Republican Senators Announce That They Will Vote Against Betsy DeVos

“Teachers have more freedom and parents have more choices, they are public schools and Betsy Devos is in the forefront of helping create that opportunity for public education”, Alexander said shortly after the vote.

Ohioans flooded Senate phone lines in Washington, hoping that Portman, of Terrace Park, would cast the deciding vote on her nomination. “And I think that we’re going to make sure we do everything we can and we feel 100 percent confident that she will be confirmed”.

Democrats have vowed a united front against the Republican president’s nomination of DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist and school choice activist who once ran the marketing company Amway and faces questions about plagiarism in recent answers to senators’ questions. Democrats on the committee argued that she knows too little about education policy and would undermine public schools. “That is not acceptable to Betsy DeVos, and it is not acceptable to me”.

So DeVos’s rhetoric about replacing “failed” public schools with charters and vouchers may have rubbed many people – even Trump supporters – the wrong way. The GOP overpowered the Dems, and now there will be a final vote confirmation by the Senate next week.

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of ME both announced earlier this week that they would break with their party and vote against DeVos’ confirmation. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. She authored the protest letter, which identified four areas of concern with DeVos’s nomination, including her qualifications in the education field and her level of commitment to public education. High-performing schools – be they rural, urban or suburban – should determine how to best address their community’s unique educational needs rather than conform to broad, one-size-fits-all standards issued at the federal level, and I made that clear to her.

The two senators’ statements came as somewhat of a surprise given that both had voted in committee Tuesday to move DeVos’ nomination to the full Senate.

“Let’s give her a little bit of credit”. Should the Alabama Republican be confirmed before DeVos, he would resign from his seat, and would not be able to vote for her. “This nominee is being jammed through with corners being cut”.

Portman’s Democratic counterpart, Sen.

President Donald Trump’s nominee has spent more than two decades promoting charter schools across the country.