By Kaitlin Housler
Corey DeAngelis, a school choice activist and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, said it’s time for Tennessee State Representative Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill) to be voted out of office amid his anti-school choice stunts, including his recent work with News Channel 5’s Phil Williams.
On Monday, Warner appeared in Williams’ investigative segment regarding the conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity pushing for state lawmakers to advance Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice bill.
Warner, who voted against the bill last month in the K-12 Subcommittee, told Williams he’s “not leadership’s bi***” in regards to House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) and House Republican leadership – all of whom support the governor’s school choice bill – and supposedly is voting the way his district wants him to vote.
However, during Monday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, host Michael Patrick Leahy – who is represented by Warner – said the representative told him he supported school choice when asked at the time of his last reelection bid.
“Last election cycle…I wanted to know where Todd Warner stood and as a constituent, I asked him, ‘Do you support school choice?’ And he said yes. That was before the August 2022 primary. So based on his statement to me, I voted for him in that primary. And now he’s lied to me. I don’t like it when my state representative lies to me,” Leahy said
DeAngelis also noted recent polling, which has consistently shown Tennesseans across the state in support of school choice.
“We overwhelmingly find that Tennesseans support school choice and that this is a nationwide trend as well. And what he says in the clip is that he’s listening to his district. What does that mean? That’s code for the special interest to control the government school monopoly. It sounds like he caved to them and he’s no longer fulfilling his campaign promise that he responded to you, that he actually supported school choice. Now he’s letting the special interests that are in his district control him and to block parental rights and education,” DeAngelis said.
DeAngelis said school choice has become a “Republican GOP litmus test issue,” noting how it’s “bad news” for lawmakers to align instead with the teachers union and anti-choice movements.
“The hardest thing to do in politics is to take out a sitting legislator. Incumbents usually win 95 percent of the time but with school choice, that trend has become inverted. Even if you’re an incumbent, if you come out against education freedom, it’s bad news because it’s become a Republican GOP litmus test issue. And so this doesn’t look good for Todd Warner either, especially after he said that he supported it, and then looks like he’s totally against it, aligning with Phil Williams over at Channel 5,” DeAngelis said.
“At the end of the day, who’s going to the ballot box to vote against someone who votes against school choice? It’s the actual parents, which are a new interest group that are just fighting for the right to educate their own kids as they see fit. They’re the ones that are going to cast the vote at the end of the day. So they’re the ones that are ultimately holding fake Republicans like Todd Warner accountable at the ballot box,” DeAngelis added.
In regards to Williams’ second hit piece on the governor’s school choice bill, DeAngelis called the segment a “desperate attempt for attention from a so-called journalist,” as the so-called “secret recording” released simply reveals how interest groups boast their resources to intimidate lawmakers to vote a certain way – a tactic used in politics for hundreds of years.
“Basically what Phil Williams does is he presents nothing but a nothing burger to the table and tries to present it as if it’s some groundbreaking news. It’s so pathetic, really. It’s a desperate attempt for attention from a so-called journalist. And all he really revealed is that, ‘Oh, political groups are doing political things. We support this policy. If you don’t support it, that’s probably going to be bad news for you because voters aren’t going to vote for you.’ That is nothing new in politics,” DeAngelis said.
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Corey DeAngelis” by Corey DeAngelis.