On Wednesday, January 9th, I will be attending the Education Minnesota Congressional District 6 candidate screening. Challengers Elwyn Tinklenberg, Bob Olson, and John Brockberg have scheduled times with which to interview for the endorsement.
From my email:
The following candidates will be screening:
Elwyn Tinklenberg (D) 5:00 pm
Bob Olson (D) 5:45 pm
John Brockberg (I) 6:30 pm
Michele Bachmann did not reply to Education Minnesota's invitation to screen.
Each candidate will be given 30 minutes. A set of standard questions will be used for each candidate. Copies of the AFT & NEA questionnaires, along with a biography for each candidate, will be printed for all volunteers.
Interestingly, Michele Bachmann has decided that even appearing is too much to ask. Conservative educators (many of whom teach in my district) throughout the district should take this as a sign that Bachmann does not particularly care whether she gets their support. While it is easy to say that Bachmann would not have gotten the endorsement in the first place, it is the sign of a leader for someone to go to the very people that disagree with you and try to convince them of your standpoint. Far too often in politics today we stick with only those whom we agree and are therefore never challenged in our perceptions of given issues. I recall another occasion on which I sat on an endorsement committee. While I disagreed with her on many things, Betsy Wergin gained my ultimate respect simply by showing up and discussing with us what she believed and even opened her mind to try understand what we believed. It caused me in that instance to vote for a non-endorsement for either candidate in the race. Even easier than saying Bachmann couldn't get the endorsement anyway, is not even making the attempt.
Cross Posted on Dump Bachmann
2 responses to "Bachmann A No Show For Endorsement"
Come on, do you actually think that Michele Bachmann stands a ghost of a chance of being endorsed by the NEA?
I was at an NEA meeting in Brainerd where they cheered an endorsement of Hillary Clinton.
The NEA/MEA's leadership is so far left that they couldn't make a right turn on Division without spazzing out.
I happen to know a few conservative educators who are very happy with the job that Bachmann is doing; I don't think that she needs to expend the energy to talk to a brick wall.
That is precisely what is wrong in politics today Leo. For whatever reason we have stopped even being willing to talk to one another.
As I said in the post, I had a lot of respect for Betsy Wergin in coming to talk to us and because of that I (a pretty liberal person) and a couple other conservative educators chose to withhold an endorsement for either candidate. It was essentially a stalemate in the room.