A Voucher Champion Rises Again

Yeah, there's a lot of rising and falling going on. Welcome to politics.

Kent Grusendorf, who was beaten by a Charles Butt-funded opponent in his 2006 primary election, was one of those true believers. After his election loss, he returned to his community where he had long been a successful businessman. He remained engaged in education issues as a volunteer.

He also was early to see the potential for resurrecting vouchers in response to the COVID lockdowns.

Grusendorf was still active politically, and he used his savvy and connections to put the voucher issue back in play: he petitioned the Republican State Committee to put a non-binding “sense of the party” proposition on the 2022 Republican primary election ballot. This referendum, he was convinced, would demonstrate that the grassroots party faithful were in favor of vouchers.

At the time there was a view that Republicans statewide might be generally supportive of school choice, but rural Republicans were strongly opposed. So most political observers expected Grusendorf’s resolution to narrowly pass in most counties, but perhaps even lose in rural counties.

However, when the vote was taken and tallied, the results surprised even Grusendorf. More than 88% of Republican primary voters voted in favor of “Texas parents and guardians should have the right to select schools, whether public or private, for their children, and the funding should follow the student.” And support for vouchers was as strong in rural communities as it was in urban and suburban ones.

Moreover, opinion polling began to shift, and dramatically. Earlier, pre-pandemic polls had shown tepid support or even opposition for vouchers. But now, in the post-COVID era, polls started showing high favorability with every demographic group, with the highest support in low-income, minority communities. In aggregate, the public education response to COVID caused perhaps a 20 to 30-point shift in favor of vouchers among the general public.

Vouchers, it appeared to the true believers, were back in the game. TPPF was still committed to its founding idea, and a new generation of supporters – people like Stacy Hock (a young, successful, dynamic voucher advocate who had joined the TPPF board) and Alex Cranberg (a philanthropist behind ACE, the largest private voucher program in the US) – worked hard to make progress.

But in Texas politics, non-binding ballot propositions are one thing, and votes from elected legislators is quite another. Especially statewide elected officials like the Governor.

It’s now almost time to weave together our three historical narratives and tell the story of the 2023 Texas legislature and the 2024 primary election cycle.

But one last introduction is needed of the most important character in this story: Governor Greg Abbott.