FINALLY, A GOOD FIGHT

The Democrats and the Minnesota chapter of the National Education Association are astonished by Carlson’s newfound passion on school choice. The state education lobby endorsed him in 1990 and donated $ 60,000 to his campaign after he promised to oppose the use of public funds for private education. “We have a videotape where he denounces using public money for private religious schools,” says a genuinely confused Judy Schaubach, president of the Minnesota Education Association. “I wish I knew what he was up to.”

What Carlson is up to is waging the most important battle for school choice in the nation. He has pointedly declined to sip the tepid tea of bipartisanship with Democrats protective of the status quo in education. His gambit confuses his opponents on many counts. A pro-choice Republican who has signed gay-rights legislation and drastically boosted education spending, he keeps his distance from social conservatives and has never been supported by his party’s nominating convention. He leaves office in two years, has no detectable senatorial ambitions, and is by no means presidential timber. His critics, then, detect no hidden scheme to advance his political interests.

So why pick a fight over school choice — a sticky wicket anywhere — in a state with an abiding affection for public schools? Because the governor is fed up with what he calls the “education cartel.”

“The education lobby approached me in 1990 and wanted to know if I’d accept their support,” Carlson recalls. “At the time, I was not in love with vouchers. But after I became governor, all I was pressured for was more money, more money, and more money. That made life impossible. The more I thought about it, the more I began to figure out that [the education lobby was] not that supportive of reforms that would actually help children. There is a kind of pretense that to them kids are first. That simply isn’t true. The union interest is first.”

Following this revelation, Carlson asked the legislature in 1995 to provide state education vouchers to poor children. The proposal attracted virtually no support and quickly died. The defeat was reminiscent of many suffered by the school-choice movement. Minnesota voters bought the lobby’s line that education spending is a zero-sum game and that vouchers for the poor would shortchange middle-class kids. Voters were also genuinely concerned about the blurring of church-state separation implicit in taxfunded vouchers’ going to church-run, as well as secular, private schools. These arguments, broadcast in massive media campaigns funded by the NEA, doomed school-choice referendums in Colorado and California and have scared off numerous Republican governors and members of Congress.

But instead of accepting defeat, Carlson set about devising a plan that could win middle-class support and sidestep church-state issues liable to land it in the courts (the fate of voucher programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee). With the help of Tim Sullivan, press secretary to Vin Weber when Weber was a GOP congressman from Minnesota, the governor settled on his package of refundable tax credits for lower-income families and tax deductions for the middle class.

The proposal would give any family with an income of up to $ 39,000 a refundable tax credit of $ 1,000 per child per year, up to $ 2,000, for expenditures to improve the child’s knowledge of subjects required for high- school graduation. Tutors, educational summer camp, private school, and classes taught by qualified instructors would qualify; flute lessons, soccer camp, and self-esteem seminars would not. The credits would be indexed to inflation and would reduce a family’s tax burden dollar for dollar.

To sweeten the pot for the middle class, Carlson proposes a deduction of up to $ 1,950 per child in grades K-6 and up to $ 3,000 per child in grades 7-12 for the same educational expenses. Education deductions already exist, but they are worth far less: $ 650 for children in grades K-6, $ 1,000 for those in grades 7-12. Carlson also wants to let parents deduct the cost of a home computer and educational software.

So far, the scheme has attracted much more public enthusiasm than Carlson’s voucher idea ever did. After pro-plan commercials ran on radio and TV, state legislators begged Minnesotans for School Choice to end their campaign because calls in support of the governor were disrupting business. A Minneapolis Star-Tribune poll showed 68 percent public approval. Those numbers, however, have not translated into support in the legislature, where Carlson’s plan was defeated in the education committees of both chambers on partyline votes of 9-5.

“That’s because this is a zero-sum game,” says Phil Carruthers, speaker of the Minnesota House. “The $ 150 million for the credits and deductions would be taken out of the public education funding.” By threatening to veto the education budget, says Carruthers, the governor is trying to push through “something that he could not get from the legislature were it evaluated on its own merits.”

Yet when it comes to arguing the matter on the merits, Carlson’s opponents have trouble maintaining a coherent line.

First they contend that the tax credits and deductions won’t help anyone. Even with the subsidy, poor families can’t afford private school, and middle- class families that want to send their kids to private schools already do — and buy them computers as well. “The credits and deductions are not going to have a widespread impact,” says MEA president Schaubach. In the next breath, though, they argue that the credits and deductions are a step toward dismantling public education. House speaker Carruthers “knows” it is the supporters’ intent “to set up a parallel system that ultimately replaces public education with a system that receives superior funding.” But if the credits and deductions won’t work and won’t help anyone, how can they destroy the public schools?

The opponents argue that the credits and deductions are really disguised vouchers. Except that they aren’t. A deduction — allowing them to shield a sum from taxation — is not the same as collecting taxes and giving them back in the form of vouchers that must be used for private education. This Carruthers reluctantly concedes. For that matter, the speaker admits he would oppose Carlson’s credits and deductions even if they were pure add-ons to a bill that “adequately funded” every conceivable education need in the state. So his concern really isn’t about a zero-sum game.

It’s about protecting public schools from any encroachment. Says Tim Sullivan, “This is a test of wills between the broad public and the teachers’ union’s hammerlock on the Democratic party.”

Carlson and the Democrats began negotiations last week, but no swift resolution is expected. The governor is adamant about the tax credits for poor families. He will accept no bill that excludes them. “I find it appalling,” he says, “that the president of the United States and the vice president want to celebrate their right to send their children to private school but deny others the same choice just because they are poor.”

Carlson’s tax-credit and deduction proposal, introduced as an amendment in April, lost in the Senate 40-23, only one vote short of the 24 needed to sustain a veto of the education budget. If the Democrats refuse to include his credits and deductions in the next version of the education budget, Carlson is confident the House will sustain his veto and that eventually the Democrats will have to blink. “I don’t understand why it hasn’t gotten more national attention,” says Chris Pipho, of the Denver-based Education Commission of the States. “Both sides have drawn a line in the sand on this one. I don’t know of any governor who has tied together the issue as Carlson has.”

The outcome in Minnesota could have a dramatic impact on the future of school choice. If nothing else, the example of a Republican governor who, upon suffering one defeat, regrouped and fought again should invigorate a GOP congressional leadership bent on unilateral surrender on this issue and so many others dear to fiscal and social conservatives.

Major Garrett wrote about GOP strategy in our May 5 issue.