COLOMBIA – A Democratic Senator from South Carolina is leaving his own party’s legislative group due to lengthy disputes over how aggressively they should push for teachers’ priorities in educational policy debates.
State Sen. Mike Fanning, D-Great Falls, told The Post and Courier that he will no longer attend meetings of the Senate Democratic bench, the group of 16 Democrats in the 46-member chamber that usually seeks to collaborate on some of the highest-issues. in profile.
“In the past year, it has become apparent that none of the parties are listening to teachers, including the Democratic bench in the Senate,” said Fanning. “So I redirected my energy that I was once spending on the caucus to meet with teachers, work with teachers and fight for them, while they are continually under attack from both parties in the Senate.”
The decision made official what he had been thinking for a while. He almost stopped attending meetings a year ago, amid his obstruction of a huge educational bill.
A Democratic bench spokeswoman declined to comment.
The practical implications of Fanning’s change are limited.
Republican and Democratic caucuses are groups of lawmakers in each party who strategize together – in the Senate, there are 30 Republicans and 16 Democrats. But there are no requirements to vote for a bloc, and most issues in the legislature do not fit the party lines perfectly.
Even if he is leaving the caucus, Fanning will still identify himself as a Democrat for now, but he said that could also change if he determines that an “independent” label would be more applicable.
Still, his decision represents another setback for Senate Democrats after they lost three seats in the 2020 elections, which reduced their minority to the smallest size since at least Reconstruction.
Elected for the first time in 2016, Fanning has developed a reputation in recent years as a staunch teacher prosecutor, which has made him dear to the SC teacher advocacy group for Ed, but has increasingly angered his Senate colleagues, who argue that it spreads misinformation.
Fanning was also a professor in the 1990s and currently runs an organization that offers teacher training and job fairs to schools in various counties in and around the Senate district, which extends from Fairfield and Chester counties to parts of southern York.
At the 2020 session, Fanning spent nearly two months battling a broad education reform project, insisting that he did nothing to help teachers and that it was written without enough of his contributions.
The legislation was finally overwhelmingly passed by the Senate in March, just before the coronavirus pandemic forced the session to end earlier. The Chamber had approved a very different version of the bill a year earlier, but the two chambers never had a chance to attempt an agreement between the two measures, which officially died with the November elections.
While he is disassociating himself from the Democratic Senate bench, Fanning said he would remain the only white member of SC’s legislative black bench, because he felt they have been more receptive to teachers’ concerns.
Follow Jamie Lovegrove on Twitter @jslovegrove.