Two Principals Indicted After Alleged Electioneering Attempt to Disrupt GOP Primary
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
Two Texas school principals are under fire for using their positions and school communications systems to tell their underlings to vote against Republicans who supported school choice measures in this year’s GOP primary.
As a nation, we love to see passionate educators, of course, but we also expect them to stay in their lanes when it comes to social and political issues — especially since we are paying their salaries with our taxes.
Teachers and administrators should leave their private politics out of our tax-supported schools.
In the case of two public school employees in Denton, Texas, their transgressions of pushing politics at work has crossed over from merely inappropriate to criminal.
Alexander Elementary School principal Lindsay Luján, 36, and her husband Borman Elementary School principal Jesús Luján, 33, who both work for the Denton Independent School District in Texas, have been indicted for unlawful use of an internal mail system for political advertising thanks to their political posturing, according to KERA.
Two @DentonISD admins, Jesus and Lindsay Lujan, were charged April 2 with unlawful use of internal mail system for political advertising—a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine ➡️ https://t.co/NtihNLd9Fh #TxEd #TXLege #DontDoTheCrime
— Erin Anderson (@TrueTexasTea) April 4, 2024
The charges are a class A misdemeanor under Texas’ election code.
Both Lujáns improperly sent emails to their teachers and fellow staffers urging them to go to the polls and vote for specific Republican candidates who fully support government-funded schools and who oppose school choice initiatives, the indictment said.
According to KEYE-TV, Lindsay Luján promised to give school staffers a 30-minute break to vote early and set out a list of the different candidates labeled as either “friendly” or “unfriendly” to public schools.
Jesús Luján sent emails of his own to staffers telling them not to think along party lines in the election, but to have a “purple mindset” and vote strictly for candidates along lines of their support for public schools. He stood accused of telling staffers to “vote for candidates who support public education and school funding.”
The couple have been under a cloud for some time, too. Already Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office settled an electioneering lawsuit filed on Feb. 22 against the pair.
“It is absolutely improper for publicly funded entities like school districts to engage in electioneering as Denton ISD has done,” Paxton said in February.
“Government officials everywhere are on notice that I will use every legal remedy available to me to stop school districts from influencing or coercing their employees to vote any particular way, especially when a district uses taxpayer resources and money to do so.”
But that settlement triggered a criminal investigation into their violations of the Lone Star State’s election laws.
“Denton ISD and the Texas Attorney General’s Office previously settled this case on Friday, March 1. As stated previously, we agree that election laws should be followed,” the school system said in a statement, KERA reported.
“Our Board of School Trustees adopted board policies in 2018 and 2021 regarding elections and campaign ethics, and we train all Trustees and Administrators on these policies annually. It is our expectation that these policies be followed,” the statement added.
This incident is just more evidence that our elections are vulnerable to abuse by those in power in more ways than just one. In this case, educators have apparently abused their positions of power to coerce a political outcome favorable to big government spending and control.
It goes to show how we all need to keep election security in the forefront of our minds as we go into every election cycle.
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