Gov. Evers isn’t going to help Jill Underly as she faces the political fight of her life.
Gov. Tony Evers told a Milwaukee radio host on Jan. 14 that he is “absolutely not” going to endorse Democrat incumbent Jill Underly in the heated primary race for DPI.
Asked whether he was going to endorse in the three-way primary for state school superintendent, Gov. Evers said, “No, for sure not now because we have a primary. I will not be doing that. After the primary, we’ll see. But at thus point in time, absolutely not.”
That’s a stunning rebuke by a Democrat governor. After all, Underly is an incumbent in his own party, and she is facing aggressive challenges from two other Democrats. The other candidates are leftist superintendent Jeff Wright, who was endorsed by the WEAC PAC, and Brittany Kinser, a centrist Democrat who has embraced education reform. The primary is Feb. 18.
Evers made the comments on WTMJ 620 AM.
Evers also criticized the liberal Underly when asked about her decision to water down school testing scores. He said her move “caught many people by surprise. If the state superintendent had reached out to more people involved in our public schools, I think it would be a better result.”
He said there are a lot of people who seemed “exceedingly surprised by the change and wished they could have had input.’
In the same interview, Evers slammed the failure of Milwaukee Public Schools to follow the state law requiring the district to install school resource officers.
“It is a law, and it needs to be followed,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to throw anybody into jail on that, but it looks like the city agrees to it, the mayor wanted it, possibly the issue might be who helps pay for it. But the bottom line is, we just have to get this done. It seems ridiculous. If something is passed into law, we should anticipate that whoever it impacts, will follow through. I believe it has to be done and the sooner the better.”
Evers also said he wasn’t sure if he’s going to run again, and he said his relationship with Republican leaders in the Legislature has improved.
“I will decide after the budget,” Evers said. “Obviously I’m weighing that as we go forward but until the budget is done and that work is done, early summer I would say, that’s the time that I will be making that announcement. Nothing new to me, don’t know and we will wait and see.”
He added again, “I don’t know if I’m going to run … I need to spend more time thinking about it.”
