For eight months, mega-bucks businessman Patrick Byrne spent millions of dollars and lots of energy trying to convince Utahns that they should support a private school voucher scheme.
And when Utah residents overwhelmingly rejected the so-called “Parents for Choice in Education Act,” Byrne got rankled and blasted Utahns as uncaring dupes. The head of the Internet retail seller Overstock.com also took cheap shots at his own allies.
Byrne, who according to Utah press accounts dumped more than $3 million of his fortune into the pro-voucher push, complained to The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News following the 62 percent to 38 percent smack-down that the state’s residents had failed a “statewide IQ test” and that they don’t care about their children’s education.
“They don’t care enough about their kids,” Byrne told The Tribune. “They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don’t care enough about their kids to think outside the box.”
Byrne, who has repeatedly derided public schools as “broken,” elaborated on his disgust with voters, telling the Deseret Morning News that he was “ashamed” of Utah.
“This is parents looking at their kids getting a third-rate education and other kids getting basically a death sentence and saying, ‘That’s OK by me.’”
Even Gov. John Huntsman Jr., who signed the voucher bill into law, drew some of Byrne’s bile.
“When he asked for my support [for governor],” Byrne told The Tribune, “he told me he is going to be the voucher governor. Not only was it his No. 1 priority, it was what he was going to be all about. He did, I think, a very tepid job, and then when the polls came out on the referendum, he was pretty much missing in action.”
The retail mogul is all of sudden all about burning bridges. The pro-voucher group, Parents for Choice in Education (PCE), which was largely bankrolled by Byrne, also couldn’t escape being knocked.
The PCE chairman, while expressing disappointment in the outcome of the voucher referendum, told the Deseret Morning News that “We have moved from a small tight group to a big coalition that is looking for changes and reform and we are going to keep pushing … and that is very positive.”
Byrne would have none of it, telling the newspaper that “When you run the ball down to the 2-yard line you don’t get four points for it – (the loss) is shameful.”
Bryne may be finished with Utah, but it appears he has his sights set on other states. He told The Tribune that there are so-called “freedom-oriented groups” in South Carolina that are interested in private school vouchers. Byrne singled out African Americans as eager for vouchers.
He’s obviously bitter, but apparently Byrne is a slow learner as well. Voucher schemes have routinely fared poorly at the voting booths in a number of states. Voters in California, Michigan, Colorado, Oregon and Washington have turned away initiatives to implement vouchers, usually as decisively as Uthans.
And if you can’t convince voters in what right-wing pundit George Will dubbed “among the reddest of states,” what makes one believe that South Carolinians will finally be the place to revive the voucher movement?
Before he decides to dump tons of money into trying to shape South Carolina public policy and drag his bad attitude into the state, Bryne should do his homework.
In September, the Myrtle Beach Sun News reported on a poll showing that 48 percent of African Americans in South Carolina oppose private school vouchers. Only 18 percent of those polled backed vouchers.
South Carolinians should be alert to Byrne’s agenda. He has lots of money and is willing to blow it on pushing poor public policy, but he’s also a sore loser who doesn’t take kindly to citizens who defy his voucher demands.
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