But the endorsement this month from the Wisconsin Education Association Council, or WEAC, gives her a boost in a primary race just beginning to heat up.
Here’s how Roys, whose campaign calls her “a dark horse” in the race, received the endorsement from an organization representing about 97,000 educators in Wisconsin:
Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, the WEAC president, said the union’s political action committee interviewed seven of the nine Democratic candidates and extended invites to the Republican candidates, who chose not to participate.
The committee then made a recommendation to the WEAC board of directors, which then voted on the endorsement. The decision among the roughly 25 board members was not unanimous, Wirtz-Olsen said, but support was still “very strong.”
The group liked Roys’ experience on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee — where much of school funding gets debated and slashed or bolstered — and her deep knowledge of public education and labor, Wirtz-Olsen said. Roys also shared solutions to the school funding crisis, supported other initiatives like paid family leave and healthy school lunches, and had a track record of listening directly to educators to learn about their needs.
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