Elections 2015: St. Paul School Board, DFL-Endorsed Candidates

I have been putting this off and putting this off and then I realized today that the election is in less than a week and I do in fact need to make a decision about who I'm going to vote for in it.

The four DFL-Endorsed candidates are Steve Marchese, Mary Vanderwert, Jon Schumacher, and Zuki Ellis.

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Overall, I would say I like Mary, Zuki, and Steve quite a bit. I'm less enthusiastic about Jon, but may ultimately vote for him.

Part of my struggle in terms of just getting a grip on this race is that the four DFL-endorsed candidates have been running as a unit and encouraging people to think of them as a unit. I've seen few (if any) individual signs: they want you to put up a sign with all four candidates on it.

In fact, this may be sort of a party response to some of what happened in Minneapolis last year, where a DFL-endorsed candidate (Iris Altamirano?) went to a fundraiser for Don Samuels (who was not DFL-endorsed, and Iris was supposed to be supporting Rebecca Gagnon, the other DFL-endorsed candidate). I would not be surprised if somewhere in the process they all pledged to support whoever the endorsed candidates were, especially if they were also endorsed. (I was actually at the city convention, where these pledges would've been made, but the acoustics in that room were horrible, I was seated near the back, and I missed large amounts of what was said from the microphones, despite them regularly scolding us to "be respectful" and refrain from side conversations, which -- FYI, DFL Arrangements Committee -- NEVER WORKS EVER.)

But it makes it that much harder to properly think about and write about the race. In part because I really don't WANT to elect four people who are going to march in party-approved lock-step. I want people who will bring their individual ideas and priorities to thinking about the problems of the district. I mean, sure, there are certainly areas where I want to see SPPS follow the liberal party line, but there are a whole lot of issues that schools have to deal with that are not obviously partisan.

There was a campaigner from Caucus for Change (a Minneapolis teacher who had been sent out door-knocking on behalf of the St. Paul endorsed candidates) who door-kocked me a few weeks back to talk up the four endorsed candidates. I told him I would probably vote for three of them, but was undecided on whether to vote for all four, or for three plus Keith Hardy. His pitch against Keith Hardy was that the School Board has seven people on it, with four seats up for vote, and if Keith Hardy is elected, the Old Guard will still control a majority of seats. The implication, of course, is that the old board voted as a block and would continue to do so -- I find that startling as hell, because back when the Minneapolis City Council was dominated by people I deeply disliked, there were huge fracture lines and people who were the "good guys" on the council who we didn't want to get rid of. How is it even possible that there's no one on the board that the CfC considers a potential ally for their candidates? Were all their controversial votes unanimous?

Ed pointed out that if we vote for the DFL-endorsed candidates, then we're handing full control of the school board to the Caucus for Change. To revisit this point -- I am generally pro-union but I think it's important to remember that the priority of the teacher's union is to represent the interests of teachers. Those overlap heavily with the interests of students but there are areas where they conflict, and when those come before the board, I do not want the union voice to be the only one at the table. Is that what I'm going to get, with four Caucus for Change candidates? Maybe not. I mean, the overall approach with using CfC instead of doing straight-up union endorsement was that they screened everyone and gave most of the non-incumbents vying for DFL endorsement a general stamp of approval, and then said they would say "yes, them" to whomever the DFL endorsed. And for all that I feel like the CfC has presented itself in a deceptive way, it's also the most hands-off approach to union endorsement I could have ever asked for.

Anyway, I'm going to write about Keith Hardy (the incumbent) and Rashad Turner (running as a write-in candidate) and then possibly I'll have more thoughts on the race overall. If anyone who adores Jon Schumacher wants to make a pitch for him, by all means feel free, either in comments or by e-mail. (My e-mail address is my first and last name, at gmail. Basically if you were to take a stab in the dark based on the fact that I do all my pre-election research with Google, you won't go wrong.)

Election 2015: Write-In School Board Candidate Rashad Turner

So I'll start by saying that in this situation, I think it's entirely legitimate to hold it against Rashad Turner that he didn't file in time to get on the ballot. If something had changed drastically during the race due to a death, a major scandal, whatever, and he jumped in -- fine. But that's not what happened. His answer to "why aren't you on the ballot?" is "I was encouraged and decided to run for school board after the filing deadline. I missed it by a couple of days." Although, I have in fact voted for a write-in candidate who jumped into the race because he disliked the person who was running (John Scalzi, when he ran for SFWA president in 2007) but I do think "oh good grief, if you couldn't decide you wanted to do this in time to file, you don't deserve the job" is a reasonable attitude.

He's running a lot more seriously than some of the other candidates, though -- he has a website, he has endorsements (from the Green Party), he can take donations and he's recruiting volunteers.

Rashad is best known for being the most visible organizer of Black Lives Matter of St. Paul. Which means I need to start with a sidebar about BLM generally and BLM-St. Paul. When I talk about BLM over on Facebook, for the most part I've just reposted things that other people have said. I'm white, I'm solidly privileged on the issue of cops and how they treat civilians (when was the last time you saw a video of a cop beating the crap out of a nonresisting middle aged white lady?) and I think that solidarity from white people on this issue is entirely called for but making white voices predominant is really not.

But just to be clear about this from the get-go, I think that Black Lives Matter is an ENTIRELY legitimate movement. I am horrified by the fact that black men and women are routinely battered, abused, threatened, and murdered with complete impunity by people to whom we've handed over a shit ton of authority and not bothered to check up on. And I'll note that fixing policing to protect black people is a great example of what I think of as societal Universal Design. Universal Design is an approach to building design where things are made accessible to disabled people but also just better for everyone. If you've ever pressed a "door open" button with your butt to get through a door with your hands full, you have benefited from universal design. But if you start with the people who will have the hardest time getting through a door, you can usually guarantee that everyone will be able to get through that door. If we start by protecting the people who are most vulnerable to police abuses, it's going to get better for everyone. (Well, everyone who is not a power-tripping abusive asshole with a badge. But I'm good with that!)

All that said, I am not convinced that Rashad Turner would be a terrific person to have on the school board.

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As a final note: you are welcome to post comments about whether Rashad would be good or bad on the St. Paul school board. We're not going to have a conversation about the basic legitimacy of the Black Lives Matter movement. We're also not going to get into BLM-St. Paul's tactics in general. I realize that there is some overlap here, but if I think you're not making a good-faith effort to stay on topic I will delete your comments.