The candidates running for school board ... they’ve become an afterthought in this election. The main player in this election is Voices 4 Delaware. Not because of the money, but because of the tone and their failure to understand school board elections. They have cast themselves as Citizens/United while employing Mitt Romney’s Republican Primary strategy – Flood the market with money and employ negative ads.
Out of nowhere, a mail piece landed in Delaware voter's mailboxes. Attacking all longterm incumbents as failures... Vote for these endorsed candidates it told us. They are committed to change... It then attacked each of the incumbents calling one, I think, a communist... A communist? On the school board? Did Joe McCarthy rise from the grave?
From the personal blog of one school board member:
"Last week my daughter, despite being challenged by autism, picked up a Voices 4 Delaware Education Action Fund postcard and spontaneously said "Mommy, you got a report card? And you failed." God that knife cut deeply."
Those with a penchant for politics immediately looked down to see who'd sent it....Delaware4Change. Who could that be from? Anyone!... And the bloggers began sifting... and sifting... and sifting.
And it came down to.... a statement by the head of one of Wilmington's top banks, that the unions needed to be busted........
Here it is for real..... This is the tip of the iceberg.
One of our state's premier bloggers is running the campaign of one candidate in one of our districts. That candidate's opponent, has their campaign being run by different one of our states premier bloggers.... It was supposed to be a nice race of two good candidates between two friends.....
When I characteristically came out demanding the boycott of all these candidates receiving these outside PAC dollars, I was reminded that one of my friends was behind one of those candidate's campaigns. And another was behind his opponent....
Joanne Johansen was not recruited by Rodel et el. Joanne has never talked to Voices, and her campaign has never coordinated anything with Voices. She is nobody’s shil. Even Mike Matthews, Kenny Rivera’s campaign manager, admits that Voices only endorsed Joanne because DSEA endorsed Kenny, and that if DSEA had then chosen to endorse her, they’d have then endorsed Kenny.
DSEA stands for Delaware State Education Association, our state's teacher's union....
In otherwords, clearly... the PAC was formed to bust unions. It's money went to the exact opposite candidate from whichever one was on the receiving end of the union's endorsement.
Busting unions in the public sector is ingenious. For someone like Mitt Romney to campaign on busting private unions in for-profit organizations, opens them up to the charge of: why should they make less so you, Mr. Rich, can make even more? Hard to justify that right now, especially in this economy.
But it's so much easier in a taxpayer environment, where the beneficiaries are the American people. The claim gets made that these people are making too much money, they are costing taxpayers unnecessary money.
Once unions get busted, it becomes human nature that we become attuned that fact, and it follows that private unions start falling to. Seeing the inevitability with teachers, when private unionization comes up for a vote, company by company, the rank and file, most too young to remember why unions have importance at all, bear those ills of a job paying much, much less, than possibly having none at all....
And then, there is even less money flowing around in the economy....
And then,... the rich are even richer... :)
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