“We think that we know a man or a woman, when so much of what we know is actually that man’s or that woman’s situation, his or her place on the board of life. Move the pawn to the last row and see her rise in armor, sword in hand.”
― Gene Wolfe, Home Fires

Another election season has passed. No more robocalls. No more mailers. No more ads. The airwaves are no longer dominated by people insisting that casting my vote for their opponent will bring about the end of civilization.

The winners and losers have been decided. The next chapter begins.

Nationally, it was a field day for Democrats, who won control of both the House and Senate. Something they last held simultaneously in January 2023. In political years, apparently, that qualifies as ancient history.

Unfortunately, the dead space left by campaign season has already been filled by a thousand pundits explaining what went right and what went wrong. Everybody has an opinion, and thanks to our ever-expanding media landscape, everybody has a platform.

Including me.

Mine is fairly simple: One team offered better candidates, ran better campaigns, and shared a vision that more voters found appealing.

I also think President Trump spent the last two years asking Americans to do hard things. We are not particularly interested in doing hard things anymore, especially when the promised benefits arrive sometime after the bills.

Ask people to accept short-term pain, and they probably won’t like you very much. Couple that with a personality that, on a good day, can be described as boorish, and they really won’t like you.

That doesn’t mean every decision was right. Nor does it mean the issues disappear because voters have grown tired of the messenger.

Immigration, trade imbalances, and Iran remain very real issues. I don’t pretend to have access to the same information as our leaders, but I don’t see many lasting answers that arrive without difficult choices and some measure of pain.

Then again, I’m just a guy with a keyboard and an inquisitive mind.

A win is still a win

Statewide, Jerri Green gave Governor-elect Marsha Blackburn a considerably tougher race than many expected. The reported margin was roughly 53,000 votes, about 2.5 percentage points. That is a respectable showing for a Tennessee Democrat.

It is also a loss.

Today, much is being made of how close Green came. A year from now, fewer people will remember the margin. Politics is like the NFL: In the end, the win matters more than the score.

Blackburn will be governor despite what I thought was a horribly run campaign and a charisma factor that rarely threatened to overwhelm anybody.

Democrats can take encouragement from the result. Republicans ought to take a warning. Neither reaction changes who gets the office.

Republicans won eight of Tennessee’s nine congressional seats, but Democrats collected a significant victory when Victoria Broderick upset incumbent Scott DesJarlais in District 4.

The unofficial margin? Roughly 280 votes.

Remember what I said about the scoreboard. Assuming that result holds through certification, Broderick will head to Congress. DesJarlais won’t. Nobody hands out a partial congressional office because the other candidate almost won.

In the state House, Democrats flipped six seats. That is cause for celebration, particularly for a party accustomed to finding its victories somewhere between moral encouragement and a fundraising email.

But don’t get carried away.

Republicans retain a supermajority. Speaker Cameron Sexton has been at this a minute. I wouldn’t expect his remaining majority to fracture simply because election night proved less comfortable than advertised.

Still, Republicans should probably pay attention to the writing on the wall.

Personally, I believe Governor Bill Lee was terrible at his job. I also suspect his tenure may ultimately prove worse for Tennessee Republicans than for Tennessee Democrats.

Many of the policies championed under Lee helped sell Tennessee as a destination. Unfortunately for conservatives, newcomers don’t check their political beliefs at the state line.

That is my interpretation, not a demographic finding. But inviting growth and then assuming every arrival will vote like the neighbors seems like questionable planning.

Our cities have grown while rural living has gotten tougher. Hospitals, schools, housing, employment: Those pressures don’t vanish because somebody puts another business recruitment announcement on a podium.

It isn’t difficult to imagine a future in which Tennessee becomes more competitive politically.

Look west to Oregon and Washington. Large stretches of both states vote Republican, while their population centers help produce statewide Democratic victories. Land doesn’t cast ballots. People do.

None of that means Tennessee turns blue tomorrow. It means permanent majorities have a funny way of becoming less permanent when their owners stop paying attention.

Same building, familiar business

Since this is an education blog, I probably ought to address what the election means for public schools.

My initial answer: Less than some people hope.

Under Sexton, the House has become powerful enough to shape the agenda as much as any governor. Blackburn will choose an education commissioner. Committee leadership may change. There will be new introductions and fresh stationery.

Much of the machinery will remain familiar.

I talked with a handful of legislators about whether the election changed their interest in Metro Nashville Public Schools. All assured me it had not. Interest remains high.

Despite its best efforts at celebration, MNPS keeps adding gasoline to a simmering fire.

This fall has found the district and Director Dr. Adrienne Battle facing repeated allegations involving grade changes and the integrity of district data. Allegations require investigation, and an investigation should establish what happened rather than simply ratify somebody’s preferred conclusion.

But responding to questions about the numbers by celebrating the numbers isn’t much of an answer.

After a recent Nashville Rotary Club meeting, Battle told News 2:

“Nashville public schools is in a great place. We’re continuing to grow and achieve at high levels,” Battle told News 2. “There is a strong correlation to how our students are performing, both in the classroom on our standardized assessments. We are celebrating our highest graduation rate (ever). I am not going to diminish; I’m only going to elevate and celebrate the great work of our effective educators in our schools.”

That sounds good if you say it fast.

However, if you are being accused of cheating, telling people how many points you are scoring really isn’t a viable defense.

Nobody needs to diminish teachers to ask whether district reporting can withstand scrutiny. Those are separate questions. Effective educators deserve credit for their work. They also deserve confidence that the system describing their work is accurate.

I suspect citing those accomplishments without directly addressing the underlying concerns will only pique legislators’ interest a little more.

When asked about comments from Rep. Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka, regarding a state audit and potential takeover, Battle responded:

“I’m not really familiar with any comments,” Battle said. “What I will tell you is that we actively engage in monitoring and audits frequently. Our school board, our administration will continue to work with our local elected officials on any requirements or any needs for the performance audit.”

Really?

Cepicky is a driving force in the General Assembly when it comes to education policy. His interest in Nashville hasn’t exactly been whispered behind a locked door.

To suggest unfamiliarity with his comments strikes me as either an alarming lack of awareness or a deliberate attempt to avoid the question. Neither is a particularly good look.

Perhaps Battle is playing chicken with the state representative. I wouldn’t recommend it. If that’s the strategy, she had better be certain the school board, Metro Council, and mayor possess the same appetite for confrontation.

That is a big gamble with an awful lot of students sitting in the back seat.

I don’t want a state takeover treated as an automatic remedy. State officials ought to explain what they would improve and how. Local officials ought to answer the questions that give the takeover talk oxygen.

Parents are entitled to know whether a diploma represents the work their child completed. Teachers are entitled to know whether the grades they assign will survive a trip through the administrative office. Taxpayers are entitled to know whether the story being sold matches the records being kept. None of those expectations should require choosing a political team. And none should disappear because the district has an award to display. If the records support the celebration, open them up and let the evidence do some of the talking for a change.

An audit should provide evidence. A press conference provides a message. Nashville needs to understand the difference.

Count the votes, then count again

In the election’s aftermath, some folks are arguing that primary defeats and flipped seats have substantially weakened the forces pushing education vouchers.

There is something worth watching there.

During the last session, the House initially approved voucher expansion 52–43, with Republicans supplying the support and a bipartisan coalition opposed. That was a nine-vote difference between the two sides, but only two votes above the 50 required for passage.

That distinction matters when everybody starts doing election math.

Six Republican-held House seats flipped to Democrats this week. Those changes deserve a close comparison with the voucher roll calls. But six flipped seats do not automatically translate into six lost votes on every version of every bill.

The final concurrence vote on the amended legislation was 63–28. Different language can produce different coalitions. Any prediction needs to account for that, too.

Still, it could get interesting.

A Republican can oppose expansion without opposing every existing scholarship. Another can favor the program while demanding tighter financial controls. A Democrat can seek repeal while settling for additional reporting.

The question is what coalition exists when the actual bill lands on the desk.

We could also see stronger accountability requirements attached to the existing programs. Schools accepting Education Freedom Scholarships do not operate under the same TCAP testing requirements as public schools.

If lawmakers want to compare outcomes, they should explain what makes the comparison meaningful. If public schools must answer for a particular measure, why should publicly subsidized alternatives face a different measuring stick?

That doesn’t necessarily mean the answer is more testing for everybody. Don’t dismiss the possibility of legislators looking to reduce public-school testing requirements instead.

What matters is consistency. Accountability shouldn’t become a word that changes definitions depending on which school is receiving the check.

A Texas connection

There is an interesting side story out west, though how much it will influence Tennessee remains to be seen.

Texas has a new governor-elect, Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned against vouchers and state takeovers. She has promised to replace Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath and pursue an end to the voucher program.

Tennessee’s debates have repeatedly invited comparisons with Texas. That doesn’t make every provision identical, or establish that every Tennessee proposal was copied from Austin. It does make the change in leadership worth watching.

Replacing an agency head and repealing a program are different assignments. A governor has considerable influence over the former. The latter requires lawmakers willing to change the law.

Campaign promises don’t arrive with their own legislative majority attached to every sentence.

Morath has led the Texas Education Agency since 2016. He is also the man who hired former Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn that year. She became a senior deputy before leaving for Tennessee in 2019.

Their shared history includes the troubled SPEDx special education contract. A Texas audit identified serious procurement failures involving the $4.4 million agreement and an undisclosed professional relationship between Schwinn and a subcontractor.

The agency publicly supported her candidacy for the Massachusetts commissioner’s job after the contract was canceled, though before that audit was released.

That is a documented professional connection. It isn’t necessary to embellish it into something the record doesn’t establish.

Given Morath’s long tenure and the incoming governor’s stated priorities, his departure would hardly qualify as a surprise. Whether changing the person changes the larger approach is the more useful question.

We’ve watched enough education commissioners come and go in Tennessee to know that a new nameplate doesn’t automatically produce a new direction.

Welcome to the hard part

Elections always produce celebration somewhere. One side dances in the street while the other wonders whether the republic can possibly survive until breakfast.

Then everybody begins making promises.

Sometimes I think more promises are made in the days following an election than during the campaign itself. Every result becomes a mandate. Every narrow victory becomes an overwhelming demand for whatever the winner already wanted to do.

It is important to remember that governing is a whole lot different from campaigning.

Campaigning lets you identify the problem, assign blame, and promise relief. Governing requires a budget, enough votes, people capable of carrying out the plan, and some willingness to admit when the plan isn’t working.

None of those fit particularly well on a yard sign.

My hope remains the same every year: I hope the new bunch does a better job than the old bunch.

I’d like fewer performances and more answers. I’d like public officials who understand that questions aren’t automatically attacks, and supporters who can recognize a bad decision even when their team makes it.

We also need to keep our expectations tempered. Politics is a macro game, while our lives exist on the micro level. Leadership can change the conditions around us, but it cannot personally repair every disappointment inside them.

That gap between the campaign promise and the individual experience is where a lot of resentment grows.

But that’s for another day.

Today, we welcome the next class of leaders.

Tomorrow, we start asking questions again.

Dad Gone Wild runs on curiosity, coffee, and readers willing to help keep the questions coming. If you find value in this work, please consider contributing through Venmo @Thomas-Weber-10 or Cash App $PeterAveryWeber. Every contribution helps make time for the digging, reading, and writing that go into these posts. Got a tip or something I ought to be looking into? Reach me at Norinrad10@yahoo.com. As always, thanks for reading, sharing, and helping keep this little corner of independent reporting alive. Nobody reads it, everyone quotes it.

Categories: Education