Whatever state school superintendent Diane Douglas intends to prove with her political career, it's hard to see how she plans to do it -- unless it's driving even more funding away from the schools she was elected to oversee.
One: Celebrating her second month in office by getting into an open war with the governor. That fight erupted over Douglas firing two people that her own letter to the governor said she didn't have the authority to fire without the concurrence of the Arizona Board of Education ... that's an unconventional beginning, to say the least.
Two: Using that letter to attack charter schools, the darlings of wingnut Republicans in this state. Political suicide by ego -- or so it would appear. Douglas must see a path ahead that nobody else sees, or else she's as politically astute as a pitcher of clabber.
And there's more to come: Gov. Doug Ducey immediately said the two Board of Education employees were not fired and should report to their desks Tuesday morning, after the Presidents Day holiday.
Douglas quickly fired back that as far as she was concerned, it was still up to her to decide that, and she wasn't so sure the two would be allowed back in the building on Tuesday.
Continued after the orange Arizona dust devil.
After consulting with its attorneys behind closed doors, the board voted 7-to-1 (with Douglas alone supporting herself, as a voting member) to require Douglas to let employees resume their jobs Tuesday.
But Douglas, as superintendent, controls the building, and when you put a nut in charge, you may end up with someone blocking the "courthouse" door to stop reality from messing up the fantasy.
More to come, obviously, but pretty much everybody in Arizona politics is united for once: Democrats thought Douglas was straight out of the Cuckoo's Nest from the get-go and couldn't believe Republicans elected her over a candidate that was widely recognized as Arizona's first serious candidate to head public schools in many years.
Even before the election, Douglas was so reviled by establishment Republicans that some of them held their nose and endorsed the Democrat.
Now the Repubs are more apoplectic than the Democrats.
Doug MacEachern, longtime columnist at Phoenix's Arizona Republic, sputtered:
"There is no firmer expression of hostility to the conservative vision of education reform than rejecting charter schools. As … a … conspiracy, for love of heaven.
"Douglas can expect zero Republican support at the Legislature (or, to say the least, from the governor) after this.
"Douglas ran for her office to defeat Common Core. If, in fact, her boat traveling up this river was provisioned by her compatriots back at the hothouses of district meetings, then they're the only political friends she's got left."
You can't alienate everybody in the state quicker than this!
To top it off, three former superintendents of public instruction publicly sided with the board, while one -- John Huppenthal, the Internet troll defeated by Douglas in last year's GOP primary -- publicly supports Douglas.
"It's bizarre and outrageous and offensive and she should apologize to all she's offended," Glenn Hamer, president and chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told The New York Times.
It's hard to see what else all these people expected.
When you have a candidate so disdainful of the public that even during her campaign her website states under "My Record" simply "Check back later," who could have thought she cared about qualifications?
Maybe even worse is a superintendent of public instruction whose disdain for education was perfectly clear on the website, when she stated about her own learning:
"I did it on my own, for my own edification, rather than through a college of 'education' in order to add letters after my name."
This woman is so anti-education she not only opposes it for herself, she's going to do her damndest to make sure your kids don't get one, either -- at least not in an Arizona public school.