Hypocrisy is perhaps all too common among liberals in Olympia, but State Senator Rosemary McAuliffe is staking a claim to be #1 among her peers this year, stepping onto the backs of poor students across the state to raise her profile, as reported in the Washington State Wire.
As also noted by the News Tribune, McAuliffe was willing to vote against a bill she had sponsored – and was still extolling the virtues of on her Senate web site after she voted against it – all to curry favor with the state teachers union. She would rather put $40 million dollars in federal education aid to poor and at-risk student programs than cross her campaign benefactors at the teachers union.
The impact is clear, according to Mike Sotelo, who co-founded the Association of Washington Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.
“It is unfortunate if you look at the areas where the funding impacts — it is going to impact our communities of color more than any other place.”
But for McAuliffe, poor students were not the issue. Instead, it appears she is more focused on her own bottom line. She spent most of last year trying to retire a $50,000+ debt left over from her 2012 campaign. But dollars were harder to come by for someone who is no longer the chair of the State Senate’s Education committee (courtesy of the bi-partisan Majority Coalition Caucus last year), and she had to dip into her own checkbook to the tune of $8,000 to pay off vendors who had waited more than a year to be paid. Perhaps she figured that it might be easier to get that remaining money paid back if she didn’t cross her biggest benefactor, the teachers union.
After all, who would notice that she would vote against a bill she wrote, when doing so would only impact poor kids who were unlikely to be campaign contributors anyway?
So she didn’t really say that?
So she didn’t really say that?
So she didn’t really say that?