A new candidate class: schoolteachers running for office
When public school teachers in West Virginia heard last winter that their health insurance premiums would skyrocket, Brianne Solomon wasn’t sure anything could be done about it. Educators like her were grumbling, to be sure, but their union’s clout in this right-to-work state was questionable.
“I have the equivalent of three master’s degrees, and I’m barely making $45,000,” she says. When the state legislature proposed doubling healthcare costs, it erased what Ms. Solomon calls the “consolation prize” of good benefits that she’d depended on while her salary remained static over the years.
The ensuing walkout by nearly 20,000 West Virginia teachers – the first of seven states to see strikes this year –
