Green wins race for superintendent of NC schools
Mo Green won the race for state superintendent, beating his opponent Michelle Morrow. FIle photo
While a majority of North Carolina voters chose Republican candidate Donald Trump for president of the United States, many split their ticket to elect Democratic candidates to top state offices.
One of those was Mo Green, who won the race for superintendent of North Carolina public schools.
“I am humbled and honored to be elected as North Carolina’s Superintendent of Public Instruction,” said Green following his win. “Thank you to every person across the state who believed in this campaign.”
Green will take the reins after eight years of Republican leadership at the Department of Public Instruction — Mark Johnson held the office from 2017 to 2021, and Catherine Truitt has been in office since winning election in 2021. Prior to Johnson’s election, the last Republican to hold the office was Charles Mebane from 1887-1901.
But Republicans took a risk this year when they voted against their own incumbent in Truitt during the primary and opted instead for Michelle Morrow — a retired nurse and mother of five who had never held public office or worked in public instruction.
Morrow won the Republican primary by casting herself as more conservative than Truitt, saying at the time that she was running because she believed “the biggest threat to our constitutional republic is the indoctrination happening right now in the public education system in North Carolina.”
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Morrow had a history of inflammatory social media posts, filmed herself at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and called for the public execution of elected officials including North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.
Morrow beat Truitt 52.1% to 47.9% in the primary, winning 457,151 votes to Truitt’s 420,270. In The Smoky Mountain News coverage area, Swain Republicans were alone in selecting Truitt to move on to the general election; she beat Morrow 55% to 44% in the county. Republicans in Haywood, Jackson and Macon counties voted for Morrow by wide margins — 55% to 44%, 62% to 37% and 53% to 46%, respectively.
But the gamble of choosing a newcomer over an incumbent didn’t pay off. In the General Election Green beat Morrow 51% to 48% statewide, with Green winning 2,806,574 votes to Morrow’s 2,687,266.
Morrow ran her campaign not only against Green, her opponent, but also against the Department of Public Instruction, the office she was seeking to occupy.
“He is an integral part of the failing, broken system,” Morrow said of Green in an interview with The Smoky Mountain News during her campaign.
In the SMN coverage area, voters went for Morrow over Green in Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties, again by wide margins.
Morrow and Green were split over many issues, one of them included public funding for private schools.
In September, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a mini budget that included $463 million to clear the waitlist of families that had applied for the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Program and provided voucher money for those attending private schools.
Last year, the General Assembly removed the income eligibility requirement, as well as the requirement that recipients must have previously attended public schools, for the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Program — a system that reimburses families with children attending private schools to help pay the cost of tuition and fees. This led to some 70,000 new applications for private school vouchers for the current 2024-25 school year, a more than 100% increase over the 2023-24 school year.
The bill provided enough funding to clear the 55,000-student waitlist at the cost of $463 million. It also increased the amount of funding the program will have in the future, from $625 million for the upcoming 2025-26 school year to $825 million for the 2032-33 school year. It will continue to be funded at that $825 million annual level thereafter.
Green was vehemently opposed to the bill, saying he believes “that it is taking money that could go into our public schools at a time when our public schools desperately need them.”
The bill passed a week after the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management released an analysis that estimated the new legislation would cause annual K-12 state spending to increase by a total of about $185 million, with an estimated $75 million leaving public schools and an increase to private schools of approximately $260 million.
Morrow supported the voucher funding and sees it as benefitting competition between public and private schools.
“If you have a failing public school system, and your state is responsible for ensuring the sound, basic, moral education for every student, the real problem exists with the public school system,” said Morrow.
Support for such a bill may be expected in urban counties like Mecklenburg, which is home to 96 private schools where 13% of the student population is enrolled, but it was thought to be less popular in rural counties like Macon, which has two private schools and enrolls just 1.87% of the student population. Haywood is home to five private schools and Jackson and Swain each have two.
After her defeat, Morrow released a statement insinuating she would continue her bid for office in public education.
“The closeness of this race is a testament to grass roots campaigning. And grass roots support like we have is not a campaign product, but rather the symptom of a movement,” Morrow said in a statement. “A movement like we have created together cannot be stopped by politics. It cannot be stopped by oppositional media. It cannot be stopped by smear messaging here today and gone tomorrow. A movement like ours can only be stopped by satisfying the need that created it.”
Following his victory, Green held a press conference in which he said he was looking forward to advocating for North Carolina Public Schools.
“This position is called upon to elevate public schools and to advocate for public schools and so that’s what I intend to do,” said Green. “This position is called upon to say, ‘we need to have those dollars going to support the constitutionally required public school system.’”
