Breaking: Did Kentucky teachers turn out Bevin? What next?

Kentucky teacher and pension activist Randy Wieck.

Randy Wieck is a Kentucky teacher and pension activist. He sent this special to this blog as the Kentucky vote was still being counted. 

If the election results hold for the Governor’s race in Kentucky – Democrat Andy Beshear seems to hold a 5100 vote lead, and IF incumbent Matt Bevin recognizes the result (always in doubt with autocrats – think Robert Mugabe) THEN governor-elect Beshear faces a flock of angry birds in the Republican super-majorities in both Kentucky legislative chambers – think Tippy Hedron in Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Will Beshear’s likely vetoes of draconian attempts to continue Bevin’s/Devos’s charter agenda – even in Bevin’s absence (!) – end up in the courts?

Will the Kentucky legislature attempt to push through ANOTHER pension deform law – this time squarely taking aim at the teacher portion of the Kentucky pension system?

To this observer, we teachers have plugged a hole in the dyke – but with the rising of hostile seas, and with a down-ticket Republican sweep of the other offices on the ballot – think Daniel Cameron as the new Attorney General – we must prepare for a long twilight struggle against the powerful anti-public education forces which have sharpened their knives in recent years, and are ever eager to pierce more holes in the dyke and allow a wave of privatization, and pension plunder to wash us away.

Make no mistake – autocracy dies a difficult and prolonged death.

The State teacher association, and the local (KEA and Jefferson County Teacher Association) backed Beshear’s primary opponent, Adam Edelen, creating some awkward bad blood when Beshear won the primary in May; however, Beshear had a teacher as a running mate, so many teachers likely showed up to vote.

Bevin calling teachers Thugs, and threatening us with $1000 fines, and firing, for demonstrating in the Capitol building, certainly did not make friends among teachers.

Our teacher associations here are in the pocket of alternative equity lobbyists.

It is absolutely ironic that a candidate for governor who used lawsuits and the court system to block attacks on pensions and public education, and to stop pension plunder – a strategy opposed by the KEA, and the Jefferson County Teachers’ Association – succeeded in fending off those attacks, won the governorship, and the reluctant support of those teacher associations.