Adkins says education a state issue after House GOP leader backs action on parents’ rights

Republican congressional candidate Amanda Adkins wouldn’t commit to supporting a federal parents’ bill of rights on Monday, though House Republican leadership has promised to advance legislation.

Adkins, a former Cerner executive and state GOP chair in a competitive race against Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids in Kansas’ 3rd District, held a news conference to discuss the “Commitment to America” – a high-level policy roadmap released by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican poised to become speaker if Republicans retake the chamber in November.

The policy agenda comes as Republicans are attempting to wrestle political momentum back from a Democratic Party galvanized by a call to push back against restrictive abortion policies in the aftermath of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned the federal constitutional right to an abortion.

The court decision, coupled with the ongoing legal troubles of former President Donald Trump, had put the Republican Party on its heels when it came to a cohesive midterm message. McCarthy’s agenda, announced last Friday, is an attempt to shift the conversation to Republican goals.

The outline provides Republican candidates like Adkins a series of mostly political popular policies to tout on the campaign trail in an attempt to show what a Republican-controlled House would try to accomplish.

Adkins emphasized the harm caused by inflation, the importance of securing the U.S.-Mexico border to stem the tide of fentanyl and other drugs, and the need to increase the use of nuclear energy production. She was flanked by a local business owner who spoke about supply chain woes, as well as Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe, a Republican, who said President Joe Biden’s administration had failed to secure the border.

But Adkins didn’t speak about the Commitment to America’s call for a parents’ bill of rights until asked about it – and then suggested it’s an idea best left to the states.

“I strongly believe that education is a state and local issue and that’s where the dialogue needs to happen. But the focal point … the theme is in there because it represents a frustration point in America,” Adkins said when asked whether she supports federal legislation.

Adkins’ response comes as anger over school closures earlier in the pandemic, as well as increased frustration with curriculum and school materials perceived as left-leaning, have risen among Republicans and some independents nationally.

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin made parents rights in schools a key issue in his campaign. He ran an ad featuring a woman criticizing the content of a book in her son’s curriculum (the Pulitzer-Prize winning book Beloved by Toni Morrison) and his campaign often highlighted a clip of Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe saying that parents shouldn’t tell schools what to teach.

Youngkin and Adkins both use the same political consulting company, the Kansas City-based Axiom Strategies. Youngkin’s success with the political issue injected life into legislation across the country aiming at giving parents more control over what’s taught in classrooms.Youngkin traveled to Kansas to campaign for Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, the Republican nominee for governor, last week.

The Kansas Legislature in April approved a version of the parents’ bill of rights that instructed districts to establish processes for parents to challenge classroom content. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who called the legislation the “teacher demoralization act,” vetoed the bill. Schmidt has pledged to sign a parents’ bill of rights if elected.

The Commitment to America broadly defines a parents’ bill of rights as including the right to know what’s being taught, the right to “be heard,” the right to school budget and spending information, their child’s right to privacy and a right to be updated on any violent activity that takes place at school.

Several versions of a parents’ bill of rights have been introduced in the House. One, which has 112 co-sponsors, is supported by Kansas Republican Reps. Jake LaTurner and Tracey Mann.

“I think parents, and I hear this a lot, they just want to know – they want to know what’s going on in a classroom. They want to know and understand what their children are being taught,” Adkins said. “Again, there’s no reason why that dialogue can’t happen within a trusted relationship between a parent and a teacher and it should happen. I think parents, especially now, are interested in understanding how education dollars are spent.”

Asked whether Davids supports a parents’ bill of rights, Ellie Turner, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said school boards should ultimately make decisions about the curriculum.

“Rep. Davids is a proud graduate of Kansas public schools who believes that both parents and teachers have an important role to play in education and curriculum decisions should be left to state and local school boards,” Turner said.

Focus on ‘daily life’ and economy

McCarthy unveiled his agenda in Pennsylvania – a swing state that will help determine which party wins control of Congress this November – declaring which issues Republicans would focus on if they took back the House in November. According to a FiveThirtyEight polling average, Democrats hold a small lead over Republicans, 45.2% to 43.9%, when voters are asked whether they would support a generic Republican or Democrat for Congress.

The announcement was modeled after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America, a legislative agenda of popular policies promised by the Republican Party, should they win control of the House. The party picked up 54 House seats in that election, in what is sometimes called the “Republican Revolution.”

McCarthy’s plan, too, tries to focus more on popular Republican Party policies than on some of the more hot button issues that have divided the caucus, like Sen. Lindsay Graham’s proposal for a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks.

His agenda largely avoids abortion (though it does say Republicans would “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers”) and instead focused on issues like the economy, crime and giving parents more control over what is taught in schools.

Adkins didn’t speak about abortion on Monday until asked about the issue by reporters. She reiterated that she opposes a federal ban on the procedure and that abortion policy should be decided at the state level. But she also said she supports reducing abortion and that “whatever steps that we have take incrementally to reduce abortion in America, Amanda Adkins – I – will be a supporter of that.”

“Overwhelmingly, as I’ve been out in the community, the focus for most people is daily life and the economy. So it is a misread on the part of the Democrats to think that this is the issue that’s driving people,” Adkins said.

Adkins faces a similar challenge to McCarthy. Her campaign will have to bring out the more conservative members of the Republican base while also appealing to the type of moderate, suburban voter who rejected Trump and helped Democrats win control of Congress in 2018.

Democrats have tried to drive a wedge between Adkins and moderate voters by highlighting her past role managing Sam Brownback’s 2004 Senate campaign. As governor, Brownback appointed Adkins to chair the Kansas Children’s Cabinet.

“Amanda Adkins spent nearly two decades helping Sam Brownback do everything he could to decimate our public schools,” Turner said. “Typically, you don’t go to an arsonist for fire safety tips.”

Asked about the Brownback criticism, Adkins said she is her own leader. She never received a paycheck from the State of Kansas, she said.

“The Democrats do not want to talk about the fact that I worked in business for 15 years, that I grew business at Cerner,” Adkins said. “They especially don’t want to talk about the fact I worked in health care across the entire United States, that I spent my career focused on cutting costs in health care, making it more affordable and helping communities have higher levels of health outcomes.”

Budget position

Many of the ideas outlined by Republicans are highly unlikely to become law in the short term, however. Even if Republicans take back control of both the House and Senate, they are virtually certain to fall short of the supermajorities that would be needed to override a presidential veto.

Democrats have been criticizing Adkins for her support of a hypothetical budget crafted by the Republican Study Committee, a conservative group of Republicans in the House. The budget has a top-line goal of balancing the federal budget within 7 years, in part through making changes to Social Security and Medicare by raising the retirement age and cutting benefits for “high income earners,” though it does not define high-income.

“The Republican Study Committee has a plan to completely reduce the deficit within five years. I absolutely support that,” Adkins told KCUR in September.

The RSC budget also goes beyond economics and into some of the culture war issues Adkins has attempted to shy away from. It supports a federal ban on abortion after a heartbeat is detected, which would be earlier than Kansas’ 22-week ban and supports a bill declaring that human life begins at conception. The budget also promises to “protect children from Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology.”

Asked about the distinctions between the Republican Study Committee budget and McCarthy’s agenda, Adkins said: “ I don’t endorse one whole thing. I’m a leader myself. I have my own policy ideas and I laid them out earlier.”

Adkins said in Congress her focus would be on domestic and international business opportunities important to the district and to Kansas, given her background in business and health care.