Westside Dems Forum

The Westside Dems held their candidate forum last week. It was smoothly run, so they set the bar for the rest of the Democratic Party auxiliaries. Seriously, I was impressed about how smoothly and seamlessly it was run. There were a lot of candidates but they got through the forum quickly without making it feel like it was dragging. 

I don't know if they recorded it and it can be reviewed, but if it can - you should take the time to go watch it for several reasons. 

Mainly for two races that you probably wouldn't think much about - but they were the biggest points of interest in the candidate forum. The race for County Court at Law #2 and the race for State Board of Education. 

Judge Julie Gonzalez is the incumbent in the race and she is facing Judge Sara Priddy. Gonzalez was first and it was a pretty pedestrian presentation. She stayed inside the lines and and didn't do herself any harm, which is the thing you worry about the most with incumbent candidates in judicial races. 

And then Judge Priddy came up to bat - and it was, pardon the pun, Priddy intense. Judge Priddy went after Judge Gonzalez's conduct on the bench, saying she was disrespectful to attorneys appearing in front of her, defendants, and even the workers. 

Judge Gonzalez was clearly surprised by the characterization. I can't find video of the forum that shows Judge Gonzalez's reaction but I was watching with the grid view so I could see her reaction while Judge Priddy was quoting the Judicial Code of Conduct about how judges are supposed to treat people in court. Judge Gonzalez was clearly surprised by Judge Priddy's comments and Priddy closed the critique by saying people don't have to take her word for it - they can ask any lawyer that practices in her court. 

But I was able to find the video of Judge Priddy's comments. 

I don't know if Judge Gonzalez was genuinely surprised that Priddy articulated a pretty well-known perception of her in the courthouse - or if she didn't know how else to react. But yeah, there's a reason I said she was kind of the "hangin' judge" of misdemeanor courts. 

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SBOE Race

The State Board of Education race was also pretty interesting. Some context first. The current SBOE Member is Georgina Perez and word around Austin is she's up for a paid position in education at the state level - which is why she quietly didn't run for re-election. Not sure if she'll be an Abbott appointee, but that is the word in union circles. She tried to pull a movida to keep it quiet that she wasn't running for re-election and wanted to tap one of her acolytes, Melissa Ortega, who is in administration at EPISD to fill in the seat. 

Getting unions to support management is a tough sell to say the least. Tougher when Perez is the one trying to pull the movida off. Perez ruined her relationships with pretty much every school district in El Paso County by her own doing. The San Elizario incident crystalizes her time in office. 

The bullying and pushing people around thing only works for so long before people ultimately stand up against her - and thats what happened. 

I guess Perez had Ortega convinced she was gonna have the education community on her side because she's Perez's chosen one but that was one big embarrassing assumption for Ortega. She was asked in the forum about her financial support and she mentioned mostly family and friends - but then went on to talk about the education community. 

She was alluding to union support. 

The day after this forum, AFT endorsed her opponent Laura Marquez. 

Perhaps Homer Simpson says it best, "D'oh!"

Ortega is the most qualified candidate. But her association with Georgina Perez is what is hurting her because of Perez's reputation of not being easy to work with and always trying to meddle in things that are outside her lane. But the bigger problem for Ortega is the fact that State Rep Mary Gonzalez has a lot of influence in public education in Texas - not sure why considering she sold out to the GOP and allowed them to pass anti-Public Education and anti-LGBTQ legislation - but she has influence nonetheless. 

She knows that Georgina Perez has long planned challenging her for state rep. You think Gonzalez is gonna make it easy for Perez's hand-picked successor? 

Yeah, no. 

Laura Marquez is a good alternative for labor to support - she has the educational experience in the classroom and she doesn't have those ties to Georgina Perez. 

The other opponent in the race is a complete non-starter. Omar Yanar is a charter school guy and he's completely unapologetic about it. 

There is no way labor is going to endorse someone who is a cheater school guy when charters are bad for teachers, students, and tax payers. 

Yanar is far and away the biggest carnival barker for charter schools to ever walk the streets of El Paso. Yanar channeled his inner Donald Trump and started bragging about his charter school. Everything is the best and yuuuuuge, and no one has ever seen anything like it before. I mean he really shoveled it around really thick. 

But he's basically full of shit and in my opinion, the epitome and stereotype of a sleazy candidate. And I'm not talking about the slick hair and beard. 

While he talks up his charter and compares it to local schools, there's a lot he doesn't tell people that is important for them to know - especially Democrats. 

First, charters get to cherry pick students. Language learners, the physically, emotionally, or cognitively challenged - they don't have to teach them. But even when they have the best of circumstances - they still perform similarly, or below, local public schools.  

But there's something else he said that I really take issue with. His assertion that charter schools are public schools is misleading at best. 

The fact is, charter schools take money away from public schools. There's no getting around that no matter how much he tries to spin it. In public schools, the public have oversight. There is no transparency and oversight at charter schools. The public schools are subject to scrutiny from the public. Their budgets, salaries, expenditures, etc. At charter schools, there is no requirement to be transparent with the public about any of that. 

So they steal public dollars from our public schools, but we don't know anything about how its spent. 

But we do know that their teachers are paid less. They have less requirements than public schools and there is no due process in charter schools despite taking public dollars. And when I say no due process, I mean for students, faculty, or the public. 

Not only do they cherry pick students on the front-end, but if a student isn't cutting the mustard, they can always kick the student out, often using "behavior" as a reason to expel the student. 

Why do you think they can sell prospective students' parents on things like 100% graduation rates, or 100% college acceptance rates?

Its all a shell game to target families by telling them that their student is "special" and can't thrive in public schools - but their educational outcomes (even under the best of circumstances and with every advantage possible), are still comparable to their public school counterparts. 

Thankfully the chair of the Westside Dems asked him a follow-up questions about charters and afforded the opponents more time as a result, but none of them took the opportunity to call out Yanar. 

If he's running under the banner of the Democratic Party, he should have to answer why his business (charter schools operate as a business), doesn't pay his workers a fair wage, doesn't practice transparency of public funds that they receive, or why they don't allow due process. 

The way I see it, his candidacy is literally the fox trying to get into the hen house.