StgCoach – Page 30 – Oh, Contrarian!

Mary Taylor Speaks at the City Club

These days Republican candidates are under a lot of pressure to establish that they are True Conservatives, and that means embracing school choice, low taxes, and business interests. But it hasn’t been that long since the state’s largest teachers’ union endorsed Republican Mary Taylor for State Representative in 2004.

Now she’s Ohio’s Lieutenant Governor, and she is running to succeed term-limited John Kasich as Ohio’s next Governor in the 2018 election.

So it was natural that I wanted to see her “Meet the Candidates” appearance on July 7 at The City Club of Cleveland. As most of my readers and friends know, I am pretty much a single-issue voter. It’s not that I don’t care about other issues, but I know more and care more about education than any of the other topics. (And it’s pretty much the only topic on which people ever ask for my opinion.)

Taylor identifies as a conservative, but on education she downplays ideology. She affirmed her support for school choice, but she also pointed out the need for charter school accountability. Perhaps more important, she recognizes that charter schools were originally envisioned as laboratories to try out education innovations–not just to provide competition for the public schools. She wants to bridge what she sees as an excessively sharp division in K-12 education between college prep and career training tracks.

You can hear or see the whole session on The City Club’s website; or you can focus on what she said about education. Here are points I identified from the audio podcast: you can hear all three in less than five minutes.

At 17:29, she makes her position statement on education, and this is where she mentions her concern about the separation between college prep and career education.
At 28:30, you can hear her address my stock question to candidates for Governor: “What will a Mary Taylor administration do to maintain and improve Ohio’s common schools?” You can judge for yourself how successfully she answered the question.
At 50:00, she answers a Twitter question about vouchers.

All three comments are important to understanding her stance on education, and you can listen and draw your own conclusions.

Four Republicans are running already for Governor, and it’s likely that one of them will represent their party in the fall 2018 election. Even Democrats like me need to pay attention to their positions. I plan to ask my question to as many of the candidates as possible, and I’ll report my impressions here.

The First Day of . . .

Many who will read this page know that I retired yesterday. My retirement from NEOEA was a “long goodbye,” and over the past year many have asked the question that retirees hear so often: “What are your plans?”

I haven’t really had an answer, but I do have some guesses. I have been fortunate to have a wide variety of interests, and they have always competed with each other. So within the next month or so I’ll begin to see what I enjoy the most and what I miss the most, and that should give me some direction.

At the heart of my expectations would be family and friends: enjoying our children and grandchildren, doing further genealogy exploration, and reconnecting with friends I’ve been too busy to see.

I will continue to play and sing the music that has always been such a joy to me. I’m looking forward to mastering the “retirement camera” I bought a couple of weeks ago. I have plenty of things to work on in our house and my workshop. I need to read more, write more, cook more, see some movies, and attend some concerts. I continue to care about the state of society and especially our responsibility to educate future generations. I plan to start paying attention to my health.

And I’ve been preparing this website. My friend Dan Dyer is perhaps my biggest role model: his “Dawn Reader” blog provides an excellent example of retirement energy well-spent online.

As Dag Hammerskjöld wrote (Markings, 1864): “For all that has been–thanks. For all that will be–yes.”

That’s a Wrap

It’s time for one last post before putting our campaign to bed.

Since learning of our loss yesterday, many people have called or written to ask how I’m doing. I’m doing just fine, thank you. You can’t run for office if you can’t take defeat, and from the beginning it was clear that winning this race would be a heavy lift. I’m proud of the campaign we ran, proud of all of you who helped out, and proud of the trust you placed in me to advocate for what we know is best for kids.

During the campaign, I met hundreds of people and made many friends. I also learned some valuable lessons.

People value high-quality public schools for all students, and they are looking for candidates with a positive vision for education and society.
Despite the distrust that exists between different segments of our diverse district–as in society itself–we have more in common than we sometimes realize.
You’re never too old to develop greater self-understanding. Campaigning taught me things about myself. This isn’t the place for specifics: ask me sometime, preferably over a pint.
Regardless of their political persuasion, candidates–especially entry-tier candidates–are heroes. I met many wonderful candidates giving freely of their time, talents, money, and energy to make things better.
“Commitment, service, and leadership” isn’t just a slogan: it’s a summation of what we should demand of officeholders in general and State School Board members in particular.

So, to answer the question several people have asked: If I had known a year ago that this would be the result, would I do it again? Oh, yes. I wouldn’t have missed it.

All of which doesn’t make losing less painful, but it helps to keep a sense of proportion. My race was just a small footnote in a much larger, historic election. If Campaign 2016 was a national tragedy, as I believe, then in that context my own setback will seem pretty small.

A lot of people are sad today. Let’s pray for our country and, especially, her children.

This post originally appeared on the website of my 2016 campaign for State Board of Education, http://bill4board.us.