The latest bulletin from Los Angeles: Monica Garcia, with the billionaires’ bundle, easily beat four opponents who had no money, including the fearless Robert Skeels.
But–wow!–the main target of the billionaires, Steve Zimmer, was running ahead of his opponent.
What an upset that would be!
Nearly $5 million was raised by the mayor of Los Angeles and billionaire Eli Broad to knock Steve Zimmer off the school board. Mayor Michael Bloomberg added his $1 million to the anti-Zimmer fund. The maligned and vilified UTLA, which has had the nerve to defend teachers, put about $700,000 into Zimmer’s campaign.
Zimmer is no tool of the UTLA. He is independent, principled, and moderate. His only sin: he offended the powerful privatization movement. He dared to ask questions. He dared to think critically.
I will save the cheering until the results are final, or at least sure.
But I have to say that it would be incredibly exciting if Zimmer does defeat the millions of Bloomberg, Broad, Rhee, Murdoch & company.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It would be very exciting, indeed, to know that our democracy cannot be completely undone by the whims of the wealthy.
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Results as of 2:30 am LA time: http://graphics.latimes.com/la-primary-results-march-2012/
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The cynical side of me thinks that if Zimmer DOES win, the next flow of money will come in to fund a campaign to make the LA Board appointed instead of elected. We can’t let democracy stand in the way of profit!
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Not just were millions spent to defeat Zimmer, but also how they were spent: to finance a disgraceful smear campaign with distortions spread through mailers and ads. Bloomberg, Rhee, Murdoch, Klein et al fought a really dirty battle and deserved to lose by that measure alone.
Leonie Haimson Class Size Matters Sent from IPad so please excuse typos
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This is good news. Wgersen, I think you are absolutely correct, that is the next battle that will be fought in LA. However, it seems like the public is starting to wake up to the shenanigans of the “reformers”.
There will always be a few die-hard teacher haters who live to cheer on anyone who will kick teachers in the teeth, but woe betide the reformer who gets on the wrong side of the parents of any community. Seems to me like the only way Zimmer could have won with millions of dollars against him is if enough people in his community were able to see through the smokescreen.
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Remember that the privatization crowd doesn’t really hate teachers — this isn’t personal for them, it’s all about profit. If they keep pouring money into their plans and they keep coming to naught, they will eventually give up and move to abuse some other system.
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Yeah, I suppose. In the same way that many of the Southern Dixiecrats weren’t really all that anti-black, but promoting exploiting racist sentiment among their constituents served their political ends. It matters not to me what Rhee, Bloombert, et al actually think of teachers, it’s what they do to them.
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Unfortunately, the majority of the LAUSD school board does hate teachers. They don’t think much of parents either. That’s why they changed the rules for speakers at the meetings. This championed by board president Monica Garcia. 23 years in LAUSD. Yup reformers, this IS personal.
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How joyful it would be to see the Rhees and Gists of the nation being forced to re-enact that scene from “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?” — “Is you IS, or is you AIN’T my constituency?”
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I can’t find a link now, but on election eve, Barbara Jones of the Los Angeles Daily News had an article on the election results which said that Steve Zimmer and Monica Garcia had defeated well-funded opponents. Skeels? Well-funded? I was a volunteer on his campaign and the nicest thing we had were the door hangers, and we were running out of those at the end.
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