Fred Smith’s clumsy play for the home-school crowd may be good Republican primary politics. But it’s Exhibit A for why Democrats will hold onto the Governor’s Office in 2008.

In the three gubernatorial elections Republicans have won, their candidates ran as public-school champions: Jim Holshouser in 1972 and Jim Martin in 1984 and 1988.

Since then, the private-school crowd has taken over the Republican Party. Now the home-schoolers are growing in numbers – and GOP clout. That presumably is why Smith looked homeward when the Republicans debated education at the School Boards Association last week.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, that’s not where the voters are. Including a lot of Republicans and Independents who have moved into North Carolina.

They are public-school people. That’s where their kids go. And that’s where they think the state should be focusing.

Understand, I’m not complaining. I thank the Republicans for giving Democrats the lock and key to the Governor’s Mansion. I fear that some Republican – like pre-Iraq, “compassionate-conservative” George Bush in 2000 – is going to start talking about helping the public schools, instead of abandoning them.

Thanks to candidates like Fred Smith, I’m not too worried.

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