Economic issues are top of mind for many voters as they head to the polls for the midterm elections. But education—in particular, school choice—is also playing a role in some major contests.
While private school choice, such as vouchers and education saving accounts, may not be on statewide ballots, they are shaping debates in close races in states including Arizona, Iowa, and Texas.
Private school choice has been ascendant in recent years, with 18 states passing policies in the past four-plus years to make virtually all students eligible for programs that send public funds to families for private education. And a new federal school choice program, which will provide tens of billions of dollars to students to use at both public and private schools, is set to launch in 2027.
Democrats stumping in red states have found some political advantage from criticizing expansive private school choice programs—but not necessarily calling for their repeal. At the same time, few Democratic governors are closing the door on participating in the new federal school choice program that could mean millions of dollars for students in both private and public schools.
“The politics around school choice are being scrambled in real time,” said Jorge Elorza, the CEO for Democrats for Education Reform, a school choice advocacy group. “No longer is it obviously the case that Democrats should stay away. There is a lot of nuance that has been introduced into the equation.”
In Arizona, private school choice is factoring into both the elections for governor and state school chief. The Republican candidates for those posts, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs and Treasurer Kathy Yee respectively, are championing Arizona’s expansive private school choice program, which offers state-funded education savings accounts to all K-12 students.
Yee won her primary challenge to Republican incumbent Tom Horne with the backing of school choice advocates who claimed the state superintendent was regulating the state’s ESA program too aggressively.
Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who is running for reelection, and the Democratic nominee for state superintendent, Teresa Leyba Ruiz, want more regulations—such as income limits and spending restrictions—on the state’s ESA program.
Private school choice isn’t quite so front and center in Texas as it is in Arizona, but it’s potentially fueling pushback to the state’s Republican incumbent governor from a group inside his own party: rural Republicans.
Gov. Greg Abbott was a major force behind pushing through the state’s expansive new education savings accounts program, overcoming years of opposition from rural Republicans and Democrats. Abbott backed primary challengers to Republican state legislators who had blocked his previous attempts to create a private school choice program.
“There are a lot of Republicans that feel burned by the governor, pushing the Texas ESA so strongly. I know that the Democratic candidate is trying to use that as a wedge issue,” Elorza said of state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.
On the campaign trail, Hinojosa has vowed to end the program and called attention to money donated to Abbott from wealthy, out-of-state school voucher advocate Jeff Yass.
Democrats aren’t all pledging to end school choice
Ending corruption and policies that benefit the elite is a core part of Democratic messaging this election cycle, said Jon Valant, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the director of the think tank’s Brown Center on Education Policy.
“Some of these candidates, Hinojosa in particular, have done a very good job of connecting the school choice battles to that question of corruption and, is all of this set up in some way to just enrich the wealthy?” he said. “She has very capably tied what is a big issue in education policy to what is a big national narrative and one of the Democrats’ preferred narratives for this campaign.”
New programs like Texas’, which began this school year, are more politically vulnerable because families haven’t used them for long and the programs don’t have the strong, grassroots support their more established counterparts do, Elorza said.
That’s why Democrats are making a different calculation in states where private school choice has been around longer, he said.
“That’s where even Democratic candidates are not launching direct frontal assaults to repeal these bills,” he said.
A prime example of this is Iowa, Elorza said, where the state’s Democratic auditor, Rob Sand, is running for governor against Republican businessman Zach Lahn. Lahn back the state’s education savings account program. Sand is calling for more regulation.
“He’s not necessarily trying to eliminate it, he’s trying to bring some measure of additional accountability and income-targeting to it,” Elorza said. For Democrats running competitive races in red states, “it’s interesting that when candidates do talk about it, it’s not blanket opposition, it’s taking what exists and making it work better. That’s a nuance that just hasn’t existed in Democratic messaging on private school.”
But how popular private school choice is with voters remains a source of debate.
While popular with the families who use them, private school choice programs don’t necessarily appeal to all voters. In 2024, voters in three states—including two that President Donald Trump won by double digits—rejected efforts to expand or codify school choice.
“It still meets a whole lot of resistance even in very red, rural areas,” Valant said. “And even in the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit case, the reason we have this policy is not that a Republican Congress passed it—because they couldn’t pass it, they tucked it into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act where it kind of flew under the radar.”
Democratic governors weigh a major decision on federal school choice
The federal school choice program injects new political considerations for Democrats.
The policy will allow taxpayers to claim a dollar-for-dollar federal credit on donations to nonprofits that give scholarships to K-12 students. Donors can receive the dollar-for-dollar credit for donations up to $1,700 for individuals and $3,400 for married couples. Students can use their scholarship money for private school tuition or public school expenses such as tutoring. The U.S. Department of the Treasury projects the program will grow to $26 billion annually by 2030.
But governors must opt their states into the program for students to be eligible to receive those scholarships (although donors in states that don’t enroll can donate to scholarship-granting organizations in participating states and still receive tax credits). Sixteen governors, mostly Democrats, have yet to announce their plans.
Democratic governors insisted on seeing regulations from the Treasury Department before deciding whether to opt in. But those regulations were released Oct. 1 and, so far, the Democratic governors who hadn’t announced their intentions previously still aren’t opting in. But they’re not declaring they’re out, either.
Democratic governors in tight reelection battles may not want to risk angering important constituencies over the issue. But even Democratic gubernatorial candidates who feel relatively safe may not want to throw a wrench into the works, said Elorza.
“In a number of states we have seen Republicans trying to make it a campaign issue in these last few weeks,” he said. “Democrats who haven’t committed to opting in are going to be on the defensive. Saying no to additional resources for kids is a hard position to maintain.”
The political calculus is different depending on the state and the politician
It’s the potential for additional resources for public school students that brought Colorado’s outgoing Democratic governor, Jared Polis, on board, choosing to opt his state into the federal program. However, Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser, who’s favored to succeed Polis, opposes the state’s participation.
Opting in remains a big political step for most Democratic governors, even if they have charter schools or inter- or intra-district school choice in their states, said Alex Medler, the executive director of the National Network for District Authorizing, a group that supports districts that oversee charter schools, and vice president of the Boulder Valley School District board of directors in Colorado. Many Republican governors have had state-run private school choice programs in their states already.
“This option brings private school choice to states that don’t otherwise have it that are controlled by Democrats, and I think that is a political recipe for people saying no,” he said. “This is the camel’s nose under the tent.”
Democratic governors with possible presidential ambitions have additional political calculations to make, said Valant.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, for example, “may be running for president in a couple of years, so this conversation on whether to opt Pennsylvania into the tax credit scholarship program has different implications for him than other gubernatorial candidates,” he said.
Other Democratic governors who may be presidential contenders in 2028 include California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who have not made decisions about the federal school choice program.
“That’s not necessarily to say that all of the Democratic Party is going to be really riled up about this issue in two years,” Valant said. “But it does have implications for something like, which candidates will teachers’ unions prefer among the, probably, very many Democratic candidates who end up on that stage?”
