No, I didn’t expect Gov. Phil Scott to accept the Senate’s vote on Zoie Saunders with grace and equanimity. But he shouldn’t be allowed to rewrite the history of that lopsided rejection of his choice for education secretary.

In his press conference one day after Saunders was rejected, he called it “a partisan political hit job” in which Saunders was collateral damage in an attack aimed at himself:

I  think this was a partisan political hit job, so I would say once they get through that and they get their pound of flesh, which they did, it was all against me, that maybe they will come to their senses and see what I see and confirm her, if that’s the path they choose. 

Yeah, well, none of that is true.

A total of 19 senators voted against Saunders because of her scanty resumé. She’d barely served any time at all working in public schools — as a teacher, principal, district staffer, or janitor or lunch lady or bus driver for that matter. And she had little to no experience managing a sizable bureaucracy, which ought to be a prerequisite for being a cabinet secretary of any sort.

And if this was a case of “it was all against me,” then perhaps the governor could enlighten us about all the other times the Senate rejected a gubernatorial appointee. I can cut to the chase there: It’s never happened before.

As if that load of codswallop wasn’t insulting enough, the governor also accused the Senate of failing to perform due diligence:

 I don’t know as they did their total homework. One senator claimed she had no more than three months working in the public education sector, which is just not true. So they didn’t have all the facts, or they chose to ignore it, one of the two. 

Here he seems to be adopting Saunders’ definition of “public education,” meaning any form of education paid for, in full or in part, with public funds. In truth, Saunders has indeed spent roughly three months actually occupying a position in a public school system. She spent a few years before then as the city of Fort Lauderdale’s liaison to its school system, and several years before that as an executive with a for-profit operator of charter schools.

Now if you squint real hard and smear some Vaseline on the lens, you can claim all of that as “working in the public education sector,” but what that senator said was much closer to the truth than what Scott said about what the senator said.

The governor laid the blame for Saunders’ defeat on “outside groups” putting pressure on the Senate. And by “outside groups,” he meant professional associations of people who actually work inside public education: “I think there was a number of [outside groups], whether it’s the NEA, the Superintendents, many, many groups.”

Yeah, really, how dare those people stick their noses into the public schools? Just because they work there, doesn’t mean they have a viewpoint worth listening to. If you’ve dedicated your life to a public institution, then clearly you’ve lost all objectivity. Better to bring in someone untainted by exposure to public education, right?

If you see a system as fundamentally rotten and unsalvageable, then it makes sense to bring in an untainted outsider to clean up the mess. That’s how Scott apparently views the public schools. After all, in each of the last two searches for an education secretary, Scott said that he valued CEO experience more than public school experience. Odd thing about that is, Saunders has even less of the former than the latter.

One wonders if Scott gazes fondly across the Connecticut River at New Hampshire’s education secretary, Frank Edelblut, a businessman and, ahem, Republican politician, who is no friend of “public education,” non-Zoie Saunders definition, at all. Not only has Edelblut ever worked inside a public school, but he sent all seven of his children to private schools.

Not that Scott would go with Edelblut’s culture war nonsense, but I suspect he’d love to have a no-nonsense, nuts-and-bolts type who could beat some sense into those humanities-major softies who populate our public schools. As Support Our Schools New Hampshire — one of those “outside interests” that Phil Scott is no fan of — put it:

Edelblut has used the Department of Education in every way possible to expand privatization efforts, through expanding vouchers, the promotion of for-profit micro-schools (otherwise known as “learning pods”), and programs that focus on education outside of the public school, such as “Learn Everywhere.”

“Learn Everywhere” sounds a bit like Scott’s “cradle to career” concept, which seems all neat and comprehensive but could also be taken to posit “education” as a system not unlike The Matrix. Get ’em while they’re young and put ’em on the treadmill for life.

Phil Scott knows he couldn’t get away with appointing a Frank Edelblut type, but Zoie Saunders is the next best thing. She possesses the veneer of “education professional” that Edelblut lacks. Too bad the majority of the Senate saw through that veneer.

No, governor, they didn’t reject Saunders because she came from Florida or she’s female or because they wanted to get at you. They rejected Saunders because of her flimsy resumé. They wanted a person with actual experience in the public schools who could imagine a productive future for the system without betraying, or putting up for sale, the values and principles that make our public school system such an important resource for our society.