QUORA: ‘What can the GOP do to attract more minority voters?’

 QUORA: ‘What can the GOP do to attract more minority voters?’

I posted this answer:

The GOP can start by championing the smallest minority, the individual. 

Orienting their message and policy proposals around the rights of the individual to make their own choices in life doesn’t guarantee electoral success across the board, given that America’s original Spirit of Liberty has so dramatically eroded. But there are signs that it could be a winning strategy on some important issues. I would point to school choice as a way for the GOP to meld individual rights to policy success among ethnic minority groups. And I would point to former two-term Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s electoral success as evidence of that.

Christie, a Republican, was first elected in 2009. In his first term, he revolutionized public education by initiating an aggressive public charter school policy to increase educational opportunities beyond the traditional public school monopolies. This program has been (and still is) wildly popular in the voter-rich big cities like Newark, Camden, and Trenton, where the worst traditional public school districts existed. Tom Moran, editorial page editor of the NJ Star-Ledger and no friend of Christie, nonetheless called Christie’s charter school reforms a “big thing” for which Christie deserves immense credit. Moran observed that there has never been “a Democratic governor who did as much for poor minorities” as Governor Christie. 

In NJ’s cities, Christie’s charter school program met a tidal wave of demand. Big city parents, overwhelmingly minority (i.e., of darker complexion), responded in droves to the superior school choice offered by charters. Consider one city, Newark, NJ’s largest city. By the time Christie left office in 2017 due to term limits, Newark charter schools had enrolled more than of 1/3 inner city students, up from essentially zero in 2009, all based on voluntary parental choice to move their kids from the traditional unionized public schools.* 

So, how did Christie fare in his successful 2013 reelection bid? According to Pew Research, his shares of the minority vote from 2009 to 2013 jumped from 32% to 51% among hispanics, and from 9% to 21% among blacks. Given that Christie’s charter school program was one of his biggest policy initiatives, if not his biggest, it seems certain that it factored into these results. School choice is one major way for Republicans to blend a principled defense of individual rights into a concrete policy, and channel it to make particular headway among ethnic minority voting blocks.

Unfortunately, current Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, who succeeded Christie, slammed the brakes on the Charter School Movement despite the fact that huge unfilled demand for charter seats among big city parents remains unfilled. Tom Moran recently observed,** 

Charter schools educate more than 1 in 3 students in Newark today, and still there aren’t nearly enough seats to meet the demand.

That demand is robust for good reason: The charters are producing much better results, giving their kids a clean shot at college. Black students in the charters, and poor students, are roughly twice as likely to show proficiency in math and English as their counterparts in the district schools.

Newark’s charters, rated as among the best in the nation, have closed the racial performance gap on test scores, with their overwhelmingly Black student bodies matching the statewide average in reading and math. That’s a revolutionary success story.

Thanks to Murphy’s cynical “political games”—he’s a teachers union hack, after all—his refusal to approve most new charter school applications are shredding the aspirations of parents to get their children better educational opportunities and threatening this revolutionary success. Worse, many kids already in charters will be forced back into traditional public schools because their charters can’t get state approval to expand into the higher grade levels, leaving parents and children frightened and outraged. Tom Moran of the NJ Star-Ledger blasted the Democratic Murphy Administration in two high profile columns (here and here). Many other parents’ voices are speaking up (here and here).

Murphy, along with his Democratic Party (though not all Democrats), are clearly on the wrong side of this issue, siding with the reactionary defenders of the traditional public school monopoly—including the teachers union—over the education of children and the interests and free choice of parents and taxpayers. 

Education tax dollars are allotted to schools based on enrollment. But we must remember that education tax dollars, as the great Thomas Sowell has correctly observed, are intended for “the education of children.” They are not intended “to provide iron-clad jobs for teachers, billions of dollars in union dues for teachers unions, monopolies for education bureaucracies, a guaranteed market for teachers college degrees or a captive audience for indoctrinators.” [Page 130, sic] Republicans clearly have an opening among ethnic minority voters by advocating for the individual rights of parents to choose public charter schools, and school choice more broadly, for their kids, via giving parental control over education tax dollars allotted on behalf of each student. 

* [Charters draw students from lotteries of students whose parents chose to apply them. No charter student is assigned by the education authorities.]

** [Murphy’s political games threaten charter success in Newark | Moran, Star-Ledger Editorial Board, Updated: Feb. 06, 2022, 5:30 p.m.|Published: Feb. 06, 2022, 7:15 a.m.]

Related Reading:

While NJ Gov Attacks Charter Schools, Legislators Focus on ‘Segregation’

The Enemies of Charters Versus the Parents and Their Kids

Chris Christie’s School Choice Achievement.

‘Investing’ of ‘Resources’ In Education Is Up to the Taxpayer

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

As NJ State Closes 3 ‘Failing’ Charters, What About the Parents and the Children?