Teachers Always Show Up

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

Sometimes, in election season, I have the feeling that the entire audience at political events is made up of teachers.

O.K., maybe an exaggeration. Democratic political events. And you do see people from other unions, although, unlike the teachers, they tend to come in large buses and wear identical T-shirts. And there will be students, as long as the event in question takes place in a university gymnasium.

But the teachers — good citizens who are always worried about what the government will do to them next — win the political participation prize. During the presidential race, the line in Barack Obama’s speech about how standardized tests should not “come at the expense of music or art or physical education or science” often got more applause than getting out of Iraq.

All of this takes us to Florida, where Gov. Charlie Crist announced Thursday that he was going to leave the Republican Party and run for the United States Senate as an independent. This happened at a rally where most of the attendees appeared to be teachers.

(More here.)