithesis of Hoosier hospitality. And the 2005 photo ID law, heralded as a remedy to a nonexistent voter fraud scourge, more than a decade before the nonexistent voter fraud scourge went national. Then there is the enactment of a 2019 law that took away Hoosiers’ ability to choose their state superintendents of public instruction, making it a governor-appointed position instead of an elected office, as it had been for 166 years. That is just a sampling of nearly two decades of extremism in the Legislature. There, Republicans hold 71% of the Indiana House seats and 78% of the Indiana Senate seats, even though the party’s candidates in statewide races receive a more modest 53% to 57% of the vote, on average – a distorted advantage perpetuated by the legislative districts strategically drawn by the GOP legislators themselves. Such dominance allows them to forward detrimental ideas, like politicizing Hoosiers’ local school boards. And this plan is indeed bad. It has no redeeming qualities. None. As with all of these schemes, the Republicans give this party-serving idea a shiny coat of rationalization to cover up the real motives of political expediency within. By introducing a bill requiring school board candidates to declare a political party, Republicans will be ‘œensuring that parents have more insight and input into the curricular materials and surveys being used in their schools,’� said Todd Huston, Republican speaker of the Indiana House. Wrong. In reality, the placement of an ‘œR’� or ‘œD’� or ‘œL’� next to a school board candidate’s name does not provide more insight to that person’s probable behavior in office than the current nonpartisan system. Instead, it would simply empower party bosses to recruit and fund candidates willing to serve the politicos’ election-driven objectives. Under Indiana’s nonpartisan system, school board candidates are often the most carefully chosen by voters. The lack of a party label leads voters to study the choices, attend candidate forums by groups like the League of Women Voters, and read pre-election interviews in the local newspaper. Those choices cannot be made by simply finding the ‘œR’� or ‘œD’� or ‘œL.’� In the 2020 election, 56% of Vigo County voters favored Republican incumbent Donald Trump for president. Almost half of those votes came from voters casting a straight-ticket ballot for all Republicans. Thus, the top vote-getters in Vigo for most of the partisan state and countywide offices – like clerk, treasurer, auditor and recorder – were Republicans who won by totals similar to Trump’s, give or take a couple percentage points. By contrast, the straight-ticket voting did not apply to the nonpartisan 2020 school board races. Voters had eight total candidates from which to choose for three seats in two districts. Voters decided to make a change, ousting two incumbents – a rarity in partisan elections. Those were thoughtful selections, not automatic reflexes guided by party labels. The real motivation for injecting politics into hometown schools is to expand a political party’s influence.