There are three positions up for election on the Palomar Community College board.
There is no incumbent running in Area 1. The Republican Party is endorsing Frank Xu. The Democratic Party, Palomar faculty and students at are endorsing Judy Patacsil.
Patacsil is a community college professor with an amazing list of endorsements. This daughter of Filipino immigrants is obviously well liked and respected by colleagues. She has the endorsement of four currently serving board members and is also the choice of organized labor.
The student newspaper, Telescope, was impressed by Frank Xu’s technical and business background. However they endorsed his opponent because “we do not agree with his statements about changing the race-based admissions quota and his dislike of race and diversity inclusion.”
Frank Xu appears to be a far right ideologue. He is President of the new non-profit California for Equal Rights Foundation (CERF) (IRS ID 85-2315151). Last year CERF joined a law suit against San Diego Unified School District over Critical Race Theory. CERF legislative reports read like they were lifted from Christopher Rufo and the Manhattan Institute.
Recommendation Area 1: Judy Patacsil
Area 4 has a match between Kartik Raju who was appointed to the board last year and Michelle Rains a restaurant owner from Ramona.
Rains is endorsed by the Republican Party and has substantial support from building contractors. She also has the endorsement of several elected officials in Ramona.
Raju is endorsed by the Democratic Party and he is supported by four existing Palomar board members and the Palomar college faculty. Raju is an electrical engineer with diverse experience in project management, defense and aerospace. Telescope endorsed him stating,
“He expressed enthusiasm for student culture, and the connections he’s made here at Palomar. He also shared his personal experience at a community college, and the joyous discovery of all the benefits it offered.”
Recommendation Area 4: Kartik Raju
In Area 5, Jacqueline Kaiser – endorsed by the Republican Party – is running against incumbent Nora Miyamoto.
Kaiser is from Fallbrook where she was involved in community planning. She has a masters in business administration and is supported by the San Diego Chapter of the Association of General Contractors. County Supervisor Jim Desmond, Asseblywomen Marie Waldron and State Senator Brian Jones all support her candidacy. Telescope also endorsed her stating, “While she doesn’t have any prior experience at Palomar, we feel that a forward-thinking business mindset could bring fresh ideas to the board.” The students seemed to really be taken with her in their one on one interview.
Miyamoto who also lives in Fallbrook has worked at Palomar for 21-years. Her bio states, “With nearly 30 years of community college experience, she served in various positions—a part- and full-time faculty member, a classified employee, a temporary employee, a mid-level academic director and as an Instructional Dean.” She shares an impressive list of endorsements including that of four existing board members and the Palomar faculty.
Billionaires are once again spending heavily to flex political influence in California. Much of the spending is directed toward implementing neoliberal ideology into education policy. It makes sense that billionaires embrace neoliberalism and in some cases libertarianism. The present system has made them wealthy beyond even their own imagination and the philosophy of “I got mine so you can bugger off” appeals to many of the ultra-wealthy. However, it is shocking to see unions joining forces with these people who abhor collective bargaining.
Much of the school board spending is directed at the Los Angeles Unified School District. Three seats that the oligarchs previously won with massive spending are up for election. The two incumbents standing for reelection this year won their seats in 2017, which was the most expensive school board election in history. During that race, data from the LA Ethics Commission shows independent expenditures supporting Nick Melvoin totaling $5,500,000 while Kelly Gonez raked in $3,340,000. Melvoin won a tough race for district 4 running against Board President Steve Zimmer. Gonez easily won the district 6 seat.
The other incumbent besides Zimmer running in 2017 was Monica Garcia who had received ample monetary support from billionaire Ely Broad and friends in her first two elections. Because of term limits, 2017 would be Garcia’s last go around. This year, Garcia’s long time chief of staff, Maria Brenes, has been selected to represent neoliberal interests in district 2.
Arthur Rock is a 96-years-old investor who bet on Apple, Intel and other famous tech companies when they were start ups. His 2021-2022 political giving includes being by far the biggest sponsor ($399,000) for the successful effort to recall three members of the San Francisco school board earlier this year. His other donations (ID 499292) include $21,000 for state assembly races, $12,500 for senate races and he has contributed $800,000 (96% of the PAC’s income) to California Educators, Parents and Students for High-Quality Education (ID 1442251). That PAC sent $540,000 to a Mesa, Arizona Foundation called Students First. The rest of this contribution went to campaign consultants and services.
William E Bloomfield Jr. (ID 494345) is an extremely wealthy business man and native Angelino. He is very involved in politics and sees himself as an education reformer. This cycle he has poured more than $1,800,000 into neoliberal education reform friendly candidates. That includes $1,610,000 into the local Los Angeles PAC, Kids First, Supporting Kelly Gonez and Nick Melvoin for Re-election to the LAUSD School Board 2022.
Doris Fisher (Gap Founder ID 1221980) joined Reed Hastings (Netflix CEO ID 499251) and James Walton (Walmart Heir ID 1372611) in sending the Charter Public Schools PAC (ID 1302433) $3,700,000. That PAC is administered by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). Charter Public Schools PAC put $1,200,000 into Families and Teachers United as well as donating to several key school board candidates including $375,000 to Kate Dao.
Dao is running for a seat on the Alameda County School Board (Oakland). Her qualifications seem to be that she founded a private school in Livermore, California called Acton Academy East Bay. Before her private school venture, she did marketing for tech startups. The state department of education shows her school opening in fall 2019 and closing on July 1, 2022. Fisher’s Champions for Education PAC (ID 1422949) also sent Dao $20,000.
Three billionaires, Fisher, Hastings and Walton all invested heavily in legislative races. Fisher put $48,000 into assembly seats and $10,000 into senate seats. Hastings put $81,250 into assembly seats and $13,300 into senate seats. Walton who is from Arkansas put $96,700 into assembly seats and $12,100 into senate seats.
CCSA sponsors the PAC Families and Teachers United (ID 1367043). This PAC is mainly funded by the Charter Public School PAC. Families and teachers concentrates its campaign giving on getting preferred state legislative officials elected. Table 1 gives the details for how they distributed $1,429,000.
There is a group on the far right called Fix California. They sponsor a PAC called Education Savings Account (ID 1442249). The PAC has taken in $270,000 and spent $243,000 promoting a petition to authorize school vouchers. They were unsuccessful this year.
Another PAC, Californians for School Choice Foundation (ID 1440327) has taken in $467,000 to promote school choice including vouchers. They spent over $468,000 over the last two years on media and campaign consultants to promote school choice.
Several LA Labor Unions Seem to Support the Neoliberal Agenda
Lily Geismer’s book Left Behind the Democrat’s Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality documents the rise of the Democratic Leadership Council, Bill Clinton and the neoliberal agenda. She observed, “Labor Officials and the rank and file both had strong objections with Clinton’s position on free trade and were well aware of the New Democrats’ long-standing hostility toward unions” (Page 133). So it is astonishing to see labor joining with billionaire neoliberals to support the privatization of public education.
With over 300,000 members the California Teacher Association was not a union spending with the billionaires to privatize public education. Through their PAC, California Teachers Association/Association for Better Citizenship (ID 741941) they donated $301,000 to the LA independent expenditure committee Students, Parents and Educators in Support of Rivas for School Board 2022.
Professor Rocio Rivas is also enthusiastically supported for the board seat by Diane Ravitch and the Network for Public Education (NPE). NPE which shares,
“Rocio Rivas worked as a teacher assistant during her undergraduate years at U.C. Berkeley. This work inspired her to seek a career in education. She attended Teachers College, Columbia University where earned a Masters and Doctorate in Comparative and International Education. Rocio has traveled to many countries (Chile, Argentina and Republic of Georgia) conducting educational research. She also participated in research studies as an analyst for LAUSD, where she authored reports on a range of critical issues including academic achievement, culturally relevant education, and charter school renewals.”
Unfortunately, 300,000 teachers giving small donations are easily outspent by one billionaire. But surprisingly the lions share of the big money going to her pro-charter school opponent, Maria Brenes, is coming from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local 99. Form 57s filed with the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission show the three Independent Expenditure committees local 99 sponsors are spending more than $7,500,000 to elect the neoliberal candidates. This is spending directed at privatizing public education.
SEIU local 99 is not the only union spending with the billionaires. With no limit on independent expenditure, direct contributions to candidates have less value than they used to but are a source of money that candidates control themselves. The campaign spending limit for this race is $1,300 but it can be given in both the primary and general election. Table 3 shows direct contribution spending by local LA unions. It is all going to the billionaire supported candidates.
Observation
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Kentuckian Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. His confirmation made him the first Jewish Associate Justice to serve. He entered Harvard University at age 19 and in 1877 he graduated with the highest grades ever recorded there. His nomination was opposed by anti-Semites but more importantly big business was intensely opposed to him. Peter Dreier explained, “As a ‘people’s lawyer’ in Boston, Brandeis fought railroad monopolies, defended workplace and labor laws, and helped create policies to limit corporate abuses of consumers and workers–an approach that is now called ‘public interest’ law.” On the court, he became a great defender of privacy and democracy.
Looking at this year’s election spending, Brandeis’s 1922 statement about democracy and wealth leaps to mind, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
True to Brandeis’s declaration, democracy is being sundered by great wealth and unsurprisingly that wealth is being directed at undermining its most important foundation, the public school system. Every time I see pricey color campaign advertisements printed on expensive paper stocks, I ask myself who is paying for this and why? They are completely useless as a source of information.
We have entered an era in which reliable information is becoming more and more obscured by deliberate obfuscation paid for by billionaires. At the same time, some labor leaders appear to have a personal agenda other than serving their members. It is scandalous for SEIU local 99 to invest millions into the election of three billionaire endorsed school board candidates supporting school privatization.
This year democracy and free public education are on the ballot. Vote wisely.
Nine schools serve 4,813 students in K-6 classrooms administered by the Encinitas Union Elementary School District (EUSD). This November, residents will be voting to select who will serve four year terms in three at large board seats from a list of six candidates.
The Democratic Party endorses the three incumbents running; Emily Andrade, Marla Strich and Raquel Pfeifer. By a vote of the board, Pfeifer was appointed to the board in July. She assumed the deceased Gregg Sonken’s seat.
Emily Andrade was first elected to the EUSD board in 2010 after spending time as a principal at three different schools in the district. Marla Strich was originally elected to the EUSD board in 1998. In 2000 she completed the California School Board Association’s Masters in Governance professional development series. Raquel Pfeifer is workforce development facilitator for San Diego State’s Academy for Professional Excellence in the Child Welfare Development Services program. Her facebook page indicates she is running on a slate with Strich and Andrade. The Encinitas Teachers Association supports this slate.
Candidate Thomas Angel has no online presence and the only thing known about him is that he claimed to be a retired physicist. Justin Ried is a marketing executive at Qualcomm. His linked in page shows deep experience in digital marketing across several companies but no engagement with or experience in education.
The Republican Party makes one very odd endorsement for Andre Johnson. He manages information technology and the database for Awaken Church. The Voice of San Diego’s Jakob McWhinney reported this May,
“Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Awaken has played a pivotal role in a new movement of conservative activists who thunder in public and at times make vaguely threatening statements toward elected officials. As the Republican Party’s influence in local politics wanes, some conservatives, sensing a vacuum in the regional power structure, have pivoted away from traditional Republican values, and toward a more hyperbolic worldview that casts them as righteous fighters against a diabolical liberal ruling class.”
“Over the past two years, several of the church’s pastors have actively spread medical misinformation at events and rallies throughout the region, and from the pulpit. The church itself has also allied with political groups looking to recruit like-minded conservatives to run for office, and others seeking positions of influence.”
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