Can ‘mr. Education’ Save An Agency Trump Wants To Shutter?

HAMPTON ROADS, Virginia — Bobby Scott isn’t a showman. Democrats have to decide if they need one.

The longtime Democratic representative, who is eager to retake the chairmanship of the House education committee next year, was back in his district at the sort of function he has done for years. Visiting a high school, he posed for photos with organizers helping families fill out the revamped federal student financial aid form, shared quips and got stopped by a security guard who wanted to snap a selfie.

But Scott, who hasn’t dealt with a serious challenger from either party since he was elected more than 30 years ago, is being forced to prove himself 200 miles north, in Washington.

He’s quiet and methodical and has little interest in making a scene, and that’s turned out to be a vulnerability: When faced with President Donald Trump’s determination to dismantle the Education Department, two of Scott’s fellow Democrats feel this moment in history — and stopping this particular president — requires a chair who is willing to make some noise. 

Scott has led Democrats on the panel since 2015 and is the only ranking member besides Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) facing a challenge for a committee gavel. And while both of them are having to make their case amid broader angst in the caucus about the lack of term limits, Scott seems largely unfazed by the competition.

“Well, I’ve done it,” Scott said matter-of-factly about leading the committee, so he’ll “do it again.”

That directness and efficiency are typical for Scott. But it’s precisely that logic that raises questions about whether he appreciates how much harder he may need to push against a president whose tactics have become far more combative since Scott chaired the committee during the first Trump administration. It can make Scott’s reserved style — one centered on compelling documents and testimony and eschewing showmanship — come across as a mismatch for the fight the party’s engaged in.

“I have heard from many people that they want to see more,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), one of Scott’s challengers for the committee gavel. “I want to respect those voices, and also I just feel that this is such a critical time.”

Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.), Scott’s other challenger, said “there's been a lot of side conversations, infinite conversations” about the Education Department when asked if Democrats are being galvanized on the issue.

“This is going to be the agency that's gone,” she said. “We're hearing [of] attacks on other agencies, but the Department of Education will be completely gone.”

Scott, who has to make his case to the caucus in the coming weeks, is dealing with these challenges without the kind of support the Congressional Black Caucus extended to Waters because Scott and Hayes are both members. Hakeem Jeffries, who is expected to be speaker next year, also hasn’t weighed in.

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, an advocacy group that represents 1,800 affiliated parent organizations across the country, isn't taking a side even though she’s spoken with Hayes and Bonamici. But she said she’s eager to hear Scott's strategy for the new Congress.

“I want to hear a plan. I want to hear an articulated agenda for what we're doing over the next two years,” Rodrigues said in her assessment of current Democratic leadership on the panel.

“I'm not looking to have, like, an Ed-Workforce chair that loves public education like a 5-year-old loves their mommy,” Rodrigues said. “I want to see the next chair of Ed-Workforce saying, ‘We love public education. We're going to fight to make it better because we are going to give America's children the schools they deserve.’”

In hearings, Scott likes to question witnesses last, shunning the tradition of the chair and ranking member going first and setting the tone for the proceedings. At the start of this Congress, he joined House education Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) in his “goal of conducting the committee proceedings in a dignified manner that we can all be proud of.” And when committee Democrats confronted the Trump administration last year, demanding to speak to officials at Education Department headquarters, Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) took the lead.

Taking the House majority will unlock subpoena power for Democrats and the authority to call hearings and compel agency officials to testify — tools Scott used during the first Trump administration.

Democrats are particularly interested in Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s efforts to dismantle her own agency in part by siphoning its responsibilities to other federal departments. In the majority, Scott wants the internal communications detailing recommendations career staff may have given senior agency officials about those plans.

But unlike other top Democrats who stand to lead committees next year, such as Reps. Jaime Raskin (D-Md.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Scott isn’t particularly eager to flex the extra investigative powers.

“You ought to be able to have a conversation without subpoenas, and they know that we have the right to the documents,” he said. “It shouldn't be such a big deal to produce them.”

Scott said he wants to kick off oversight by calling on career officials and civil rights advocates to testify before the committee.

“Having the political appointees come and testify without career people and advocates coming in to establish the factual basis of what's going on, you get into more of a spectacle,” Scott said. “I think we're trying to focus on facts and get the department back on track to protecting civil rights of students.”

That aligns with his methodical style. But it also limits opportunities for his fellow Democrats to confront the Trump appointees behind some of the agency’s most controversial decisions or create the kind of viral moment that can draw the public’s attention.

Scott’s “style is to get it done. Other members tend to be a little more public,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who started in Congress at the same time as Scott.

“But at the end of the day, it’s the job,” he added. “And his interest in education, equity and inclusion is irrefutable, and so every time I've had an issue with education, he's my go-to person.”

Perhaps the most spectacle-worthy education-related event of the new Congress, a possible impeachment of McMahon, shows the limits of Scott’s tolerance for eye-catching maneuvers.

“I haven’t thought about it,” was his reaction to POLITICO around the time Bonamici introduced her measure this summer. Scott’s assessment was straightforward: It’s “hard to see” it getting enough votes in the Senate.

Bonamici hasn’t ruled out reintroducing the resolution, which nabbed the support of other education committee members besides Scott, in the new Congress, saying that “everything has to be on the table.”

McMahon has been “clear about her willingness to partner with any member of Congress working in good faith,” Savannah Newhouse, a department press secretary, said in a statement.

“Democrats who put orchestrating a political circus above addressing the country’s education crisis are failing American families,” Newhouse said. “No matter the distraction, the Trump Administration will continue to exercise our full authority to shake up the failed status quo and empower states, parents, and teachers to lead the way.”

Scott, 79, grew up in Newport News in a family of educators and public servants who sent him to school in Massachusetts in the late 1950s when Virginia resisted public school integration, and he later graduated from Harvard University and Boston College Law School. His 1992 election made him the first Black person to represent Virginia in Congress since Reconstruction.

Scott dedicated a commencement speech at Hampton University, a historically Black institution, to deriding the Supreme Court’s decision this year to further dilute the Voting Rights Act, a decision he says ranks with racist rulings like Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson that denied Black Americans basic rights. These are the issues that drive much of Scott’s views about the Education Department’s role in fighting discrimination.

The department under McMahon has thinned the staff of its civil rights office, shuttered regional operations and redirected some of those responsibilities to the Justice Department.

“We need to restore some fairly important core functions, starting with civil rights, and recognize that the department is essentially a civil rights organization,” Scott said.

McMahon has green-lighted at least 14 agreements to shift her agency’s operations across the federal government to support Trump’s bid to dismantle the department — something Congress hasn’t approved and appropriators have resisted. The Trump administration has also used federal dollars to pressure schools into reversing their transgender-inclusive policies and diversity programs.

With everything going on, Bonamici, who has been on the panel since 2013, said she decided to run for chair because she wants to “see the committee be very, very active and go on the offense to save public education and make child care affordable and protect and strengthen labor rights.”

Those who know Scott best say he is always focused on the right goals even if he doesn’t show it.

“It’s quiet. It’s unassuming,” said Virginia state Del. Marcia Price, Scott’s niece, when describing his leadership. “His fingerprints are on so many more things than he will ever take credit for because he's always helping bring up other people too.”

Scott also has one particularly influential ally outside of Congress: Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, which has significant sway with Democrats and has waged a steady public campaign against a range of McMahon’s decisions.

“He is Mr. Education in the House of Representatives,” Weingarten said of Scott.

Weingarten said Scott needs to sell his agenda to the Democratic caucus. That agenda can’t just be about oversight and accountability of the Trump administration and the GOP’s domestic policy law, she said. It has to include legislation.

Scott’s leadership blueprint can be one that “both focuses on accountability and opportunity,” Weingarten said.

Scott said he wants to tackle child care costs, federal aid for low- and middle-income students, undo limits Republicans put on student loans with last year’s sweeping domestic policy law and make it easier to join and form unions — a range of issues that potentially dovetails with Democratic messaging for 2028.

Price thinks her uncle’s steady hand makes him the right person to lead the fight against Trump. She said Democrats have to decide whether they want influencers or legislators holding the gavels.

“There is a level of expectation of performance. You're not gonna get the performance from him, but you're gonna get the work,” Price said. “If you're looking for someone that can make a Jerry Springer moment out of something — OK, cool, we've embarrassed Trump. Now, how are we helping the people?”