LttE - Tony Kosub's positions
Submitted to the San Antonio Express-News on 3 March 2008:
Tony Kosub, the Republican challenger for State Rep. district 122, sure sounds good on paper. He talks about limited (and efficient) government, lower taxes, Second Amendment rights, ending eminent domain abuse, etc. Where he's curiously silent is on education, his website only touching on this important issue in two glib-sounding bullets that are void of substance, addressing the affordability of college tuition and improving the never-defined "quality" of education. He's a middle-school teacher, so one might be forgiven for thinking any candidate might have very detailed points on an issue specific to how he or she makes their living, informed by the very expertise that allows them to make their living in that field.
In fact, that's what worries me about Kosub. He's been endorsed by three local chapters of the American Federation of Teachers - not surprising given that he's a public school teacher and one would assume a member of their union (affiliated with the AFL-CIO). With the AFT.org website posting strong positions opposing any form or degree of school choice, vouchers and privatization (three subjects that should be near and dear to any conservative Republican's heart), one is left to just read the sparse bullets on Kosub's website and wonder how much sway the AFT's positions hold for him. If he were to win office and a vote on vouchers were to come up in the next session, how would he see it? Would he vote for his political constituents or his professional colleagues? Especially worrying is the recent California court decision regarding homeschooling - if a vote came up to protect Texas' vibrant homeschooling community from a similar threat, how would our new state Rep. vote?
Frankly, the answer to those questions, with such long-term implications for the education of my own not-yet-school-age kids, is not something I'm comfortable guessing on.
posted by JT | 3:34 PM
2 Comments:
JT,
If you ever want clarification on where I stand, you should contact me rather than make up stuff yourself.
Thanks,
Tony Kosub
tonyforstaterepresentative@yahoo.com
Replied to Tony via email:
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It's been over a year so my memory might be hazy but I think I recall trying to contact your office but never receiving a call back. I seem to recall also contacting the Bexar RLC regarding their endorsement of your candidacy in relation to these same issues and receiving a pass-the-buck reply that whoever I contacted wasn't responsible for endorsements.
Can I ask exactly what I "made up" in that letter (which was never printed by Express-News, by the way)?
[quoted letter in email]
In the first paragraph I described what I found on your website in the "Issues" page, and wondered why, as a teacher, you didn't have even more detailed bullet points on the issue of education. In the second paragraph I cited the public endorsements given you by the chapters of the AFT, then cited their posted positions regarding several detailed education issues, then asked aloud questions about how you might vote on a couple of issues. I never even speculated or guessed a direction that I thought you would vote - which might be mistaken by some as "making up" a position for you out of whole cloth. Instead, I just wondered which way it might turn out to be. The third paragraph was a statement of my own opinion regarding the vagueness in your position that virtually required speculation or guesswork to be applied when weighing the decision for whom to vote.
I don't believe I "made up" anything at all but I'm certainly willing to listen to a reasoned opinion to the contrary.
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