DeVos unfairly maligned

Shawn Vestal’s Jan. 13 opinion column unfairly maligns Trump’s choice for secretary of education, “billionaire” Betsy DeVos. Implying that personal profit motives disqualify her fails the test when the millions of her and her husband’s Amway fortune, dedicated to improving private and public education, are deliberately omitted from the equation.

Betsy’s unforgivable sin is she’s a conservative intent on improving education without the big government models teacher unions demand. She’s defeated them politically as chair of the American Federation for Children, helping elect legislators supporting school choice, spending $5 million vs. the union’s $138 million-108 of her 121 AFC candidates won, an 89 percent success rate.

Vestal’s column smells of the progressive conceit that character assassination and bigotry can defeat a woman’s passion to provide poor children and their parents alternatives to increasingly expensive and ineffective public education models.

Democrat Sen. Patty Murray, the “mom-in-tennis-shoes,” needs much bigger shoes to credibly demean a woman seeking to provide choice and improve our moribund, statist public schools. The confirmation revealed the desperation of Democrats to destroy Betsy DeVos and please their teacher’s union benefactors.

John Weisenburger

Spokane