Todd Spangler

Detroit Free Press

WASHINGTON – With the U.S. Senate evenly split, it fell to Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday afternoon to cast a historic vote confirming Michigan's Betsy DeVos as the nation's 11th education secretary, ending a pitched battle by Democrats, public school teachers and their allies to derail her nomination.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer expressed a vote of confidence from President Donald Trump in his newest Cabinet secretary despite her opponents' characterization of her as unfit and unqualified to serve.

"The president believes strongly that our nation's success depends on education of our students, and Betsy DeVos has devoted nearly three decades of her time and talent to promoting educational opportunity," Spicer said. "She will ensure that every student has access to a good school whether it’s public, private, parochial, charter or any other kind."

In casting the tie-breaking vote, the vice president echoed those comments.

"Countless students have benefited from her efforts to promote an educational marketplace defined by innovation, opportunity, and real, meaningful choice," Pence said in a statement.



Ignoring the fact that the vote was so close because of two key Republican defections, Spicer castigated Democrats for creating a "partisan logjam" to DeVos' nomination as well as to other Trump nominees. DeVos was expected to address employees at the U.S. Education Department for the first time on Wednesday afternoon.

In the weeks since a rocky confirmation hearing for the job to run the Education Department, DeVos, 59, who has long been a polarizing figure in Michigan's political and education circles for her support of school vouchers and charter schools, became a cause celebre for those organizing against her. Congressional offices were inundated with angry calls urging her to be rejected and her performance as a nominee was ridiculed on NBC's "Saturday Night Live."

But even with two Republican members of the Senate — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — coming out against DeVos' nomination, it still left Democrats with a 50-50 tie. Pence, in his role as Senate president, cast the tie-breaking vote in her favor as expected at 12:29 p.m.

It marked the first time in U.S. history that a vice president was called upon to break a tie vote over a presidential Cabinet nomination. The votes are usually routine regardless of which party is in power: No nominee has been rejected since John Tower's nomination as defense secretary in 1989.

In order to confirm DeVos, Republicans also held off confirming U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., as attorney general, needing his vote. Both of Michigan's U.S. senators voted against her.

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Immediately following the vote, both sides reacted swiftly.

Donna Brazile, interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, targeted potentially vulnerable senators who backed DeVos, including Jeff Flake of Arizona and Dean Heller of Nevada, for defeat in 2018, saying "their constituents ... will cast their votes next year to kick them out of office for selling out their state’s public school children."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.6-million-member American Federation for Teachers, added that because of the outcry over DeVos' nomination, "the 'public' in public education has never been more visible or more vocal."

Meanwhile, the conservative Club for Growth said DeVos' win beat back a full-court press by teachers unions aided in part by its own "six-figure investment in TV and digital ads, and robocalls, to caution potential Republican defectors." Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a likely Republican candidate for governor next year, praised the vote, saying, "For 28 years, Betsy DeVos has made it her mission to ensure children receive a quality education, and now she will be able to do that on a much large scale."

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As secretary, DeVos takes over an agency with some 4,500 employees and a budget of about $70 billion that administers and establishes policies for federal assistance to the states for secondary schools and higher education, as well as helping to enforce federal laws involving schools.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., himself a former education secretary and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that moved her nomination to the floor, praised DeVos' background, saying her support of charter schools and vouchers has helped "to give low-income children the same choices wealthier families have."

"Some people don't like that," said Alexander. "Betsy DeVos has committed no more Washington mandates. ... She's led the most effective school reform movement in the last 30 years."

Some Republicans have called for the department's dissolution, arguing it is a federal intrusion into what should be a purely state and local institution. However, DeVos has vowed not only to enforce public laws but to support traditional public schools, saying she advocates for any kind of school that gives parents and students the choices they want.

She has also repeatedly said, however, that decisions about school policies belong mostly with the states.

Democrats, noting that she and her wealthy family — she is the wife of Amway heir Dick DeVos, a former Republican candidate for Michigan governor — have spent millions on behalf of conservative candidates and causes, rejected her claims, noting she had no experience as an educator, administrator or even as a parent or student in public schools. Collins and Murkowski, too, said they worried that her commitment to public schools was not great enough to earn their support, since there are few choices to public schools in their rural states.

Democrats went further, arguing that she doesn't understand the policies she'll be tasked with enforcing, noting that in her hearing with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, she fumbled a question about a landmark 1975 law protecting education for students with disabilities, seeming to not know about it. She also made a joke at the hearing, saying she would not necessarily support banning guns from all schools because of the potential threat from grizzly bears in some wilderness areas.

"It's not Democrats who are bitter about the election," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "It's the American people who are bitter about the nomination of Betsy DeVos." He added that she "could not answer the most fundamental questions about public education."

U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. called hers "the most embarrassing confirmation hearing I have ever seen."

"We often have philosophical differences but one thing I think we all agree on is our Cabinet secretaries must be qualified and up to the challenge of running an agency," said Franken. "Betsy DeVos has demonstrated that she is not qualified to run the Education Department."

But even as Democrats went to the Senate floor to talk throughout the night about DeVos before the vote, Republicans continued to defend her, saying that her support of charter schools and school choice, if anything, suggests a secretary who is prepared to shake up traditional education.

“I have every confidence that Mrs. DeVos will lead the Department of Education in such a way as to put our students first,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday.

Since her nomination in November, Republicans and DeVos' supporters have argued that her support of charter schools in Michigan has led to improvements in education. But Democrats and DeVos' other critics have maintained that the evidence suggests otherwise, including in Detroit.

While DeVos has said “a lot that has gone right in Detroit” because of charter schools given the level of poverty, data from Detroit Public Schools and charters schools have shown neither with particularly strong results.

A Free Press review of 2015 results on the Michigan Student Test of Educational Performance showed that 9.6% of students in the district were considered proficient on the exam, compared to 14.5% of charter schools. DeVos has also been criticized in Michigan as having helped to defeat efforts to subject charter schools to more scrutiny.

Speaking on the Senate floor Monday, U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., argued against DeVos’ confirmation, saying she has “undermined efforts to regulate Michigan charters even when they’ve clearly failed” and that “her hostility toward public education disqualifies her.”

After the vote, Stabenow said she was deeply disappointed.

Many of DeVos' critics said the level of organization and outpouring of constituent anger aimed at DeVos' nomination indicates that she will be watched carefully.

"Today’s outcome marks only the beginning of the resistance," said Lily Eskelsen García, president of the 3 million-member National Education Association. “The level of energy is palpable. ... We are going to hold her accountable."

Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler. USA TODAY's Greg Toppo contributed to this story.