Mary Lou Bruner thinks President Obama was a gay prostitute, climate change is a Marxist hoax and evolution is propaganda for atheism. And now Bruner is one step closer to sitting on the board that decides what more than 5 million kids learn in Texas public schools (and strongly influences what textbooks are used in schools across the country).
Bruner was the leader in Tuesday’s Republican Primary for the State Board of Education seat out of East Texas. Preliminary results show she won 48.5 percent of the vote, just shy of the majority needed to avoid a runoff election. She will face Keven Ellis, Lufkin’s school board president, in the runoff. Ellis won 31.1 percent of the vote. (Texas primary election results are available here.)
Just what Texas needs — one more extremist on a board that has already embarrassed the state for years. The online magazine Slate is already up with a story. An excerpt:
Texas has long been ground zero for wackazoid right-wing politicians, who seem to get more entrenched every year: The current agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, is on a heaven-sent mission to put deep fryers and vending machines back into schools after a 10-year ban, and the attorney general, Ken Paxton, is obsessed with invalidating same-sex marriages, even on death certificates. (Paxton could be disbarred for encouraging clerks to ignore the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision, among numerous other ethically questionable acts.)
But Bruner, a retired teacher with 36 years of experience in Texas schools, is exceptional even by Lone Star standards. Earlier this year, she made headlines for claiming that President Barack Obama bankrolled his drug habit by plying his wares on the street…
The runoff election is May 24.
