School choice was on the ballot in Texas last week — and school choice emerged victorious.
The educational-choice movement is a once-in-a-generation political earthquake in America, and politicians in other states should take notice.
The Texas House failed in November to pass Gov. Greg Abbott’s school-choice legislation.
Twenty-one Republicans joined all Democrats to kill a groundbreaking compromise bill that would have created Texas’ first private school-choice program, sent $7 billion extra to public schools and provided $4,000 raises for public-school teachers and support staff.
But instead of empowering families, defecting Republicans voted against their party platform and their constituents.
It looked like the nation’s largest red state would continue to be a stubborn holdout on education freedom, but Abbott quickly and boldly went on the electoral warpath.
He endorsed primary challengers against those members and ultimately deployed more than $7 million of his own campaign cash to make sure voters knew where they stood.
The results were extraordinary.
Of the 16 anti-school-choice incumbents seeking re-election, a stunning six were defeated outright, and another four were pushed into runoffs.
Meanwhile, all five of the seats vacated by retiring members will be filled by pro-school-choice candidates.
This change in the whip count represents the largest shift toward school choice in Texas political history.
It’s difficult to recall another political event in any other state of this magnitude.
It also settled the score on school choice.
On multiple occasions, anti-choice incumbents claimed their constituents are opposed or indifferent to vouchers.
But their actions betrayed the truth.
Until election week, those incumbents still ran advertisements digging in on their vote against school choice.
Ousted Rep. Glenn Rogers wrote multiple opinion articles arguing school choice “isn’t conservative.”
Rogers lost his seat to a school-choice supporter by a 26-point margin.
As Texas’ most popular political figure, Abbott and his endorsements were hugely important to the electorate.
But the governor wasn’t alone.
In the past three months, our affiliated super PAC, AFC Victory Fund, also spent more than $4 million to make sure voters knew where their representatives stood.
All told, this election will be remembered as one of the most significant events in state-level politics in recent history.
Defeating an incumbent lawmaker is the hardest thing to do in politics.
By defeating six incumbents and pushing four more to runoffs, Abbott and AFC Victory Fund blew expectations out of the water with a resounding 77% success rate.
Coming into this year, no Texas Republican incumbents had lost a March primary re-election bid in the prior two election cycles.
Because of school choice, at least six lost in one night.
Thanks in part to the hard work of the governor and several other crucial state and national allies, parents have become the strongest interest group in town.
Texas will now have its best opportunity to pass school choice for every family, which would be the largest Day 1 school-choice program in history.
Perhaps more important, Texas is solidifying the roadmap to school choice in states across the country, and Gov. Abbott is providing a model for how other state leaders can make students a priority.
Other states should watch what happened in Texas.
Several are considering landmark school-choice legislation this spring, and we hope they’ll be encouraged by the fight for education freedom in Texas.
If not encouraged, perhaps they’ll be warned about the consequences of failing to support their constituents’ demand for school choice.
Tommy Schultz is the CEO of the Dallas-based American Federation for Children, the nation’s largest school-choice advocacy organization.