Even This Year, Some Politics Is Still Local
Battles over public school funding are generating almost as much heat as Trump is.
This shade of red isn’t Republican.
Photographer: Ralph Freso/Getty ImagesNational issues are getting most of the attention in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm election, including health care, immigration and President Donald Trump.
Yet from Arizona to Kentucky to Wisconsin, politics also remains fiercely local. Especially in states that cut school budgets as a result of the 2008 recession and Republican-sponsored tax cuts, public school funding has become a hot-button issue in many state legislative and gubernatorial races, often scrambling party loyalties. Six years after the Great Recession, most states were still spending less on schools than they were before 2008, according to a 2016 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.