Posted on 08/08/2002 7:19:04 AM PDT by xsysmgr
Amidst California's $23.6 billion deficit — a deficit larger than the combined state budgets of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah — comes news that Gov. Gray Davis is dropping his controversial program of cash rewards for public schools with better test scores.
The money's not there to continue the $100 million annual program, the governor's office says. And that's perfectly fine with the California Teachers Association, which has argued from day one of the Davis administration that money does not motivate teachers.
Which is less than can be said about the governor himself, whose relationship with the 300,000-member CTA has deteriorated from stormy to arctic-cold this summer due in large part to Davis's relentless pursuit of campaign donations and CTA's refusal to play by the governor's rules.
During the current legislative year in Sacramento, CTA's top legislative priority — a measure expanding collective bargaining to include textbook and curricular decisions — was shelved by the California state assembly without so much as a floor vote. And for good reason. The bill originally required school districts to bargain with the unions over all aspects of ed policy. Even in its amended form, with collective shared between unions and unions and school-district administrators, the measure still gave CTA a loophole: the ability to file unfair labor charges if it felt its demands were being ignored. It was a union power play, plain and simple.
And how did CTA take this rare setback? Pretty much the way you'd expect any 800-pound lobbying gorilla to behave. The union's president, Wayne Johnson, told reporters that since the state legislature won't cooperate, he may put collective bargaining on the state ballot within the next two years, thus setting the stage for an initiative fight that could cost the union up to $25 million.
Yet, ironically, the teachers union finds itself looking at a possible $25 million ballot fight because it chose not to give 1/25th that amount in campaign cash to Gov. Davis earlier this year. It's the latest twist in the on-again, off-again relationship between Davis and CTA — a feud that could affect this year's governor's race in California, as well as Davis's presidential ambitions if he's reelected.
If one were to set Sacramento's inner workings to film, Gray Davis and the California Teachers Association would be the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee of California politics. They've coupled (CTA donated about $1.3 million to Davis's first gubernatorial race, plus worked the phone banks to get out the vote); they've bickered on collective bargaining and other educational policies; their quarrel has mushroomed to a public spectacle played out before the cameras.
And, like Pam and Tommy Lee, we know how the two get along behind closed doors.
This spring, after Davis went public with his intention to veto the collective-bargaining measure, CTA's Johnson took the unusual step of telling the media that Davis had solicited him for a $1million campaign donation — in the governor's office, and on Valentine's Day. It was an overture none too romantic. "Davis hit us up two or three times for a $1 million contribution," Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle. "He doesn't understand the intensity of dislike for him by California teachers." Johnson also sent this warning via the Los Angeles Times: "The CTA has a long memory. Politicians come to you with their hands out for money and support, and then, on tough issues, they go south on you."
So what came between the governor and the teachers' union? Try the proverbial "other women": Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, a Los Angeles Democrat and co-author of the failed collective-bargaining bill.
Goldberg, a leader in the free-speech movement at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1960s, is a former inner-city high-school teacher and the first openly lesbian member of the Los Angeles City Council where, among other things, she was instrumental in barring the Boy Scouts from using city property for free or participating in L.A.'s police Explorers program.
Elected to the state assembly two years ago, Goldberg is one of four lesbian lawmakers who make up the so-called "lavender caucus". Goldberg is loud, brash — and not shy about advancing her left-of-Left agenda be it for the benefit of the downtrodden, the transgendered, or the union-labeled. The Los Angeles Daily News has depicted her in cartoons as a grotesquely overweight Jabba the Hutt-like figure. The alternative New Times LA calls her "the Duchess of Dumb," "a complete creep," and, in the same Star Wars vein, "a human Jabba the Hutt who consumes the good while producing the bad".
Having graduated to Sacramento, the assemblywoman has her sights on leaving a lasting imprint on California public education. This year alone, in addition to collective bargaining, she's sought to revamp standardized testing and failed in her bid to rid all California public schools of Indian mascot names. Small wonder that CTA's Johnson has hailed Goldberg as "a brilliant person who could not be more aligned with teachers and the public schools."
However, given the events of recent months, "brilliant" is the last word Johnson or anyone from CTA would use to describe Gray Davis. Which is curious, given union's history of butting heads with Republicans in the governor's office.
In the eight years prior to the Davis administration, CTA bickered with former Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican and staunch education reformer, over merit pay, standardized testing, curricular standards, and requiring teachers to pass a subject-matter competency exam as a condition of receiving a teaching credential. CTA initially cried foul over Wilson's call to reduce class sizes. It killed school-choice proposals both in the legislature and in the form of a ballot initiative. Johnson, CTA's president, reportedly once complained that phonics-intensive reading programs "treat teachers like chimpanzees."
But with Wilson termed out of office in January 1999, CTA theoretically had a dream team in Sacramento — a Democratic governor whom it helped to elect, plus a left-leaning state legislature in which Democrats have nearly 2-1 control over both chambers.
Only, the governor turned out to be a friend and a foe of the union's agenda.
Two years ago, Davis proposed to exempt California public-school teachers from paying state taxes ("I'm standing up and fighting for this puppy," he told reporters. Davis didn't; he soon the idea once he found out that dog wouldn't hunt in the legislature). Also in 2000, CTA, thinking Davis had shortchanged them in his budget proposal, threatened — but didn't go through with — a ballot initiative increasing per-pupil spending average to the national average. Feelings were further strained in that year's March primary, when Davis chose not to campaign for an initiative to lower the threshold for passing school-construction bonds. CTA invested $20 million in that failed initiative and privately blamed Davis's noninvolvement as a reason for the narrow loss in the primary. Adding insult to injury: For the general election, Davis put a weaker version of the initiative on the ballot and it passed — this time, CTA chose not to participate.
Even today, the governor and the teachers' union have a different worldview of what goes on in California's public schools. Davis aides point out that school spending has increased by nearly one-third since their man took office in 1999. CTA's Johnson complains to reporters that "every nickel is spent before it reaches the classroom."
So where does this relationship go now, with Davis and the teachers' union undergoing a trial separation? There won't be a divorce. CTA has already endorsed Davis against conservative Republican Bill Simon. But as in the case of many a messy breakup, California may be in for plenty of head games. For example, a CTA-commissioned poll showing Davis's reelection on shaky ground magically made its way into Republican hands. Coincidence, or getting even with the governor?
Nor will there be much in the way of spousal support — certainly not the same generosity CTA showed Davis four years ago. CTA can punish Davis by not deploying phones banks as it did in the 1998 governor's race, to gin up the Democratic turnout. And that could be problematic for Davis is a close race. However, the governor is looking for love — and money — in other places? Since that Valentine's Day meeting, Davis reportedly has asked the Council of Carpenters and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees to chip in $1 million apiece.
So perhaps Davis will achieve a rarity for a big-name Democrat: He'll win a high-stakes race without the money and muscle of his state's largest teachers union. That might get him through the current election cycle, but it might come back to bite him down the road. Should Davis run for president in 2004 — and keep in mind that most every California governor inevitably contracts "Potomac Fever" — how far will he get if an anti-union reputation precedes him to Iowa, New Hampshire, and other stops on the primary trail?
And for Gray Davis, it might be the one problem that money can't solve.
— Bill Whalen is a Hoover Institution research fellow.
God, that's one tape I don't want to see!
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