Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Saturday, August 04, 2007
Educator, legislator teachers dominate state House; Dist. 28B race promises another
Gene Pelowski spent the early years of his teaching career urging Winona Senior High School students to engage in the political process.
In 1986, he put his money, his mouth, and five months of each year in the same spot: the State Capitol in St. Paul.
“I decided to take my own advice,” said Pelowski, who has represented Winona in the Minnesota House for 21 years. He says his experience teaching social studies was perfect preparation for joining the political fray.
Pelowski shares his background with other state and federal representatives from southeast Minnesota, including U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, a Mankato high school teacher, Minnesota Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes, a former Winona Area Public Schools substitute teacher, school board member and president of the state PTA.
Both candidates in a special election for House District 28B Linda Pfeilsticker and Steve Drazkowski also list educator on their resumes.
After Aug. 7, one of the two will join a Minnesota House that has a growing contingent of educator-legislators. From 1999 to 2007, the number of educators in the House rose from 19 to 28, with the biggest jump coming after the 2006 elections.
Since 2005, educator has been the most common profession among House members.
Not surprisingly, many of them say it’s good for the education field and the state as a whole. Pelowski, for one, points to polls that say the public considers teachers more trustworthy than lawyers or businessmen.
Others say the trend has packed the Legislature with representatives with particularly strong allegiances to education lobbyists.
Drazkowski who worked for 14 years as an Extension service educator believes groups like Education Minnesota, the state teachers’ union, are “recruiting” teachers for that purpose.
“I’m fearful that the citizenry will become captive to their interests,” Drazkowski said.
That charge is levied nearly every year during debate at the state Capitol, according to David Schultz, a political analyst and professor at Hamline University in St. Paul.
“There’s always this potential conflict of interest,” Schultz said. “Are these individuals voting on matters where they stand to benefit more than everyone else?”
Pelowski dismisses the claim, saying the influence of education interest groups is “overrated.”
“You represent first your district,” he said. “You represent the people who elected you.”
Whether there’s a conflict of interest or not, Schultz says education lobbyists nationwide are realizing the benefits of promoting teachers as state lawmakers. That’s increasingly true, he said, as the burden of education funding has shifted more from the local to the state level.
“First they were thinking: Let’s get teachers elected to school boards,’” Schultz said. “Now they realize that states are in the game of funding education more than they used to be.”
The trend of teacher-educators isn’t as prevalent in Congress.
Walz said he’s currently the only high school teacher in the U.S. House. If national campaign finance laws were reformed to match Minnesota’s, he said, it might open the nation’s Capitol doors to more teachers and others in modest-paying professions.
“I think there’s more that would like to serve at this level,” Walz said.
For Walz, the link between teaching and politics is clear. It’s akin to the distinction between being able to communicate and explain information, as opposed to simply understanding it.
“You can have all organizational skills and backgrounds, but you have to be able to connect,” Walz said.
Juggling act
It’s always a trick for teacher-legislators to balance their jobs, though Schultz says school districts are increasingly willing to accommodate the split.
“This is just such a great way for a school district to get a voice at the Legislature,” Schultz said.
Pelowski has juggled the dual roles since he was first elected, teaching full-time in the fall while taking an extended leave for the legislative session, which runs from January to May.
He says the part-time system allows legislators to escape the “cloistered” environment in St. Paul.
“I like this system,” Pelowski said. “I think it was conceived in such a way that you go back and suffer the consequences or the rewards of what you’ve legislated.”
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