David Harmer (photo) is the Republican nominee for US Congress, California CD 17 against two-term incumbent Democrat Jerry McNerney.

From Mother Jones, "Tea Party Frontrunner: Abolish Public Schools" Oct. 13:

It's fairly common for conservative political candidates to support eliminating the federal Department of Education. But in California, tea party darling and congressional candidate David Harmer has gone further. He's advocated eliminating public schools entirely and returning education to "the way things worked through the first century of American nationhood," when educational opportunities for poor people, African-Americans, women, the disabled, and others were, to say the least, extremely limited.

Harmer has a long history of pushing libertarian education policy. In the 1990s, he worked on education issues for the conservative Heritage Foundation, and published a book, School Choice: Why You Need It—How You Get It through the libertarian Cato Institute. He also coauthored an article in which public schooling is referred to as "socialism in education." In that piece, Harmer and coauthor Joseph Bast assure readers that they "are 100 percent committed to getting government out of the business of educating our children." They cite the "life-ruining effects of government schools" and argue for school vouchers—but only as a step toward for the eventual total elimination of the public school system.

Mother Jones goes on to quote an "expert" who says that nobody who is "serious" advocates abolishing public schools:

Harmer's is "a very extreme position," says Richard Kahlenberg, an education expert at the Century Foundation...I don't really know of serious people who advocate entirely abolishing the American public school system."

HarmerforCongress.com