Arizona Free Enterprise Club Labels Red4ED ‘One of the Most Expensive Failures in Arizona Political History’

The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) analyzed the success of the Red4ED movement in Arizona since it launched a little over four years ago, and concluded that after spending over $30 million, the movement not only failed to accomplish anything, but failed to stop historic tax cuts. Red4Ed’s two initiatives and a referendum were struck down by courts as “legally flawed,” resulting in AFEC labeling its efforts “the largest, most expensive failure in Arizona political history.”

Pam Kirby, the executive director for the Arizona Republican Party, who has extensive experience in education policy and served on the board of the Scottsdale Unified School Board for eight years, told The Arizona Sun Times, “In November, Arizona voters have an opportunity to push back against teacher unions and socialist movements like Red4ED, Critical Race Theory and Social Emotional Learning. School Board races are critical to the future of our children and our country. Democrats and ‘go along to get along’ school board members got us into this mess. We need courageous conservative leadership leading our schools now more than ever.”

Arizona Educators United launched Red4Ed in 2018 ostensibly to increase teachers’ salaries and funding for K-12 education. People and teachers showed up all over, at the state capitol and at events and protests, wearing red shirts and carrying red signs. But AFEC said “the movement was quickly hijacked by the teachers’ unions and other out-of-state special interest groups.” It soon turned into “a singular quest to double the state income tax through a ballot initiative.”

AFEC said Red4ED’s first failure, despite a $2 million donation from the National Teachers Union, was “Invest in Ed version one,” an initiative named Prop. 207 that would have doubled Arizona’s income tax. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce sued the group, and the Arizona Supreme Court agreed, saying that the description “did not accurately represent the increased tax burden on the affected classes of taxpayers,” which “creates a significant danger of confusion or unfairness.” The court said the description “fails to mention that the measure modifies the inflation indexing of income tax rates that was adopted in 2015, thus exposing most taxpayers to tax increases.” The average Arizonan would have seen a tax increase, not just the wealthy.

Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times
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