I have been watching the returns in California to see what happened in the race between Tony Thurmond and Marshall Tuck. As of early this morning, Tuck had a small lead. But a notice sent from the Thurmond campaign says it is “too close to call.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Madeline Franklin
209-210-8950
HISTORIC STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION RACE TOO CLOSE TO CALL
With nearly 4 million ballots left to be counted, Assemblymember Tony Thurmond thanked his supporters and the voters of California.
California – Wednesday, November 7, 2018 – Assemblymember Tony Thurmond is thanking his supporters and the voters of California as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction election remains too close to call with an estimated 4 million ballots left to be counted. The race was the most expensive education election in American history, with total spending topping $60 million. Thurmond was outspent two-to-one.
“With millions of ballots left to come in, we are digging in and waiting for every vote to be counted,” said Thurmond. “The kids of California are in it for the long haul and we are too. I’m so proud of the broad coalition we built, and I thank the thousands of educators, students, and public education advocates who communicated directly with voters until the polls closed yesterday.”
Thurmond was supported by Senator Kamala Harris, the California Democratic Party, and California’s teachers.
“I ran for Superintendent of Public Instruction because I want to deliver to all Californians the promise that public education delivered to me – that all students, no matter their background and no matter their obstacles, can succeed with a great public education,” Thurmond vowed.
“We talked to voters across the state, and told them what this election means for each of us: It means giving every kid the opportunity to succeed in the 21st century, not just the ones that show the most potential. It means funding our public schools at the levels they deserve, not pouring money into our jails and prisons. It means providing mental health treatment for kids, not arming them with guns. It means supporting our teachers, not demonizing them. And it means stopping Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos’s anti-education agenda from coming anywhere near California’s public schools.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sadly, with 100% of the vote, Thurmond lost by 1.4%!
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Had the Los Angeles Times ran my Op-Ed exposing Marshall Tuck’s vile racism, that might have been enough to sway Bay Area voters. Tuck lost 55% to 44% in Los Angeles County because voters here had witnessed his abject record of failure and bigotry. They weren’t fooled by his lies and deceptive ads.
With the right-wing and GOP’s enthusiastic support (e.g. John Cox endorsing Tuck and Poizner), and Los Angeles opposing Tuck, the remaining voters needed to be educated on Tuck’s real record. Outlets like EdSource served as Tuck cheerleaders, and many other outlets refused to publish any work the examined Tuck’s record.
Three places that did publish variations of my Op-Ed were The Daily Bruin, LA Progressive, and CityWatch. Excellent outlets, but none with a readership broad enough to get the truth out about reactionary Tuck.
It’s going to be a battle to keep that racist from shutting programs for students of color statewide, the way he did here in Los Angeles. He’s going to be the Betsy DeVos of Sacramento, and we need to keep speaking truth to his racism.
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Robert has been relentless in his research and I’ve shared his articles widely in hopes of enlightening constituents. Corporate reform also has great influence in the Democratic party and Arne Duncan’s endorsement of Tuck was considered a good thing by those who are not keyed into education issues. Tuck’s folks insidiously sidled up to local disability leadership in some areas of LA and convinced wealthy, white suburban moms of special needs kids that he would be their champion.
My own personal email was “shared” by a special needs parent supporting Tuck. I asked her where she got it and to remove me from her list. She was given email contacts of Special Education Community Advisory Committee members (without permission). I’ve been retired after 20 years of involvement with LAUSD’s committee since March 2014 so she was operating from a very old list. I sent her all of Robert’s articles and was accused of insulting her intelligence. It seems that we’re dealing with a demographic that is similar to the anti-vaxx mentality with corporate reform. No proof is real proof. Their lies are the real truth. It’s extremely frustrating.
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a sadly good election night for outspoken racists: for example, Desantis in Fl. and Kemp in Georgia have so publicly said such truly terrible things, and still they “won” their elections.
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A reminder that racism is alive and well
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and shocking many of us to find that it is so loudly and adamantly supported
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It’s 100% of precincts partially reporting, not 100% of the votes counted.
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elubic@aol.com
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The 2018 elections showed us that the GOP electorate is a lot worse in terms of ethics and morality than we thought. The crafting of some mythical place in the GOP where compassionate people existed was a fraud. Kasich, Meghan McCain and Bloomberg should take note and stop the pretense. You’d think they would look at themselves and know better. Kasich’s history of picking up his Lehman’s blood money, while stiffing pensioners proved the void in his soul as did his introduction of Koch anti-labor legislation. And, then there’s Meghan who told the View audience that the Democratic Party should move to the center….then, she said she would always vote Republican. Bloomberg’s record is that of an oligarch taking the people’s assets i.e. pubic education.
A second point we learned from the election is a nice guy like Beto can’t win against “Lucifer himself”, which is a recommendation for the nomination of Avenatti.
The third thing confirmed was that Bill Gates’ biographers need to amend the statements that he is a competitor. Gates likes a rigged game, which was established with the one-half million that he and Allen spent to defeat judges who rendered verdicts favorable to public education. Gates can watch the battle between Tuck and Thurmond and deduce that the knowledgeable electorate wants privatization kicked to the curb, which would happen if democracy had a level playing field against oligarchy.
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Ed reformers are tracking the public school teachers who ran for office, and crowing if they lose:
https://www.the74million.org/article/election-day-final-sinks-teachers-running-for-office-in-three-education-battleground-states/
Public school teachers lose, ed reformers consider that a win, I guess.
People in the public should really start reading the ed reform mouthpiece sites like The 74. This is the real “movement”- a movement that is animated by and centered around an ideological goal of eradicating public schools.
Everyone should read the echo chamber- it’s instructive, and much, much different from what they say when they run for election.
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If you wonder why NPE Action did not endorse teacher Jahanna Hayes of Connecticut, it’s because her responses to our questionnaire sounded “Reformy.” During the campaign, she supported Relay, the phony “graduate school of education” run by and for charter teachers with Doug Lemov’s book “Teach Like a Champion as their Bible. We recently learned that her campaign was run by a Bloomberg PR group.
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This looks like as good a place as any to share some good news about NH: we might have lost the gubernatorial election but the legislature is now blue… so it should be goodbye to ALEC!
https://westlebanonvalleynews-nh.newsmemory.com/publink.php?shareid=3d57e1bde
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That’s fantastic news!
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