Carson Invites Himself To Austin School; School Declines
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Ben Carson is being denied an appearance at a Ausin, TX elementary school, although it’s allegedly not for political reasons.
It seems that Carson made overtures to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which has an afterschool program at Austin ISD’s first modern all-male public school. However, word that the trip could happen as early as next week quickly reached staff and teachers at Gus Garcia, who were suitably unimpressed by the proposal.
More problematically, as of mid-Friday afternoon, several members of the AISD board of trustees had no clue that a presidential candidate was planning to be on one of their campuses.
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This wasn’t a question of Carson’s politics (although it’s undoubtable that few members of the progressive-to-moderate-Republican board would be happy about his extremist and often anti-science positions). Instead, the real issue was about what in the campaign world is called optics. Having an AISD campus used as set dressing for any political candidate is a worst case scenario for the strictly apolitical school district. In Texas, ISDs can’t even lobby the Legislature on their own behalf. So being seen as even implicitly and accidentally endorsing one candidate or another, or having AISD kids turn up in some campaign b-roll footage, is beyond undesirable. That’s why, to date, the situation has never arisen.
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