Candidates Seek Teachers Union Endorsement Governor, State School Chief Hopefuls To Speak At The Wea Convention Being Held In Spokane

An important political endorsement is at stake today as candidates for governor and state schools superintendent address more than 1,000 members of the state’s largest teachers union who are meeting in Spokane.

The Washington Education Association’s political action committee will make its endorsements June 8.

Tonight at the Ag Trade Center, five candidates for governor and six for state superintendent will have a few minutes each to woo teachers, in town for their annual convention.

The union, which represents 65,000 school employees, gave more than $200,000 to state candidates, mostly Democrats, in 1992 through its political action arm.

As important as the money, the union can deliver volunteers.

“Teachers are tireless campaigners for pro-education candidates,” said WEA spokeswoman Teresa Moore.

Campaign finance rules now cap direct contributions at $1,000. But the union’s political action committee can print its own literature in support or opposition of a candidate or cause, Moore said.

The gubernatorial candidates expected to address the teachers tonight are four Democrats - Jay Inslee, Nita Rinehart, Gary Locke and Norm Rice - and Republican Jim Waldo.

The teachers will mark as absent Republicans Ellen Craswell, Norm Maleng, Dale Foreman and Pam Roach.

In the nonpartisan superintendent race, Terry Bergeson, Raul de la Rosa, Gloria Johannssen, Jed Brown, Dan Leahy and Chris Vance will speak.

Only Ron Taber is playing hookey. Taber said he decided not to seek the union’s blessing.

He supports vouchers to give parents public money to send their children to private schools, an idea the union opposes.

“The teachers union is so unalterably opposed to school vouchers that it would be a waste of their time and mine for me to appeal to them,” Taber said.

In a radio interview Tuesday, Taber said schools in an ideal society would receive no government support and parents would educate their children with their own resources, either through home schooling or paying for private schools.

That drew sharp criticism from state superintendent candidate Vance, a Republican King County councilman.

Taber “wants to destroy public schools,” Vance said. “I will fight to improve them.”

Taber said his statement does not mean he wants to destroy public schools. “We should start moving toward that separation (of schools and government) by providing (tax-supported) vouchers for parents so they make the best decisions for their children,” he said.

, DataTimes