CTA, Palmdale teachers shine in election
The day after losing her seat on the Palmdale School Board, Shawny Barcelona was back at work, running her salon, trying not to let the loss get to her.
She was frustrated but hoped to get back on the board when another seat opens up. She says she’ll at least stay active.
“I ran a good, positive campaign, and I’m very happy with that,” she said. “I think everyone else is more sad than me.”
Barcelona lost her seat to newcomer Jeff Ferrin, a vice principal at William J. “Pete” Knight High School. Both had the backing of Valley Republicans, and Ferrin had state Senator George Runner, R-Lancaster, behind him. Republicans also endorsed incumbent Sheldon Epstein.
Ferrin, Epstein and Sandy Corrales, the current board president, all of whom won seats in Tuesday’s election, were on the slate of candidates endorsed by the California Teachers Association. Barcelona drew the union’s wrath for supporting Governor Arnold Schwarzennegger, whose propositions the union adamantly opposed. She came in fourth, finishing 466 votes behind Ferrin.
The big winner in this election, locally and at the state level, was the California Teachers Association.
On local school boards, with one exception — the Antelope Valley College Board of Trustees — every candidate teachers picked won a seat.
The union also helped sink initiatives backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that would have changed teacher tenure rules, changed political spending by public employee unions, affected school funding and capped state spending.
Endorsements are a regular part of every election. Candidates at every level seek the backing of every influential organization they can find, hoping voters who put stock in those groups’ philosophy will help put them in office.
CTA wasn’t the biggest power player in this election, and it certainly wasn’t the only group promoting candidates. In fact, teachers’ endorsements often overlapped with groups that have little in common politically with the left-leaning union. The Antelope Valley Republicans Assemblywoman Sharon Runner and Sen. George Runner, for example, also boosted their own slates of candidates in most races.
But where there was a difference — such as in the Antelope Valley Union High School District or the Palmdale School District — the union’s candidates won seats.
Ferrin might never have run if not for the Palmdale Elementary Teachers Association. The union asked members to find candidates, and a Joshua Hills teacher knew Ferrin, whose wife is active in the Parent Teacher Student Association at another Palmdale School.
PETA organizers convinced Ferrin to throw his hat into the ring. They said he had more ideas than Barcelona, who has had a rocky relationship with the teachers’ union.
Barcelona, a Republican, took heat from PETA for appearing at a fund-raiser in Lancaster for Schwarzenegger. Her husband, Isaac Barcelona, head of the Palmdale Chamber of Commerce, sold enough $250 tickets to the dinner for the couple to sit near the governor and be named a co-chairman of the event.
While Barcelona said she opposed the core of Schwarzenegger’s proposals — the spending cap and tenure-reform initiatives — she said she still supported the governor.
That got teachers fuming.
Earlier in the year, when teachers rallied outside the Palmdale district office in an effort to improve stalled labor negotiations, Barcelona parked in back, then joked about avoiding the union.
“I came in the back way,” she told the Valley Press. “I didn’t want to be mauled.”
She apologized a few weeks later, saying the remark wasn’t meant to harm. But the damage was done.
“Shawny was compromising a lot,” said Bruce Shank, a political organizer for PETA. “She didn’t have strong opinions or ideas of her own that were really contributing. Whatever (fellow trustee) Tom Lackey did, she usually did.”
Lackey is a conservative Republican on the Palmdale school board. He won a seat on the Palmdale City Council in Tuesday’s vote. Barcelona is now angling for the Palmdale board seat Lackey will vacate when he joins the City Council.
“The union’s worked hard,” Barcelona said the day after the election. “I’m not going to take away from fact that Jeff Ferrin is an educator, and that’s very powerful.”
Palmdale teachers started organizing politically three years ago, Shank said. This year, PETA built a campaign fund from member dues and CTA contributions, setting aside about $5,000 for the election. The union split that money evenly between the candidates.
David Aponik, a local CTA organizer, said parents were a key target in local races.
“They’re very supportive of teachers and the teaching profession,” he said. “When the teachers’ associations weighed in on candidates and endorsed them, parents and residents gave their support.”
In the state election, CTA formed the core of the opposition groups fighting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Year of Reform” initiatives. Voters rejected all the governor’s propositions, along with every other initiative on the ballot.
Senator Runner, a strong Schwarzenegger backer, said his side made a mistake in letting the opposition frame issues before the governor could respond.
“I think we underestimated the vigor with which the unions and Democrats would come against these things,” George Runner told the Antelope Valley Press.
“A lot of the attacks went on early and were unanswered. … Part of our problem was we started in a hole because we were not able to come back and answer the critics and attacks that started early in the summer.”
The stunning defeat for the once invincible Schwarzenegger, who rode into the statehouse on a wave of voter rage that ousted Governor Gray Davis by recall, gave CTA President Barbara Kerr cause to gloat on Wednesday.
“Let’s hope the governor has finally heard the real will of the people and understands that his agenda was wrong for California,” Kerr said.
“The people of California want real solutions that include adequate funding of our schools, protecting our minimum school funding guarantee and affordable health care for all.”
Aponik said the campaign started long before the special election. Really, he says, everything began in January, “when the governor declared war on working families.”
In his State of the State address, Schwarzenegger called for massive structural reforms in state pensions, teacher pay and tenure and the state budget. Every proposal would have affected public-employee unions.
Teachers came out swinging. They hit back early and hard.
Ten months later, after watching his initiatives sink in a special election he called, the governor promised to work with the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
While union organizers and supporters were celebrating the statewide victory, they also noted a swing in local polls driven by strong sentiments toward state measures. Candidates took notice, too.
“I think the propositions brought out a lot more union voters than usual, which in turn affected the outcome,” said Gwen Farrell, a Westside Union School District trustee who was not up for re-election.
“They’ve always had clout,” said Greg Tepe, who won re-election to the Lancaster School Board. He said of teachers: “They certainly showed up in force because all the propositions affected teachers.”
CTA’s hand was hard to miss.
“The teachers’ union seems to have affected all the districts,” said Lancaster trustee Keith Giles, the top vote getter in Tuesday’s election for his district. “Overall I received a lot more votes than I have in past elections.”
Both Tepe and Giles enjoyed CTA backing.
Aponik, the local CTA organizer, said his union has the momentum. Politicians should take note, he said.
“It’s not just a message for the governor. It’s a message for the Legislature, as well,” he said.
Looking at Tuesday’s vote, in which all eight initiatives lost, Aponik said the Legislature should hear people saying: “We elected you guys to do a job. Now do it,” he said.
He added, “I think we’ll see that.”
Tags: education, elections, lancaster, palmdale, politics, unions