Will there be another body blow to the Republican caucus at the Arizona legislature this year over a contentious funding issue?
Last year, “moderate” Republicans defected to the Democratic side to supply GOP Gov. Jan Brewer with the substantial Medicaid expansion she insisted on, even if it meant a dead-of-night vote flattening Brewer’s party.
This year, Brewer had not yet given her State of the State speech on Jan. 13 when “Arizona Capitol Reports” said a legislator predicted the same “Medicaid coalition” will push Common Core education funding through, over the objections of a majority of the Republican caucus.
Asked about this, conservative political strategist Constantin Querard told ADI early on Jan. 17 that it’s premature to predict.
“It is too early to tell which of the Medicaid defectors will also go left on the issue of Common Core funding,” Querard said. “Some likely will, while others may decide that they have already taken enough chances heading into an election year.”
The defectors stirred outrage among many other Republicans.
Diane Douglas, a Republican candidate for Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, told ADI on Jan. 17 that although Brewer changed the controversial Common Core’s name in Arizona by executive order last year, it remains “federally mandated education – unconstitutional.”
The newer name is Arizona College and Career Ready Standards.
Incumbent GOP state Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal supported the name change. The Associated Press reported in September 2013: “Arizona’s top education official said the state should stick with implementing the Common Core academic standards but rename them and act independently of other states that helped develop them.”
Douglas told ADI, “I have no idea” what the chances are for pushing the funding through the legislature, although “I would not be surprised” that it could happen due to politicians “willing to support, shall we call it, less than Republican principles… I believe Common Core could be incredibly expensive to implement…
“Absolutely we have to educate our children,” Douglas said, “but the money we have is the money we have,” instead of an infinite amount. “…If we’re not going to have new money to fund it, what other options would there be” aside from taking it from some other education area?
Douglas’s campaign Web site (www.dianedouglas.com) says the federal government has “reformed” education time after time, “at great expense to the American taxpayers while decimating the quality of our children’s education. I don’t have to tell you that our system remains broken, our children uneducated or under-educated and ill-prepared for success in their adult lives.
“These systemic problems will only get worse under Common Core,” she says at her site. “Our schools will formally be under the control of the same Washington bureaucrats who have marginalized academic content — stressing culture over content, social engineering over student achievement, and conspiring to rewrite the story of American pre-eminence in the world. Our education system was the envy of the world for over 200 years, prior to the involvement of progressive educators and the federal government.”
The Arizona Republic said former state lawmaker Chris Herstam “said increased funding to help Arizona schools conform to a new set of academic standards, or to boost university budgets, could reactivate the [Medicaid] coalition.”
The story added, “The same coalition of Republicans and Democrats that pushed through Medicaid expansion could come into play ‘as long as Brewer is willing to plant her flag for the necessary funding,’ he said.”
Conservative Republican state Sen. Al Melvin (LD 11) told ADI on Jan. 17 that “I guess anything is possible” about some Republicans renewing the Medicaid coalition for Common Core. “I would hope that they wouldn’t, but maybe they will.”
As a gubernatorial candidate this year, Melvin added, “I want to be the Tea Party candidate in this race. Related to that, I am opposed to Common Core in Arizona, and I am sponsoring a bill to stop it in our state, to defund it and to stop its implementation.
“Similar to Indiana and some other states that initially were in favor of it, the more we look at it, the more we realize that it should stop,” Melvin said. “We can do better with our own state standards than a federally imposed set of standards.”
He said conservative Republicans in the Senate, led by President Andy Biggs, and in the House believe “that our most important responsibility is a balanced budget, and we need to keep it balanced.” So they want to make sure “that any and all funding, including the education – K though 12 and the university funding – does not jeopardize a balanced budget.”
Forbes magazine projects that Arizona will be the Number One state in job creation in 2014, Melvin said. “But that means having a responsibly balanced budget, and we’re bound and determined to make that happen.”