'Ostracized and excluded': Dem candidate spars with party leaders
Superintendent candidate clashes with Abrams allies
An internal dispute between a Democratic candidate and party leadership has boiled over in recent days with early voting now just over two weeks away.
Alisha Thomas Searcy, a former state lawmaker who is running for the state’s top education post, took to Facebook this week to tell her supporters that she feels “ostracized and excluded” by Democratic party leadership.
One Georgia, the leadership committee that is powering Stacey Abrams’ campaign for Governor, has not included Searcy on any of their campaign material. “Although the campaign is called One Georgia, the actions of the group nor the candidate seem to align with the name,” Searcy said.
The dispute goes back to Searcy’s time in the state legislature, when she routinely crossed party lines to support Republican-backed education proposals.
She voted for a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the state to take over failing schools, and another that would give the legislature the power to approve charter schools.
Searcy endorsed a controversial evaluation system that linked teachers’ salaries to their students’ standardized test scores. She also supported a scholarship program for private schools funded by taxpayers.
A Cobb County native, Searcy joined a Gwinnett-based charter school firm after losing the Democratic primary for state school superintendent in 2014. She ran for the post again this year and easily won the nomination without a runoff.
Some Democrats have not been quiet about their frustration with Searcy. “Searcy has robbed citizens and their local boards of education of funding and the authority to manage public schools,” Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Russell Edwards said in a scathing op-ed. “Democrats support public education; Searcy has undermined it. What can she possibly run on?”
Some took to social media to share their concerns about Searcy’s candidacy. “Searcy received $$ from Betsy DeVos, pledged to put an SRO in every school, and has voted again and again for privatization efforts proven to undermine the needs of GA children,” one Democratic activist tweeted. “We deserve better.”
For their part, the One Georgia campaign has noticeably excluded Searcy at public events. At the Georgia Democratic convention in August, Abrams posed for pictures with the other statewide candidates — except for Searcy. Though she did address delegates and speak at a press gathering.
The campaign insists that Abrams supports every Democrat running up and down the ballot. “Stacey Abrams supports the Democratic ticket and is dedicated to fundraising for candidates up and down the ballot,” a spokesman said.
Searcy says that other Democrats have reached out to her expressing their support after her Facebook post. “It appears to me that they’ve changed course,” she told WABE. “I’m happy to see that. I’m hopeful and I look forward to winning in November.”
Informative & very interesting! Great job, Niles!