Frank Edelbut Is Making the Grade

There is no one in New Hampshire civic life more polarizing than the state’s education commissioner, Frank Edelblut.

He is either loved, or he is hated. There is no in-between.

Though baked into these emotions are two other points: people who know who he is and people who know that what he has done over the past six years in the role has mattered a lot.

With all due respect to the dozens of commissioners who have served in that role previously and all other commissioners currently serving, none have been nearly as consequential as Edelbut and his aggressive manner in beginning to fundamentally transform his department.

One of the biggest questions in state politics in the late summer was wondering when Edelblut would take this resume and launch a run for governor. Sitting Gov. Sununu announced in July he would not seek reelection, creating the first time there has been an open seat for governor in eight years.

In early September, Edelblut announced he would not run for the role. He said the last of his seven children is off to college, and he wanted to have some empty-nester time with his wife.

He may also have figured that he didn’t want to put millions of his own dollars to run for governor like when he did in 2016, or maybe he saw a poll that said his polarizing nature meant he had no shot of winning a general election.

Though it is also possible, Edelblut can look at his time as education commissioner and decide he actually did something that he was proud of and is more than content to find this time to walk away.

People desire to be a New Hampshire commissioner either because they want to be somebody with a title, or because they want to do something in the office.

Selecting Edelblut to lead the state’s Department of Education was one of the very first high-profile things Sununu did after becoming governor in 2017. Those in politics saw the move as pure political calculation. Edelblut surprised everyone with how close he came to defeating Sununu in the 2016 Republican primary, where Edelblut had the backing of the state’s conservatives.

Giving Edelblut a job in the administration, or any job really, was a way to block him from challenging Sununu in a primary or just being a pain politically.

Sununu may not have imagined how transformative Edelblut would be. In a culture of public education that celebrates teachers and inclusion, he proudly puts in his state biography that he and his wife home-schooled all their children. He worked with the Legislature to create education savings accounts, which allows parents to receive grants to send their children to private schools. He fought teachers’ unions, embraced nontraditional paths for post-secondary education and validated more technology in the classroom. He also championed ideas like letting a fringe conservative website win a state contract to teach financial literacy.

Critics have said this has worked to erode the very public schools he was put in charge of overseeing. Some have also gone so far to call him a bigot after an op-ed he wrote where he suggested that if teachers discuss gender identity it was a threat to family values.

Edelblut, of course, doesn’t live in a vacuum. America itself is very polarized. Reforming education, particularly by siphoning off money for public schools, is something that about a dozen states have also done in recent years. His tenure is in keeping with both and will likely continue through his term, which ends in March 2025.