In one of the most bizarre moves I have ever seen a teacher union association pull, they are rumored to have endorsed a well known Republican for school board. It’s not like she is just some regular old house wife Republican, she is married to a staunch Republican lawmaker who is anti-union and anti-organized labor.
When teachers stand around with their fingers in their butts wondering why they can’t get raises, all they need to do is look at the 50 year chokehold Cynthia and Mark’s party has had on Pierre and their anti-public education stances on funding. It’s almost an insult to teachers that this person is running, than they endorse her? Baffling! The half-penny sales tax only passed because the chicken-shit Democrats voted for it also.
I’m sure this stems from the higher ups in the organization making this perplexing decision based on who they think will win, and who Cynthia sleeps with. But don’t expect Mark to wake up the day after the school board election and suddenly become PRO-UNION, the party would burn him at the stake.
Also, I think the SFEA should have stayed neutral in the race to begin with, voter turnout will probably be a record low, and it could only take a couple of votes for any of the 4 candidates to prevail, even though it seems Mickelson is spending several thousand on her campaign (rumor has it that Mark is donating his legislative campaign funds to Cynthia’s, which is totally legal) I guess we will find out after May 30 when financial reports are due. It’s your typical Republican strategy, outspend your opponent 5-10 fold instead of actually running on your credentials.
As a person who has worked in printing and the sign business, if I had to make an educated guess, Mickelson has probably spent well over $10K on signs alone. I also saw a bumper sticker today, and would expect billboards closer to the election.
Pretty sad really when you are only trying to get a majority of the predicted 2,000 votes that will be cast.
UPDATE: Also, teachers typically are not big on voting, and take into account that a large percentage of them can’t vote because they live outside district.
Incredibly crazy as her husband will be making a run to eliminate the limited amount of collective bargaining the teachers enjoy next legislative session. They will have no one to blame but themselves on this one.
When I ran for SF School Board almost 20 years ago (!), the school district unions (except for the administrators) acted as a group (the KEY Alliance, I think) to interview each of the 12 candidates running for the single seat that year. Candidates were provided with a question list and we each secured a one-hour appointment to meet with representatives of each of the bargaining units.
As a Republican, I knew there was no way I’d get their endorsement. They had already decided to endorse the eventual winner, but I thought I’d have fun with and learn from the interview.
I think we surprised each other during the interview. In fact, at the end, representatives in the room encouraged me to consider running the next year, when two school board positions would be available.
The funny part, for me, was when they asked me about my campaign budget and strategy. Knowing that they had already picked their candidate, I simply said that I planned to run a full-featured campaign. Everyone smiled.
I ended up coming in second out of 12, and discovered (because one of my opponents had done so) that it was indeed possible to be registered to vote in multiple SD counties simultaneously. Researching the publicly available voting histories of my 11 opponents showed I was the only candidate that had voted regularly in the preceding four years, and that 6 of the 12 candidates (including the eventual winner) that year hadn’t voted for school board at all in the preceding four years.
A cynical person might say that SFEA made the calculation that Mickelson is likely to win, therefore by supporting her in her campaign she might be more likely to give full consideration to their views, perhaps she might even blunt some of her husband’s animosity toward public employee unions, collective bargaining, and binding arbitration during the 2018 Session. So by this time next year, SFEA will have been disappointed by 2 Mickelsons.