Last Sunday at a venue in the Austin suburb of Kyle, Merideth Keller delivered a speech to local attendees that took square aim at a man she once voted for back in 2014: Governor Greg Abbott. Over the course of her 12 years on the school board of Hays Consolidated Independent School District, a position she left in 2022, Keller began to lean more to the left as she watched a crisis unfold in Texas’ public education system. She’s not buying what Abbott’s selling with his latest education initiatives, and she hopes voters of various stripes will follow her lead.
“Greg Abbott set the fire, watched it blaze, and now wants to put it out to get the glory,” said Keller, who now considers herself more of a moderate, helping to elect both Democrats and Republicans down the ballot. She was there to kick off the first stop of the Save Our Schools tour, a statewide effort by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa to turn growing education issues in Texas into an effective electoral cudgel in November.
