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Texas SBOE Wingnuts Lose Primary Battles

By dispatches on March 4, 2010.

Here's some good news out of Texas: Three out of five of the wingnuts running for the State Board of Education lost those elections -- including former board chairman Don McLeroy, who lost his seat to Thomas Ratliff. And a fourth wingnut was forced into a runoff to decide the election.

Cynthia Dunbar is not running for reelection but her handpicked successor, Brian Russell, will go to a runoff election with Marsha Farney to decide who replaces her. Joan Muenzler and Randy Rives both lost their primary fights to join the board. Only incumbent Ken Mercer won his primary outright.

You might remember Rives as president of the Ector County School Board when they put the NCBCPS curriculum in and got sued over it. In a repeat of Dover, all of the members of that board who favored the policy that prompted the lawsuit were voted out of office in the next election, including him. He then tried to run for the state legislature, where he got only 9% of the vote. Now he's failed in a run for the SBOE.

So the candidates backed by the religious right didn't do very well and the wingnut brigade on the board will shrink by one, maybe two. That should help restore some sanity to the Texas educational system. Bravo to the Texas Freedom Network and all the others in Texas who work so hard to counter the 17th century agenda of the religious right down there.

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