Especially in California, the party is deeply divided on the question of how best to improve schools.
By Jim Newton
(From LA Times, May 21st 2012)
Gloria Romero is a Democrat. She was elected to the California Assembly as a Democrat and later to the state Senate. She served as Democratic leader of the Senate, the first woman to do so. Ben Austin is a Democrat too. He worked in the White House under President Clinton and was an ardent supporter of Barack Obama. Both Austin and Romero support reform of the nation’s education system, and when Romero helped found an organization to push that effort, she and her co-founders (fellow Democrats) called it Democrats for Education Reform.
Eric Bauman chairs the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, and he takes offense at that name. It creates confusion, he says, especially when the group supports a candidate. Specifically, he cites the group’s endorsement of Brian Johnson, who is running as a Democrat (though not the only Democrat) in the June primary for the Assembly in the 46th District. Bauman says the endorsement by a group with the word “Democrats” in its name suggests that the party itself is behind Johnson, whereas it hasn’t endorsed any candidate.
So Bauman fired off a letter this month to Democrats for Education Reform, citing various California elections code sections and ordering the group to “cease and desist” its “unlawful” use of the word “Democrat” in its name. “This is about preventing voters from being fooled,” he told me last week.
At one level, that’s just silly. Surely, Democrats who support education reform are allowed to call themselves Democrats for Education Reform. But at another, it’s illustrative of a deep division within the Democratic Party, especially in California, about how best to approach the question of improving schools.
The party that Bauman chairs simply does not agree on how to reform education. Austin, who heads a group called Parent Revolution, and Romero side with parents and argue that they should have the right to demand change on behalf of their children. This has at times put the two of them at odds with the state’s teachers unions. The state party and its leaders, on the other hand, have tended to walk in lock step with those same unions.