Corey DeAngelis calls Texas Rep. Travis Clardy a ‘school choice hypocrite’ as the lawmaker draws school choice election opponent

Education reform advocate Corey DeAngelis called out a Texas state representative for the member’s hypocrisy on school choice, voting against it while sending his kids to private school.

“REVEALED: TX Rep Travis Clardy (R) voted against school choice, is funded by teacher’s unions, sends his kids to private school,” said The Libs of Tik Tok Substack page.

Libs of Tik Tok called the GOP’s Clardy “the living definition of a hypocrite,” while noting that he has received $25,000 in campaign contributions from organizations such as teachers’ unions, which support public schools only.

In a strange exchange with Libs of Tik Tok, Clardy denied that “woke indoctrination is happening in my district.”

He went out of his way to defend public school administrators and staff in his house district’s schools, even when confronted with sexually inappropriate books and materials they allow in those schools.

“There is no logical reason to vote against parents from choosing and having control over where their child goes to school,” said Libs of Tik Tok about Clardy’s voting record.   

Nor is there a logical reason to defend the availability of sexually explicit material to minors in schools, unless of course you think the union special interest money is influencing Clardy’s behavior.   

That’s clearly the opinion of DeAngelis, who thanked Libs of Tik Tok for their work in exposing the relationship between Clardy and the unions. 

“Thank you for calling out @travisfortexas, @libsoftiktok,” DeAngelis tweeted. “He now has a primary opponent who supports school choice, Joanne Shofner, president of the Nacogdoches County Republican Women.”  

Shofner’s campaign website promotes four education related planks, which DeAngelis would likely approve. 

In a list of her campaign priorities, Shofner includes:  

• End Sexualization of Children; 
• Establish School Choice; 
• Solidify Parental Rights; 
• Protect Medical Freedom. 

This follows the news that Republican Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott will call a special session of the Texas Legislature in October to try to pass a comprehensive school choice bill, including a scholarship program.  

Abbott indicated that there will be electoral consequences for those in his own party, like Clardy, who don’t support the governor’s program on school choice.  

Either help the governor with a reform package in the special session or face defeat next year, Abbott implied. 

“There’s an easy way to get it done, and there’s a hard way,” Abbott said on a tele-town hall about the issue, reported the Texas Tribune. “We will take it either way — in a special session or after an election.” 

Voting begins for the Republican primary election in Texas on Feb. 20 and continues until March 5 next year. 

Ironically, Clardy first won election to his current seat in Texas House District 11, after defeating an incumbent Republican in a primary runoff election in 2012. 

But that Republican, Rep. Chuck Hopson, was formerly a Democrat, who ran for reelection in 2008, supporting then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.  

“You can’t run underneath Barack Obama in 2008 and then change parties,” Clardy said of Hopson’s 2008 hypocrisy. 

The 2024 primary will test whether the same type of hypocrisy on school choice holds for Clardy 12 years later.