Republicans who control Indiana government are making themselves look bad with efforts to strip power from the only Democrat who holds a major state office — Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz.
A bill to remove Ritz as the chairwoman of the Indiana State Board of Education is sailing through the Legislature. A vote Thursday to delay the change until July does not significantly improve appearances.
Predictably, Democrats are crying foul, but Republican leaders should realize their actions are losing points with independents and even some Republicans.
Last week the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, one of the state’s most conservative-leaning major newspapers, issued a warning in an editorial.
“Republicans in state government, we have written here, need to be careful not to get into bullying mode,” the News-Sentinel said. “It’s hard for a fair-minded person not to conclude that they are indeed bullying her,” the editorial said about Ritz.
“The result is that the person voters thought they were electing to do a job won’t really have many duties related to that job,” the News-Sentinel said.
The Fort Wayne paper prescribes a “long-term look” that could include allowing the governor to appoint the state superintendent, “the way it is in most other states.”
The key to that strategy is in doing it “long-term,” not in the middle of Ritz’s first term.
In a recent editorial, we recommended considering an appointed superintendent for the year 2021. That would allow Ritz to serve this term and possibly a second term without a change in her job description.
Legislators or the governor would not tolerate reducing the powers of their offices in midstream.
Ritz was the only Democrat to win a statewide election in 2012, scoring an upset over incumbent Republican superintendent Tony Bennett.
Many Hoosiers were voting not so much for the little-known Ritz, but for “anyone but Bennett.” Voters sent a message that Bennett was moving too far, too fast with policies that favored charter schools over traditional public schools.
Republican leaders continue to ignore that message at their own peril.
Voices from elsewhere in the state substantially agree with us about the future of the state superintendent’s job.
“Personally, I’m right with those who say the state superintendent’s position should be an appointed one,” said Dave Banger of Lafayette’s Journal and Courier, in a column in which he criticized Republican moves to diminish Ritz’s powers.
An Evansville Courier & Press editorial last week said: “The real political decision, whether it comes this year or four years from now, is whether… to make the superintendent of public instruction position an appointed instead of an elected position. This newspaper has campaigned for years to make it an appointed position … Indiana does not need two officials making educational policy decisions.”
The Evansville paper added, “But we have been sympathetic to those lawmakers who say give Ritz another chance at a four-year term before making it an appointed position.”
In a recent interview, Senate President David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said that would take too long. He argued, “… we can’t wait for her to run her course of her tenure — that might not be until 2020 — and have the board not working. That’s not good for Indiana’s kids and parents and schools.”
Despite Long’s apparent pessimism, Republicans have a fair-and-square chance to get a state superintendent they like before 2020 — by winning the election in 2016. By continuing their heavy-handed actions that generate sympathy for Ritz, they seem intent on blowing it.