Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
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.
Politics
Comments
You may thank those of us who held our noses and voted in the Republican primary.
Posted by: Russell | March 4, 2010 12:22 PM
We do, Russell, we do.
Does Texas have open primaries?
Posted by: James Hanley | March 4, 2010 12:34 PM
Yes, it does. I wish I could persuade more sane people here to vote in the Republican primary.
Posted by: Russell | March 4, 2010 2:07 PM
Please support two intelligent, educated (Ph.D) women who are seeking to replace the wingnuts:
www.votejudyjennings.com
www.voterebecca.com
If you live outside Texas, you should still consider contributing to their campaigns. Decisions made by the Texas State Board of Education affect textbooks throughout the USA.
Posted by: Jon | March 4, 2010 3:12 PM
@3 That's what I did. Unfortunately Ken Mercer is my rep, and we didn't have enough people to get him out. Anyone know about who he is facing?
Posted by: AusTexAth | March 4, 2010 3:19 PM
Ken Mercer is facing Rebecca Bell-Metereau.
Posted by: Kenneth Fair | March 4, 2010 4:07 PM
I hate to be such a pessimist, but are we sure they were not replaced by people to the right of them?
Posted by: Star | March 4, 2010 7:34 PM
@AusTexAth - Me too, and I live in a small enough town that some eyebrows went up when I voted in the Republican primary. I was disheartened that Mercer won by such a large margin, but picked up the next morning when I saw Rebecca Bell-Metereau signs appearing on lawns. I cannot believe that the faculties and student bodies of the great universities, and the engineers in our great tech companies in Districts 5 and 10 stand for being represented by Mercer and Dunbar (or Dunbar by proxy).
Posted by: Tom | March 4, 2010 8:26 PM
Note that both Brian Russell and Marsha Farney BOTH appear to be almost as nutty as Dunbar was, so either way the run off itself won't yield much improvement; perhaps shifting the seat to "Silly Party" from "Extremely Silly Party". (Perhaps not even that.) However, the winner will still have to face Democrat Judy Jennings (mentioned by Jon), who seems to have a decent shot at winning another seat for the Coalition Of The Sane.
Tom: I cannot believe that the faculties and student bodies of the great universities, and the engineers in our great tech companies in Districts 5 and 10 stand for being represented by Mercer and Dunbar (or Dunbar by proxy).
The Engineers might be less help than you might expect, due to the Salem Hypothesis. You might also look at this post over at GNXP. While increased intelligence may increase the likelihood of rejecting Inerrancy, among those who adhere to Inerrancy their adamant rejection of evolution increases as intelligence increases.
I conjecture that since Engineers mostly deal with science by using the results of the method to determine OUGHT answers, rather than themselves using the method to determine IS results, "engineers" have less intimate involvement with the scientific method, and thus can more easily have less cognitive integration and less acceptance than real "scientists".
Posted by: abb3w | March 5, 2010 11:32 AM