More Than 1,000 Educators Won Elections On Tuesday, Teachers Union Says
“We saw wins up and down the ballot, and we are on fire,” the head of the National Education Association said of the midterms.
More than 1,000 teachers and other education professionals won state legislative seats across the country in Tuesday’s elections, the nation’s largest teachers union said Friday.
More than 1,500 current and former teachers and education professionals sought office in the 2018 elections, the National Education Association announced in October. Teacher-led protests swept states from West Virginia to Arizona last winter and spring, leading to an exceptional influx of candidates.
The group said the final tally before Election Day numbered more than 1,800 such candidates. Of those, the union said, 1,081 won their races for state legislative seats on Tuesday.
That success means teachers and educators will hold roughly 15 percent of all state legislative positions nationwide next year, based on the number of such positions counted by the National State Legislative Council. An additional 42 races have yet to be called, the NEA said.
A lack of historical data makes it hard to compare this year’s numbers or success rates to previous elections, or to draw a direct connection between those victories and the earlier protest movements.
But the NEA and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the Democratic Party’s state legislative campaign arm, said before Tuesday’s vote that the number of teachers pursuing office had increased from previous electoral cycles. A DLCC spokesperson said before the election that it had counted more than 1,200 educators running for office as Democrats in 2018, an increase of roughly 200 from two years ago.
Not all of those included in the NEA or DLCC counts are teachers. The union used a broad definition to compile the numbers, counting current and former classroom teachers and professors at the K-12 and postsecondary levels, as well as candidates who had worked as administrative or support staff in schools, districts and universities. Many of Continue reaiding: More Than 1,000 Educators Won Elections On Tuesday, Teachers Union Says | HuffPost
