National Education Association PAC likes Clinton for 2016
The political action committee of the National Education Association is recommending that the nation’s largest labor union endorse Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest.
The PAC, known as the NEA Fund for Children and Public Education, made the decision at its quarterly meeting in Washington on Thursday.
The recommendation now goes to the NEA’s 174-member Board of Directors, which is meeting on Friday and Saturday. To win the endorsement, Clinton needs at least 58 percent of the board to vote for her, and most observers believe she’ll clear that hurdle.
But that doesn’t mean there is unanimous support for Clinton among teachers.
The Vermont NEA has already endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, its home state senator, for the White House. And there’s an effort underway among other affiliates to show support for Sanders. At the NEA annual meeting in the summer, the most enthusiastic cheers went up for Sanders, when NEA President Lily Eskelsen GarcÃa mentioned the three Democratic candidates, according to Education Week.
As part of the vetting process, the NEA sent questionnaires to all presidential candidates, Democrats and Republicans, but only Clinton, Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley responded. They each sat for a videotaped interview with Eskelsen GarcÃa.
Clinton struck a particularly sympathetic tone in her interview with the NEA, telling the union that people are “dead wrong to make teachers scapegoats for all of society’s problems.”
Clinton’s relations with teachers unions didn’t begin as smoothly when she first entered public life. As first lady of Arkansas in 1982, Clinton pushed to broaden course offerings in public schools, smaller class sizes and institute competency testing for teachers — an idea that provoked a fierce pushback from the unions.
But as a first lady and then a U.S. senator, Clinton promoted policies much more friendly to the teachers unions, including expanding preschool and after-school programs. As a presidential candidate in 2008, she opposed merit pay for teachers, another stance in line with the unions.
NEA is the nation’s largest labor union and represents nearly 3 million National Education Association PAC likes Clinton for 2016 - The Washington Post:
