Is policy for sale in Texas?

I’ll tell you what happened, and you tell me whether it seems that in Texas, policy is for sale. 

Pennsylvania billionaire voucher zealot Jeff Yass contributed $10 million to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s campaign this cycle. That’s not a typo. Yass donated $6 million to Abbott during the Republican primaries, which Abbott’s team obscenely but accurately bragged is the “largest single donation in Texas history”, and another $4 million just recently (which not incidentally is the 2nd largest donation in Texas history).

Weirdly, Abbott put the Pennsylvanian Yass’s $6 million into a separate bank account. He then spent an estimated – you guessed it – $6 million campaigning to purify the Republican party, by ousting Republican House members who throughout last year’s regular and special sessions dared to think for themselves and to vote according to their convictions and in the interests of their constituents, by opposing school vouchers. 

Why would Abbott go to such extreme lengths to destroy the careers of politicians who for many years had served him (all too) faithfully? Ten million reasons.

We are left to wonder: is the school voucher fight about public education, or is it about campaign contributions and political power?

Policy should not be for sale in Texas.

Our kids should not be pawns in these grotesque power-of-money games. 

But here we are. 

I’m not content to let our policy, and our democracy, get auctioned off to Big Money. I know you’re not either.