The general election campaign for South Carolina superintendent of education is underway with the three candidates agreeing Sunday improvements are needed but exchanging gibes and disagreeing over who can get the job done.
"One of my colleagues up here has been the director of School Administrators Association for nine years and I'm not seeing school improvement in those nine years," American Party candidate Ed Murray told about 300 people attending a forum held by the South Carolina School Boards Association.
Sitting next to him was Republican Molly Spearman of Saluda, the former director of the school administrators group who emerged from an eight-way June primary to win the GOP nomination.
"Party matters" in public education said Democrat Tom Thompson, a former dean of graduate studies at South Carolina State University who bested three other Democrats in the primary.
"You can have the state superintendent of education say one thing but the party behind that person has to be consistent with what the state superintendent says," he added, in a comment directed at Republicans, some of whom favor taxpayer vouchers for private school students.
Spearman, meanwhile, said the way to improve education is for people to work together.
"The job and our efforts are too important for us to squabble and not get along," she said. "I have worked hard over my career never to burn bridges."
The American Party was founded by former Superintendent of Education Jim Rex as a way of getting things done without the ideological barriers of being Republican or Democrat, said Murray, the athletic director and an assistant principal at Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School.