The liberally minded National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) is carefully reviewing its election procedures after a nominees withdrawal left them with only one candidate for the office of president-elect: a supporter of adding intelligent design to the curriculum in Kansas schools.
The candidate is Kenneth Willard, a Republican who voted with the conservative majority on the board in 2005 to allow state science standards to include the teaching of intelligent design to students. Willard is now in the minority on the school board after two of his colleagues lost their bid for re-election in 2006.
Facing the prospect that a conservative Republican who supports intelligent design will be the next president of the NASBE has sent scientists and other pro-evolutionists into a tizzy causing them to urge state school boards across the country to begin a write-in campaign. Yet their efforts are likely all for naught as the NASBE bylaws make no provision for write-in votes.
Combined with the fact that the balloting ends this month and the convention takes place in October it is all but assured that Willard will become the president-elect and take office as the NASBE president in 2009.
What the liberals may not have realized is that by making such a fuss they have only called attention to their own hypocrisy. The officers of the national board issued a letter to board members espousing their support for a diversity of views and tolerance and yet when the future president expresses opinions that they disagree with, they abandon their principles.
I don’t think there would have been a write-in effort if the only candidate had been a liberal. Do you?
In the end the liberals will have spent a lot of energy on a losing cause and I won’t complain about that.
Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
