Rhee-JECTED by the Voters!!!

You may think that it’s tough being a liberal Democratic party activist and blogger in Orange County, what with having to put up with our electeds doing the likes of THIS and THIS and THIS.  And then we have to defend a President who does THIS and THIS.  But I always remind myself that it could be much worse.  I could be a liberal Democratic party activist and blogger in Sacramento County, where the local big city Democratic Mayor, Kevin Johnson, is married to this woman:

Michelle Rhee

Welcome to class, new students. Now take out your sharpened pencils and stab yourselves in the eyes.

That is “education reformer” Michelle Rhee, motive force behind the movie Waiting for Superman, prophet of standardized testing, and bane of public education wherever she might find it.  She was, rather inexplicably, put in charge of Washington D.C.’s schools at one point, and cracked the whip (and narrowed the curriculum) to drive up test scores — which did happen.  (Later, this was found to have involved some cheating by school employees, but is that her fault?  Just because one lets employees know that their very jobs will depend on how well they get students to jump through certain standard hoops shouldn’t mean that one would have any reason to believe that, out of desperation, they might cheat a little to get them through those hoops, right?  No one could have foreseen that!)

Anyhoo, Rhee left DC and is back in Sacramento, where she is sitting on large piles of cash that she is doling out to get like-minded “education reformers” — whom I’ve heard called “Rhee-publicans” — in power.  (One notorious ally of her is the nominal Democrat Gloria Romero, author of what even-handed California Politics blogger Scott Lay of aroundthecapital.com described as winning the 2012 award for Editorial Negligence of the Year.  It was published in — naturally (as well as unnaturally) — the Orange County Register.  Read Lay’s re-editing of her editorial here; it’s incredibly funny — and even funnier that it’s still sitting there, uncorrected, on the Register’s site in its original form.  Lay’s comment from Nov. 12, 2012 is still on that site too:

I’ve always liked Gloria, but this is factually wrong and the Register should not have published it. In fact, there are over 3 million votes to be counted, meaning total turnout will be greater than 13.3 million. That’s 74% turnout, which is about average for presidential general elections:

2008: 79.4% of registered / 59.2% of eligible.
2004: 76.0% / 57.0%.
2000: 70.9% / 51.9%.
1996: 65.5% / 52.6%.
1992: 75.3% / 54.5%.
1988: 72.8% / 53.5%.
1984: 74.9% / 59.1%.
1980: 77.2% / 57.05%.

Ah, good times, good times — made all that much better by twisting the knife again here.

(It suddenly occurs to me, by the way, that some people may think that I’m being unfair in using a cropped photo of Rhee that perhaps looks a mite unflattering.  I respect that concern.  The original photo comes from a fawning story about Rhee in her (and no less importantly her husband’s) hometown paper, the Sacramento Bee, which as might be expected gives them both good coverage — including flattering photos.  So, just to be fair, the original uncropped photo is below.

There.  That’s much better, isn’t it?)

Here’s how skewed the coverage is about Rhee and her political efforts: a couple of days ago a “Capitol Alert” blared forth in the Sacramento Bee entitled “Mixed bag for Michelle Rhee in Tuesday’s school board races.”  The story explains:

Michelle Rhee‘s biggest foray yet into local politics in California yielded mixed results yesterday as voters in West Sacramento rejected the school board candidate backed by her education advocacy group while voters in Los Angeles handed a victory to one of the three candidates StudentsFirst supported.

Rhee, the former chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools who is married to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, created StudentsFirst to counter the power of teachers unions in state and local politics.

… [In addition to a loss in West Sacramento,] StudentsFirst also supported three candidates for the Los Angeles Unified school board: Mónica García, Kate Anderson and Antonio Sanchez. García won the race for District 2, Anderson lost the race for District 4 and Sanchez is headed to a May 21 run-off against Monica Ratliff for District 6.

(In addition, two Rhee-publicans Charlene Tabet and David Dobson are on Burbank’s April 9 runoff ballot.)

Wow — sorta scary, huh?  Well, look closer.  A commenter named Allan Brauer helpfully points out:

Hmm. One-for-four is a “mixed bag”? You fail to note that the one Rhee-backed winner is an incumbent, and the one in a run-off came in second. Looks more like a rout to me.

That’s right: the only victor in these races, García, was already an incumbent.  The only other one (putting aside Burbank) who hasn’t already lost is Sanchez — and I’m looking forward to voting to endorse Ratliff at the meeting of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party this Tuesday night without knowing a damn thing about her other than she’s not a Rhee-publican.

Any time someone shows up in politics with a gigantic pile of money to toss around for a cause, it is important to note.  But lots of people are apparently scared to death of what Rhee’s group — which is mostly interested in promoting “selective” charter schools that can save money by eliminating teachers’ unions — can do to a local race.  They should take that seriously, but it’s important to note that Rhee’s track record in this past election is about as dismal as her views on education policy itself.  She may think that her political organization can lift candidates up like the eagle, but it seems as likely that it will hang around their necks like the albatross.


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)