The Chron makes endorsements in two SBOE races.
Dakota Carter
District 6
When she was first appointed as head of the State Board of Education in 2015, Donna Bahorich was condemned as an anti-education advocate of homeschooling who would drag the board back to its embarrassing days of fractious infighting. But Bahorich, who represents part of Harris County, has failed to transform into the forewarned partisan. Instead, the former Dan Patrick campaign manager has used statewide surveys to gauge parents, business leaders and educators on the issues facing the SBOE.
However, given the issues of standardized testing and age-appropriate curricula that currently vex the SBOE, we encourage voters to back her Democratic challenger, R. Dakota Carter, who has a unique expertise in these fields.
District 10
Our choice for this sprawling central district, which includes the cities of Georgetown, Bastrop and Sealy, is incumbent Tom Maynard.
When he first ran for the seat in 2012, some flags went up about Maynard’s allegiance to hard-right ideology. However, by and large during his term, Maynard has functioned less as an ideologue and more as a public servant who has the best interests of Texas’ children at heart.
The way they wrote these, they could just as easily have swapped which incumbents and challengers they endorsed. Bahorich, who is my SBOE member, has apparently been more of a work-together type than an ideologue, and it has at least blunted the opposition if not earned her a bit of support. See Zeph Capo’s comments in this Chron overview of the SBOE races for the evidence. Bahorich is a strong favorite to win in her 60-40 district – if anyone should be worried about the close poll numbers and surge in voter registration in Texas, it’s Tom Maynard in District 10.
For his part, Dakota Carter has been a very active campaigner and gotten a lot of Dems on board with him. He’s got an uphill battle, but he’s done all he can to make a contest of it. I will be very interested to see what the precinct results look like in this one when it’s all over.
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