The Teacher Who Is Running Against Phil Berger

NC Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger is the acknowledged dictator of North Carolina. He runs the NC Senate, which means he runs North Carolina. He ran over Republican Governor Pat McCrory for four long years and is partially responsible for making the "toe-stepping" McCrory a laughingstock. And just to show him who's Boss, Berger's crippled the governorship of Democrat Roy Cooper.

Berger wanted to make Phil Berger Jr. a congressman in Washington, his greatest failure to date. Still, he could make Junior a judge as consolation, and now Junior sits on the bench.

No one can beat Phil Berger for his NC Senate seat, which includes parts of Guilford and Rockingham counties. At least that's the conventional wisdom. In fact, to oppose Berger or his lieutenants can figuratively land a horse's head in your bed, so to speak, and according to Greensboro News&Record Editor Allen Johnson.

Jennifer Mangrum

But lookie here at who's rising up to challenge Berger, not because she thinks she can win but because sometimes you just have to stand up to abusive power, no matter the odds.

Jennifer Mangrum is the child of two public school teachers and a lifelong educator herself. She taught elementary school in North Carolina for 14 years, and for the last nine years she's been teaching other public school teachers how best to teach (as a professor of education at UNCG).

She was until recently a lifelong Republican. The power-madness of King Berger (among other actions) changed her mind:

“I’m open. I was a Republican, I need to tell you that. I had a father who fought in World War 2, Vietnam and Korea, and when I registered to vote in the ‘80s, if you were military then the Republican Party was the party that you felt was going to take care of your family .... The party has changed so much since I registered. I’m also really embarrassed that leaders in the Republican Party represent us in the way they do, but I was a voter who looked at the person.” (The Carolinian)

I've only just started following her on Twitter (@jrmangru), and she doesn't appear to have launched a Facebook feed yet (though she's promised one), so I don't yet find a lot of "platform" on-line. But I did find this:

...why do we allow Phil Berger to remain in power? He does not work to insure that all men are created equal. In fact, he does the opposite. He creates laws that discriminate, he defunds schools so that children don’t have the same opportunities when they grow up, and he rules the NC Senate as though he were King, grabbing power from our executive branch and ignoring the consent of the governed.

Mangrum is just beginning to find her political voice, and we hope she'll campaign. That'll take money.