Stepping to the right in El Paso
Carlos “Charlie” Garza, the El Paso Republican who unseated longtime Democratic member Rene Nunez from the State Board of Education, hasn’t even taken office yet, but the El Paso Times already has named him to the board’s conservative bloc.
We shouldn’t be surprised, considering Garza’s endorsement, as I noted in a blog posting last week, by the rightwing “Texans for Better Science Education.”
In an interview with the El Paso newspaper, linked below, Garza, an assistant middle school principal, said Gov. Rick Perry asked him to run for the board. Garza said he believes in creationism and wants that theory to be taught alongside evolution in the public schools. He expressed support for most of the changes that the rightwingers made to the social studies curriculum last spring and shares the conservatives’ dim view of Thomas Jefferson as a philosopher. He also is a selfdescribed “fan” of Ronald Reagan.
According to the newspaper, Garza also believes the board should drop world geography lessons from the curriculum and implies that sex education doesn’t belong in the public schools.
Unlike most of the current rightwingers on the board, though, Garza says he has “no problem” with the late farm worker leader Cesar Chavez. That’s because Garza, as a child, was a migrant farm worker. “One thing that I will never do is forget my background,” he said.
Garza’s election will increase the number of Republicans on the SBOE from 10 to 11, while the number of Democrats will drop from five to four.
Two of the Republican conservative leaders will be gone in January. Cynthia Dunbar didn’t seek reelection, and Don McLeroy was defeated for the Republican nomination by the moremoderate Thomas Ratliff, who was supported by TSTA.
Two other incoming Republican members, however, remain largely mysteries. They are Marsha Farney, a former educator, who will succeed Dunbar, and educator George Clayton, who unseated longtime incumbent Geraldine Miller in the Republican primary.
