Arizona teachers union backed Save our Schools PAC apparently spread misinformation and actually fell well short of the needed ~120,000 signatures to kill school choice. Video in article.
Shortly after we had published an article describing how Save our Schools Arizona, SOS - a teachers union backed PAC - claimed to have garnered 141,000 signatures to kill the new school voucher expansion bill, sources told us that they believe that enough signatures can be challenged on grounds such as duplication and other illegal actions by SOS. One source close to the matter told us that they believe that the number claimed by public school teachers union backed SOS PAC is an outright lie. A legislator who spoke with us on account of anonymity expressed confidence that the SOS signature submission to the Secretary of State is just a temporary hurdle and that the number of valid signatures collected will turn out to be insufficient.
And so it appears that the teachers unions played even more shenanigans than we originally had thought possible and may have lied outright about the number of signatures they had gathered. Numbers are not yet official but according to the Goldwater Institute, one of the leading policy organizations behind the push for more school choice, only 88,866 signatures were actually turned in. This is according to petition sheets released by the Arizona Secretary of State.
If this were to hold true, and care has to be taken here not to jump to conclusions, this would be a massive victory for school choice proponents, including law makers, the governor, parent groups and policy organizations such as Goldwater and the American Federation for Children. In particular it would validate the efforts of parents led by Christine Accurso who had for weeks protested peacefully next to signature collection sites of SOS, working to convince people not to sign the anti universal school choice petition.
Video of press conference by school choice proponents and parent activists
In a moment of epiphany, after her press conference on 24 September 2022, Accurso said to supporters and volunteers that Americans have been sitting on their couches and watched the crazy happen for too long. If they indeed succeeded in stopping the public school teachers unions from killing school choice expansion in Arizona, then this could show that people are waking up and are taking action against the fringe racist-wokester-Bolsheviks that are working to destroy our country, and, let's not kid ourselves, many of its people.
During the press conference Accurso and parent volunteers described some of the tactics deployed by SOS. According to them these included lies to voters, illegal ballot collection tactics as well as physical and verbal intimidation of pro school voucher parent volunteers as well as children. One parent said that school choice opponents had flipped off her 6 year old son. Having no illusions remaining, she described how it was eye opening for her to see how people who claim to be for children actually treat children.