For those of us concerned about the future of public education in America, one of the most important elections this fall is the race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction between Marshall Tuck and Tony Thurmond. They are both Democrats, on paper. Thurmond won the overwhelming endorsement of the Democrats, like 89% to 5% at the party’s state convention. The grassroots know who the real Democrat is and who is the puppet of the charter billionaires.

I support Tony Thurmond, a former social worker and current legislator. His first commitment is to children. I will write more about him as the election nears. California needs a State Superintendent whose first priority is meeting the needs of students, not the whims of Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, the Walton family, and Michael Bloomberg.

Marshall Tuck is a former investment banker who went into education via management of charter schools. He has won the hearts and minds of the Uber-rich.

The Republican Party has sent out fliers endorsing Tuck. No surprise. He has received campaign contributions from the Walmart family and the usual array of charter-loving billionaires who want to disrupt public schools.

He is, whether he likes it or not, the candidate of the right.

He pledged not to take money from PACs, but when the Walton heirs bundled money for him, he took it. When a notorious homophobe funded his campaign, he was sufficiently embarrassed to return the money. The rightwingers see him as the Betsy DeVos of California, but his billionaire funders will portray him as a fresh face with innovative ideas, like more charter schools.

As Jim Miller of San Diego wrote,

“The hope of Tuck’s supporters is that perhaps no one will notice. Maybe, they think, the big money will push him over the finish line this time despite the sleazy rightwing connections that would seem an anathema to voters here on the Left Coast. We can only trust that the vast majority California’s Democratic voters will join those Democrats at the state convention last week who rejected Tuck’s second bid to open California schools to the kinds of right-wing privatization schemes that have wreaked havoc elsewhere in the country.”