Ken Mercer and Tim Tuggey have a lot in common.
Mercer, the incumbent District 5 State Board of Education representative, and Tuggey, the attorney-lobbyist trying to take his seat, both consider themselves conservatives.
They're both 54, each with more than 20 years of business experience in the San Antonio area. They're both products of the military, with Mercer the son of an Army Air Corps veteran and Tuggey a former Army captain.
They even agree about the meaning of their primary campaign, that it's a battle to define the modern Texas Republican Party. That's where the arguments begin.
To hear Mercer tell it, Tuggey is a Republican in name only, a closet liberal who has contributed heavily to Democratic candidates in recent years.
Tuggey concedes he's contributed to a few Democrats (including Congressmen Charlie Gonzalez and Ciro Rodriguez), but argues that he — not Mercer — is the true conservative in the race. He describes local control of education as a core conservative issue, and says Mercer and his Board of Education colleagues have abandoned that principle in favor of “micromanaging” public-education curriculum in Texas with a Christian-right agenda.
Defining differences
Mercer and Tuggey are a study in stylistic contrasts.
Mercer, a project software manager for USAA, favors sweaters and radiates an amiable folksiness, even when he's aiming a verbal dart at his opponent. He repeatedly describes Tuggey as “a nice enough gentleman” and follows his anecdotes with self-deprecating asides about his own tendency to ramble.
Tuggey, a former chairman of VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority, wears suits and ties, and is crisp and careful with his words. He fits the profile of what party populists derisively call a “country-club Republican,” someone who believes in free markets but has little patience for moral crusades.
In the wake of President Barack Obama's 2008 election, Republicans have debated whether the party needs to move to the political center or stand more emphatically as a party of social conservatism.
The Mercer-Tuggey race, along with a similar Board of Education primary battle between incumbent Don McLeroy, R-College Station, and his challenger, Thomas Ratliff, will put that internal debate to the test.
District 5, which runs from Loop 410 up to South Austin, tilts Republican, and the party's nominee will be a heavy favorite in November.
The board adopts curriculum standards, shapes the content of textbooks, approves the creation of charter schools and oversees the state's $22 billion Permanent School Fund.
Mercer and McLeroy have been strong allies since Mercer won election to the board in 2006. Mercer said he ran that year because friends complained the board had abandoned phonics and other traditional learning methods.
His election that year gave social conservatives seven of the board's 15 seats, and they've used their power to fight what Mercer calls the “education political lobby.”
Along the way, he's pushed for creationist theory in science textbooks, supported the concept of a Bible studies elective course in high school, and voted to exclude former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros and United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta as examples of good citizenship in elementary school textbooks.
In a 2008 piece for the conservative Web site Texas Insider, Mercer compared the teaching of evolution as fact with Nazi Germany's adherence to a master-race theory: “Did the scientists under Adolph Hitler allow questions or peer reviews of their belief that a superior race had evolved?”
Clashes
Tuggey suggests Mercer has become obsessed with social issues and failed to listen to his constituents.
“I've been to 22 school board meetings throughout this district and I've only met one board member who in the last four years has met with Mr. Mercer,” Tuggey said. “I don't know how you make curriculum and standards decisions without going to the school districts.”
Before his stint on the Board of Education, Mercer served one term in the Texas House. In November 2004, he lost a hotly contested re-election bid to David Leibowitz by 498 votes. Leibowitz raised nearly $700,000 for that campaign, nearly twice as much as Mercer.
This year, Mercer again finds himself facing a formidable fundraiser. Over the last six months of 2009, Tuggey collected more than $60,000, compared with just more than $8,000 for Mercer. Tuggey's contributors include high-powered San Antonio business leaders such as car dealer B.J. “Red” McCombs, Spurs owner Peter Holt, banker Tom Frost, construction contractor H.B. Zachry Jr. and H-E-B Chairman and CEO Charles Butt.
Tuggey has also earned the endorsement of the Texas Parent PAC, whose largest contributor is Butt. The organization formed in 2005 as an attempt to counteract San Antonio hospital-bed tycoon Dr. James Leininger's push for private-school voucher programs. Over the past five years, Butt has contributed more than $1.1 million to the political action committee, according to Texas Ethics Commission reports.
“Tim Tuggey brings a wealth of experience and knowledge and wisdom,” said Carolyn Boyle, chairwoman of the PAC. “He is very open and inclusive, and listens to parents.”
According to local contractor Mike Beldon, business leaders have lined up behind Tuggey because they're exasperated with what they view as the injection of religion into public-education debates.
“There's great concern everywhere about the State Board of Education,” Beldon said. “I think the pendulum has swung hugely in the ultra-right direction, and people are looking for moderation. And Tim is enormously well-respected.”
Mercer has the support of outgoing state Rep. Frank Corte Jr., R-San Antonio.
“I've known Ken for more than 20 years and I know he has a conscience to serve the people,” Corte said. “His re-election is real critical.”
That view is echoed by Allan Parker, president of the Justice Foundation, a nonprofit conservative litigation firm.
“Texas is a traditional-values state, and Ken has been a staunch conservative,” Parker said. “He fought to keep Christmas in the curriculum. If you turn (public education) over to the liberal experts, that's not important to them.”
Mercer recently drew fire for choosing David Barton — an evangelical Christian who argues that religion has been written out of American history — to serve on a social-studies review panel. Tuggey blasted the selection, saying Mercer should have looked for a history expert within the district. But Mercer, who says 70 percent of his district's residents are evangelical Christians, staunchly defends his pick.
“I want kids to understand that the pilgrims came for freedomof religion, notfrom religion,” said Mercer, who is Hispanic on his mother's side and attends a Spanish-language, nondenominational church. “I want them to know our historical foundations. Our national motto is ‘In God We Trust,' and you ask kids today and they don't know that.”
Tuggey says the board should set curriculum standards but allow teachers and local school districts to decide how to implement those standards.
“Politics has invaded everything, even math,” Tuggey said. “Ken is up there preaching values. If that's all we're going to do, then we're not going to get education done.”
