Oklahoma votes against creating a constitutional right to farm and ranch

One of the more unusual items on the ballot yesterday was defeated yesterday.

It would have applied strict scrutiny to laws related to farming and agriculture. The laws would have to demonstrate a compelling purpose purpose in order to be sustained.

- Click here for Ballotpedia's detail on the proposal.

Amendment design

State Question 777, which was placed on the ballot by the Oklahoma Legislature, was designed to require courts to rule on any law regulating farming and agriculture passed after December 31, 2014, by employing "strict scrutiny." This means that courts would have to overturn any challenged agricultural or livestock regulations that are not necessary for protecting a “compelling state interest.” This would make any law restricting or regulating the farming industry in the state more vulnerable to lawsuits, which would likely result in fewer government regulations over the industry.

In other words, State Question 777 was designed to require the courts to apply the same standards to lawsuits concerning agriculture and livestock as in cases concerning free speech, gun ownership, and religious freedom.

Arguments of supporters and opponents

Supporters|

Supporters argue that State Question 777 would allow farmers to defend themselves against unjust laws or laws that would harm the industry, make the state more attractive to farmers, and allow consumers to decide best farming practices through free market competition.

Opponents

Opponents argue that State Question 777 would be used to prevent the state and local governments from passing laws to protect small farmers and provide reasonable regulations regarding food and water quality, environmental protections, and animal cruelty. They claim the amendment would give large, corporate farms an advantage over small, local farms.

From the Fiscal Times: $1.7 Trillion in Unfunded State Pensions Is Squeezing Vital Public Programs

A key issue on the state and local level.

- Click here for the article.

Governments across the country are facing down at least $1.7 trillion in unpaid pension costs for public workers. As these growing commitments squeeze local budgets and crowd out essential services, taxpayers are being asked to cover a larger bill—and get less in return.

Public education is the largest and potentially the most important sector to be affected by pension crowd-out. Almost every state increased teachers’ retirement benefits in the booming 1990’s, but those increases were not accompanied by responsible funding plans. By 2003 teachers’ plans were short by $235 billion, and by 2009, pension debt had more than doubled to $584 billion.

Market growth since the Great Recession has barely put a dent in the shortfall, which still totals around $500 billion. Carrying such a sizable debt is expensive and has resulted in large cost increases.

These costs inevitably cut into education spending. Between 2000 and 2013, pension contributions per pupil increased at a rate five times higher than total education expenditures. This did little to halt the growth in debt: Pension debt per pupil increased by $9,588 over this period, more than nine times larger than the increase in total annual education expenditures per pupil.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: In Texas, You Can Fight City Hall

It looks like local control will be a major issue during the next legislative session.

- Click here for the article.

“Local” might be the byword for fancy farm-to-market restaurants, but it can be a dirty word at the Texas Capitol.

The state Legislature has become the appeals court for the state’s local governments. Companies and industries snubbed by local laws are increasingly asking state lawmakers to turn things their way — and it’s working.

. . . The next tests will start when the Legislature meets for its next regular session in January. This time, one big fight involves local regulation of drivers for ride-hailing companies like Lyft and Uber. Another is a straight-up attempt by the state to limit local officials’ ability to raise taxes without voter approval.

The ride-hailing issue sets up like the fracking issue did. Austin voters were asked whether the ride-hailing drivers should pass security checks, like cab drivers do. Uber and Lyft said they would leave if voters approved the regulations, irking voters with their methods and the explicit threat. Voters backed the regulations. The companies left. They threatened to leave Houston, too, over regulations there.

Industry allies in the Legislature have promised to file a statewide ride-hailing law that doesn’t hobble the companies.

. . . The property tax proposals are the latest attempts by state officials to control local property tax increases. The state doesn’t have a property tax itself — that’s unconstitutional — but cities, counties and school districts are state inventions and are subject to state regulation and some control. And in this case, some state officials want to give voters more control over property tax increases.

That’s not how the local governments see it, however. They believe, with some evidence, that state officials just want to make it harder to raise the money they contend they need to do what their voters demand of them. Some take it further, saying the need for more tax money is driven, in part, by what the state requires local governments to do.

You might argue that the property tax debate is a case of checks and balances, of one set of elected officials keeping another set of elected officials in line. You might even be right.
Other cases — fracking, smoking, texting while driving, hailing rides, banning plastic supermarket bags among them — are efforts to replace local laws with state ones.

From Slate: A Boy Died on This Water Slide—in One of the Many States That Barely Ensure That Rides Are Safe

This is how we get regulations.

- Click here for the article.

Earlier this month, USA Today placed the Verruckt water side at Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City, Kansas, on the top of its list of the “13 Best Outdoor Water Park Rides” in America. “Insanity,” the newspaper proclaimed of the attraction, which is the world’s largest water slide, dropping riders by 17 floors in a few terrifying seconds.

On Sunday, a few days after that article appeared, Caleb Schwab, the 10-year-old son of a Kansas state legislator, died on that ride. The circumstances of his death are still murky, though one Kansas City television station is reporting that parkgoers claim the ride’s harness wasn’t working properly. One thing, however, is almost certain: the dismal state of amusement park regulations in the United States, which allow attractions in Kansas and many other states to effectively evade any serious government safety oversight.

Even as amusement rides are getting more terrifying and death-defying by the year, the amusement park industry actively fights attempts at increased regulation. According to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, surveys reveal that 4 out of 5 of its member organizations say they view “state regulation as the biggest threat to their businesses.”

Trib + Water

When we walk through Article 3 of the Texas Constitution I like to note the inclusion of large number of bonds approved by the voters for water development projects. The availability of water has been a dominant issue for much of Texas' history.

As a way to underscore the range of issues the state faces concerning water, you might want to peruse through the various items on the subject the Texas Tribune has posted over time.

- Click here for the article.

From Vox: Bernie Sanders is right the economy is rigged. He’s dead wrong about why.

The author thinks the problem is occupational licensing, which is primarily a function of the states.

- Click here for the article.

The first step on the path to wisdom is to give up on the idea that there’s any such thing as the economy, exactly. What we have instead is a dizzying array of interlocking markets that function (or don’t) to meet consumer demand for specific goods and services, and a vast body of law that defines these markets and regulates their operation.

The economy is the sum of this incomprehensibly complex ecosystem of human exchange, and is far too variegated and decentralized to "rig" all at once. So it gets rigged little by little, one market and one jurisdiction at a time.

The story of how the economy gets rigged is therefore a bunch of homely little stories of people with nice watches screwing over people with less-nice watches. But it’s not class war. It’s not the mega rich against the rest of us. It’s insiders seeking and then protecting special privileges that give them a leg up.

Dentists rig the system against dental hygienists by working to make it illegal for hygienists to clean teeth without totally unnecessary supervision by dentists. Taxi medallion oligopolists rig the system against regular folks with cars who would like turn a buck giving people rides. Beauty school cosmetologists rig the system against hair braiders and sidewalk hair-clipper artistes. "Massage therapists" rig the system against anybody with strong hands who might want to give back rubs for cash.

About 30 percent of all jobs in the United States today require some sort of occupational license, up from 5 percent in the early 1950s. This rather dramatic shift is evidence that the economy has indeed become increasingly rigged — which is really just another word for "regulated."

Click here for Texas' Occupations Code.

From the Houston Press: THE TEXAS RACING COMMISSION KILLS HISTORICAL RACING (WITH GLENN HEGAR'S "HELP")

And now for a state level issues - one that also illustrates how checks and balances work in Texas.

- Click here for the article.

After more than a year of defying the state legislature, the Texas Racing Commission finally, sort of, caved in on Thursday.

After being deadlocked on whether to allow historical racing to remain on the commission's books back in December, this time around, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar weighed in and helped end the long battle between the state legislature and the racing commission.

The commission voted 5 to 4 to repeal historical racing.

The vote comes after months of contentious back-and-forth between those in the horse-racing industry, some racing commissioners and the Legislative Budget Board.

State lawmakers have long insisted that historical racing, in which people bet on races that are shown on video with all the identifying information about the race removed, is actually an expansion of gambling, which many Legislative Budget Board members and other state legislators are firmly against for whatever reason. (Actually, the main reasons seem to be a mix of religion and highly effective casino lobbyists from neighboring states.)

It all started, of course, with a vote. In August 2014, the Texas Racing Commission voted 7-1 to approve historical racing for the state. The decision was met with rabid enthusiasm from the Texas horse-racing industry.

Texas thoroughbred horse racing returned to the state after the 50-year ban on parimutuel wagering ended in the 1990s. For a brief period, the Texas horse-racing industry boomed, but in recent years race attendance has declined. While some states, like Louisiana, prop up their thoroughbred horse-racing industry with fat purses drawn from racetrack casinos, Texas racetracks didn't (and still don't) have that option.
Dwindling crowds forced officials at Sam Houston Race Park and other Texas tracks to choose between offering more races with smaller purses or offering the larger purses that tend to draw the better jockeys and horses in the industry. Soon the top horses and trainers, even the trainers who started out in Texas, had stopped bringing the good horses to the Texas racing circuit and the quality of the races started a swift decline.

But there was a problem with that 2014 decision. Namely, some state legislators were rather displeased that the racing commission had voted to allow historic racing without getting the state legislature to sign off on the decision, as we've previously reported. In fact, a group of legislators quickly started to insist that the TRC didn't have the authority to make such a decision. Things rapidly deteriorated from there.

So there's a marijuana industry?

Of course there has always been - but now that it is legal in a couple states and likely in more very soon, it is now legal. And it is becoming increasingly sophisticated and powerful.

The following text from the story discussed in the previous post - click here for it - illustrates some items we covered in class when we discussed interest groups, iron triangles and the revolving door. It also hints at what types of factors make for stronger interest groups. The public policy related groups seem to losing out to the industry groups. This makes sense given who makes more money and the relative incentives that exist to support each type of group. We looked at a variety of stories over the semester that pointed out that groups that promote private benefits tend to be much stronger than those that promote public benefits.

Here's an illustration:

. . . it's in the industry's interest to fight stricter regulations — and especially proposals that don't let for-profit pot businesses take root.

Even last year, it seemed like both sides were getting their fair share of attention as Colorado and Washington state worked through regulations for their newly legal pot industries. But today, even legalization advocates acknowledge that the industry will play a significant role moving forward — and might even take over entirely after 2016.

Already there are some strong links between the marijuana industry and movement. For example, at least five of 10 people on MPP's board of directors have direct ties to the industry: Troy Dayton is the CEO of the ArcView Group, which invests in marijuana businesses. Joby Pritzker, whose family started and owns Hyatt Hotels, invests in pot businesses. Tripp Keber is the CEO of Dixie Elixirs, which produces pot edibles. James Slatic is CEO of MedWest, which produces marijuana concentrates. And Rob Kampia, executive director of MPP, is a board member and the treasurer of the National Cannabis Industry Association, the lobbying arm of the pot industry.

Among lower-level staffers, Riffle said it's also common for many to move from the legalization movement to cushy jobs in the industry — something Riffle tried himself, acting as a lawyer for the industry in California, before he moved back into advocacy. This revolving door may create a financial incentive for those in the movement to support commercial legalization, since it may provide more lucrative job opportunities.

Still, many MPP board members and staffers were involved with legalization before they were involved in the industry — and before there even was a legal industry. As MPP spokesperson Mason Tvert told me, legalization is a deeply personal, genuine issue for many people in the movement. "Those of us working at MPP got into this because we strongly believe that marijuana prohibition is bad public policy that is needlessly causing significant harm to society," Tvert said, citing multiple examples of him and other MPP members having run-ins with the law because of marijuana when they were younger. "We have all forgone potentially more lucrative careers (either within the marijuana industry or in other fields) to work on this issue because we feel so strongly about it."

Tvert also argued that MPP still gets few contributions from the industry: In 2015, for instance, $420,000 out of its $4.2 million budget will come from marijuana businesses, according to internal estimates.

But ties between the marijuana movement and industry are expected to strengthen as time goes on. As legalization expands, the industry will likely play a much bigger role in shaping and funding ballot initiatives, which can be very costly. Big Marijuana could also build the clout to sway lawmakers with campaign donations and lobbying if, instead of ballot measures, legalization takes the legislative route in some states.

Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance, said he has long expected the pot industry to grow and become a bigger part of the drug policy reform movement as legalization spread. "On some level, we have always known that," he told me. "And I think 2016 may be the last year in which drug policy reform organizations, driven primarily by concerns of civil liberties and civil rights and other good public policy motivations, will be able to significantly shape the legislation. And I assume that as the years progress, various industry forces will loom ever larger."

From Esquire: Two U.S. States Might Lower the Drinking Age to 18

Who says the future's not bright?

- Click here for the story.

Voters in California could soon decide whether to lower the state's drinking age from 21, while lawmakers in Minnesota will consider bills making it legal for 18, 19, and 20-year-olds to drink in bars and restaurants.

A 1984 law established the national drinking as 21, with the federal government telling states it would withhold highway funding if they didn't abide. But Phyllis Kahn, a longtime state rep in Minnesota, believes a provision in Obamacare now makes states immune from that threat, according to the Pioneer Press, a Minnesota newspaper.

This inspired Kahn to introduce two bills addressing the legal age: One would lower the drinking age in bars and restaurants to 18; the other would allow people under 21 to drink in bars and restaurants if they are with a parent, guardian, or spouse of legal age. (Kahn prefers the first bill, the Pioneer Press said.)

The idea is to adopt a European mindset, the Pioneer Press reported, teaching young people how to drink responsibility in a social setting. They wouldn't be able to buy booze in liquor stores until age 21.

On state and local economic policy

Both of these articles are form Governing Magazine. The first investigates whether private efforts to spur economic development are preferable to public efforts and finds mixed results. The second questions a standard line made about cities, that they are economic entities oriented towards growth, but growth can upset existing power structures - so there can be resistance to it.  

- Welcome to Jobs Inc., Where States Have Little Say in Economic Development.

Go down the list and every apparent advantage of privatization seems to have an equal and opposite downside as well. Proponents claim that private economic development corporations are more responsive, but looser rules open up the possibility that they’ll cut corners in dubious ways. And they may not be more nimble at all, since new entities add their own layers of bureaucracy to the mix. The privatized entities typically are more flexible when it comes to managing their own personnel, but there have already been examples of staff being grossly overpaid as a result.

In short, while it might make sense to give development officials a leash longer than is the norm for government work, that approach offers no guarantee of success. “There is no evidence that privatizing economic development either helps or hurts economic development,” Timothy Bartik, an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, says flatly.

- Do Cities Really Want Economic Development?

. . . economic struggle can be a cultural unifier in a community that people tacitly want to hold onto in order to preserve civic cohesion.

Jane Jacobs took it even further. As she noted in The Economy of Cities, “Economic development, whenever and wherever it occurs, is profoundly subversive of the status quo.” And it isn’t hard to figure out that even in cities and states with serious problems, many people inside the system are benefiting from the status quo.

They have political power, an inside track on government contracts, a nice gig at a civic organization or nonprofit, and so on. All of these people, who are disproportionately in the power broker class of most places, potentially stand to lose if economic decline is reversed. That’s not to say they are evil, but they all have an interest to protect.

From Governing: The Top 10 Legislative Issues to Watch in 2015

Here's one persons list of the top agenda items for state legislatures this year:

- Click here to check it out.

The list?

Affordable Care Act
Funding CHIP
Public Pensions
School Testing
Transportation Funding
The Cost of Water
Specialty Drugs
Corrections
Tax Policy
Carbon Emissions

And five more for good measure:
Oil and Railroads
Net Metering
Pandemic preparedness
E-cigarettes
Ridesharing

From Vox: 11 facts about gun violence in the United States

Some fancy charts.

A quick look at state gun laws

The latest school shooting has - once again - focused attention on gun policy and raised questions about the relationship between gun laws and gun crime. Each side is trotting studies justifying their positions, so why not walk through a few?

This is a good example of a key principle of federalism, at least those who argue that states ought to have broad latitude in setting public policy. We discussed the idea that states serve as laboratories of democracy by experimenting with different policy proposals in order to determine their impact. It's a pragmatic way to determine what does and doesn't work.

Here are some general links to the nature of laws in each state.

- Wikipedia: Gun Laws in the United States by State. Very thorough - but easy to get bogged down in this.
- NRA-ILA: State Gun Laws. Has a look at all the gun clauses in state constitutions - nice resource. And nicely laid out list of specific laws in each state.
- Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence: Search Gun Laws by State. An evaluation of laws by a pro-gun control group.

From Vox: Why it's legal to fire someone for being gay in 28 states

Something to chew on prior to next week's oral arguments on gay marriage and the equal protection clause. It also applies to 2306's look at political culture.

- Click here for the article.

In most states, a landlord can evict someone simply because he is gay — and it would be totally legal to do so.

The cause isn't a religious freedom law like the one that triggered a national firestorm in Indiana, which critics said would enable discrimination on religious grounds. Instead, 31 states, including Indiana, have long allowed discrimination against LGBT people because they don't include sexual orientation or gender identity in existing civil rights statutes. In these states, it's not religious freedom laws that allow discrimination; it's the lack of civil rights laws.

"If there's a 'license to discriminate,'" Robin Wilson, a law professor at the University of Illinois who helped write Utah's nondiscrimination law, said, "it's the fact that the state hasn't said this is an unacceptable basis for saying no to people."

Thirty-one states don't ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the workplace, housing, or public accommodations (hotels, restaurants, and other places that serve the general public).

As a result, more than half of LGBT Americans, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBT advocacy group, live in a state where an employer can legally fire someone because he's gay, a landlord can legally evict someone because she's lesbian, and a hotel manager can legally deny service to someone who's transgender — for no reason other than the person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Currently, 19 states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while three additional states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Some other states protect public but not private employees from discrimination. Many municipalities have nondiscrimination laws that only apply within their local borders, even in states that don't have such laws. And some companies prohibit discrimination in their own policies.

From CityLab: The Murky Law on Free-Range Kids

This hits some of the themes the story about vaccinations discussed previously this semester hit. How much latitude are we willing to give parents in how they raise their kids, especially if the general public believes the choices parents are making put their kids at risk. Being an area where states have the ability to make this decision, the rules vary across the nation.

- Click here for the story.

On April 12, it happened again: Rafi and Dvora Meitiv, the “free-range kids” of Silver Spring, Maryland, were picked up and detained by police. The siblings, aged 10 and six, were playing unsupervised in their neighborhood when a man walking his dog spotted them and called the authorities.

Back in December, Rafi and Dvora made national headlines when police picked them up as they walked home from a local park. The children’s parents, Danielle and Alexander Meitiv, subscribe to the philosophy of “free-range” parenting, which holds that children develop self-reliance by exploring their neighborhoods or riding public transportation on their own, if their parents judge them ready. (Disclosure: the Meitiv children attend the same school as my son, though I don’t know them or their parents.)

After the first incident, Montgomery County Child Protective Services investigated and found the senior Meitivs responsible for “unsubstantiated neglect.” Now an attorney for the couple says they will file a lawsuit over their family’s treatment. In fact, the law is not clear on free-range parenting in the state of Maryland, or anywhere else in the country: states and cities generally do not specify the youngest age at which a child can play or walk outside alone.

A few states have laws stipulating the minimum age when a child can be lefthome alone. In Illinois it is 14, in Maryland, eight, and in Oregon, 10. Maryland’s law further stipulates that a young child left in the care of a person under 13 is “unattended.” Many more states offer home-alone guidelines, which vary as widely as the laws do (age six in Kansas, age 12 in Mississippi).

In North Carolina, the state fire code prohibits leaving children younger than eight home alone. Rarely, a city will have its own ordinance establishing the home-alone age, as Albuquerque does (the age there is 10). In most cases, whether such home-alone rules extend to outdoor spaces is something lawyers could argue either way.

From the Texas Tribune: The Hotlist

This might help 2306 students hone in on a topic for the 1000 word essay.

The Texas Tribune's page on the 84th Legislature lists what it considers to be the dominant issues in the current legislative session. These are topics they highlight. Each links back to the Tribune. If you are in 2306 you could do worse than draw from these for your paper proposal.

Ethics
- The fight over dark money.
- Former legislators as lobbyists.

Environment
- Reforming how groundwater is managed.
- Chipping away at environmental regulations.
- Addressing the effects of oil and gas drilling.

Transportation
- Ensuring all gas tax revenue goes to the highway fund.
- Dedicating car sales taxes to the highway fund.
- Banning texting while driving.
- Reviewing state policies on toll roads.

Health and Human Services
- Reforming end-of-life care
- Medicaid expansion or its alternatives
- Consolidating Texas’ health agencies

Higher Education
- Tuition revenue bonds for campus construction
- In-state tuition for undocumented students
- Reining in rising tuition

Law and Order
- Efforts to change voter ID
- Reducing penalties for marijuana possession
- Enhancing gun rights
- Changing the age of adulthood for criminal charges

Energy
- Acting on the EPA's "Clean Power Plan"
- Combating local drilling ordinances
- Responding to volatile oil prices

Public Education
- Improving educator quality
- Reforming Pre-K
- School choice and vouchers

Social Issues
- Efforts to defund Planned Parenthood providers
- Gay rights legislation
- Expanding gambling in Texas
- Further restrictions on abortion

Immigration and Border Security
- Banning “sanctuary cities”
- Border security spending and operations
- Mandating the use of E-verify

Budget and Taxes
- Reforming contracting and procurement
- Reducing property taxes
- Cutting margins taxes
- Budget fallout from school finance lawsuit

From the Washington Post: Arizona will require high school students to pass citizenship test to graduate. Can you pass?

They want their high school students to know as much as newly naturalized citizens.

- Click here for the article.

Arizona high school students will have to pass the same test that immigrants must take to obtain citizenship before they graduate under a new law signed Thursday by Gov. Doug Ducey (R).

The first-of-its-kind law will require students to take the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization civics test, a set of 100 basic questions on U.S. government and history. Students will have to get 60 of the 100 questions correct in order to graduate.

The measure passed the state House and Senate in a single day. It’s one of the first measures Ducey, inaugurated earlier this week, signed into law.

Arizona is just the first state to require citizenship tests for high school students. The Civics Education Initiative is pursuing similar legislation in dozens of states, with the goal of mandating the test in all 50 states by Sept. 17, 2017 — the 230th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution. In Arizona, CEI’s effort was spearheaded by former senators Dennis DeConcini (D) and Jon Kyl (R).

In total, 18 states are likely to consider civics test requirements this year. North Dakota legislators this week advanced their own version through a state House committee.

We'll take some of this in class.

Will marijuana be legalized in Texas?

If there's money to be made by doing so, I wouldn't bet against it. Political forces seem to be slowly lining up - including conservative ones - that could make a push to at least decriminalize it. File this under public policy, in addition to interest groups.

- Click here for the article.

Former FEMA director Joe Allbaugh, who took the reins of Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign just as it was going into a nosedive, has jumped into a potentially more stable and long-term endeavor: legal marijuana.

Allbaugh is an investor in and board director of Colorado-based CannLabs, which calls itself “a leader in cannabis innovation” and specializes in the testing of pot potency and quality.

The company already has a major presence in Colorado, recently expanded into Connecticut and is positioning itself to take advantage of what could be exponential growth in the legal weed business across the country.

Allbaugh is a conservative Republican who served as chief of staff to then-Gov. George W. Bush and then managed his 2000 presidential campaign. He heads up Allbaugh International Group, a consulting firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and Austin.

From the Texas Tribune: Education Could Test Both Parties

The Texas Tribune reports that its polling indicates the education will be a major issue in next year's election - especially for each party's gubernatorial nominee. End each party has challenges to face.

For Republicans it's the lackluster quality of the educational system and the degree that can be blamed on current Republican policies:

Both supporters and opponents of the current educational regime have lamented Texas’ lackluster numbers when it comes to per pupil spending and graduation rates. While Perry has worked hard to focus his and others’ attention on Texas’ economy and the so-called “Texas Miracle,” the public education system is an unhealed sore spot for the party in power. The numbers used to judge the state of the public education system can be complex and seem to point in contradictory directions, but after a decade of Republican hegemony, the public education funding system is once again under review by the courts. In the absence of an easy solution to the funding model, the public discussion on education defaulted to a set of important but unclear side issues in the most recent legislative session — charter schools, testing and testing companies, graduation requirements.

For Democrats its the different opinions its supporters have on key issues regarding education:

In the February 2013 UT/TT Poll, we found Texans to be supportive of school choice by a margin of 63 percent to 36 percent. Unlike the graduation requirement question, blacks and Hispanics were equally supportive of school choice, and not surprisingly, Republicans overwhelmingly support the idea. For Davis and the Democrats, the trouble is that 68 percent of liberals expressed opposition to school choice. Liberals have long opposed school choice reflexively; it is a kind of litmus test among the white liberals that Davis will count on as the core of her coalition.

So the major issues appear to be:

- per pupil spending
- graduation rates
- charter schools
- testing - the STARR test
- school choice - vouchers

Inequality in funding per district has been a traditional issue, but it does not appear to register at the moment.

What is your state worst at?

From Policymic