For 26 days, Lancaster council member Ron Smith, a Republican, was an Assemblyman-elect, that is until the very last votes were counted in Los Angeles County on Sunday and by 145 votes Smith lost his seat to Democrat Steve Fox.  Smith came out of election night several thousand votes ahead but a huge glut of late provisional ballots cost him the seat.  “There is a political group that has learned how to manipulate the election by playing with provisionals,” huffed Smith.  He’s right; it is called the voters. …

Smith raised and spent about $285,000 on his campaign, but all of that was in the primary.  Once he was the only Republican in the runoff he coasted, assured of election in this “safe” Republican district.  And his opponent Fox, raised only $20,000 and loaned himself another $40,000 – he had no organized state Democratic support.

So what’s the problem? Well, over the summer local Democrats put on a big registration drive in this middle class district, as they did across the state and using the new online registration signed up a whole lot of new voters.

Wrong spot on ballot — and little active campaigning

In 2014, the Republican candidate — Palmdale Councilman Tom Lackey — trounced Fox by more than 20 percent despite continuing gains in Latino and Democratic registration. All he needed to do was run a competent campaign.

There was a heavy California favorite who lost in similar circumstances in 2014, however. This time it was a Democrat — was Raul Bocanegra, an up-and-coming Assembly member who was seen as a future party leader. The LA Weekly has the key details.

It’s easily the political upset of the year in California — Bocanegra, by all accounts California’s Assembly Speaker-in-waiting, every inch the Democratic Party establishment figure, upset by Patty Lopez, a mild-mannered LAUSD employee and political nobody born in Michoacan, Mexico, for whom English is a second language (she speaks with a heavy accent). 

Bocanegra finished nearly 40 points ahead of fellow Democrat Lopez in the June 3 primary. That’s the typical mauling of anyone who runs a campaign from their kitchen table.

He was so certain of his victory that Bocanegra spent only $15,000 on campaign literature promoting himself to voters during the runoff against her — a pittance in L.A. elections. …

Lopez, meanwhile, didn’t file a single campaign finance report until after the election, and it’s unclear how much money, if any, she raised and spent to get her name out to East Valley voters in the district that takes in gentrifying North Hollywood, working-class Pacoima, middle class Mission Hills and horsey Sunland-Tujunga.

So how did Bocanegra lose? The LA Weekly points out that the ballot in his district conveyed the impression that Lopez was the favored Democrat:

Notice how the first five races on the page are all Democrat vs. Republican races, and they all have the Democratic candidate listed above the Republican.

This is a bizarre coincidence – candidate ballot order is assigned randomly (at least it’s supposed to be) and Democrats do not get to be automatically listed above Republicans.

Now, look at the Bocanegra vs. Lopez race, at the bottom of the above page. It’s one of the few Democrat vs. Democrat races on the ballot, under California’s new voting system in which the top-two winners from the primary, even if they’re from the same party, face off in the fall.

And who’s listed in the first position in the race for AD 39, the position which up to this point on the ballot was consistently but inadvertently given to the Democrat, with the Republican continually listed in second position?

Patty Lopez is in the first spot.

This suggests that a good number of voters in the East Valley who were voting straight Democrat — and not really aware of specific candidates — may have automatically filled in the first bubble, for Lopez.

’80 percent of life is showing up’

There’s no doubt that this ballot prompted many voters to back Lopez. But if Bocanegra had campaigned and sent mailers and run even a semblance of a campaign, the word would have gotten out to enough voters that he was the incumbent — and one held in good regard by other local officials and Latino groups.

Instead, like Ron Smith before him, Bocanegra assumed his election was guaranteed, and lost to someone who will lose in 2016 and later be most remembered as the answer to a trivia question.

Morale of the story: As Woody Allen reputedly said, 80 percent of life is showing up. In the general election, Smith and Bocanegra didn’t bother.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

That didn’t sway the Legislature, which passed AB 484 — the legislation Duncan ripped — or Gov. Jerry Brown, who praised the Legislature for its approval and whose aides helped craft the CTA- and CFT-blessed bill.

So what does the Obama administration do? Education reform has arguably been the single strongest policy initiative of the president, reflecting an unusual willingness to take on teachers unions, a core Dem constituency. And Obama is also a lame duck, with no election on the horizon. He can do a Nixon-goes-to-China thing if he wants and stake out for history his support of the common-sense idea that bad teachers need to be weeded out of public schools.

But no. It’s easier to duck a fight, the Los Angeles Times reports.

“Duncan toned down his recent criticism of California in an interview with The Times, calling his previous threat to withhold federal funding from the state over a new plan to test students a ‘last resort.’

“‘We want to be flexible, we want to be thoughtful,’ Duncan said. ‘We don’t want to be stuck. There are lots of different things happening across the country. I don’t want to be too hard and fast on any one of these things because I have not gone through every detail, every permutation.'”

From critic to supplicant in one week

Duncan wasn’t done yet with his kowtowing.

“He also praised the efforts of California and specifically Gov. Jerry Brown to adopt high academic standards and move quickly to new and improved standardized tests.

“‘I give the governor tremendous credit,’ Duncan said. ‘He’s worked really, really hard’ in moving to new and rigorous learning goals. ‘He’s put real resources behind that.'”

Groan. How can the Obama administration give California credit for anything on the education front? As the Times article notes …

“Duncan’s department and California have been at odds at times over the high-profile Race to the Top grants and waivers from onerous provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The state lost out on both because of its unwillingness to mandate the use of standardized test scores in teacher evaluations.”

A 1971 state law MANDATES that student performance be part of teacher evaluations. So when the Brown administration refuses the carrot in the Obama administration’s carrot-and-stick approach, it’s not just keeping federal dollars from California and blocking reform — it’s breaking state law!

Does the Times point out this ridiculous contradiction? Nope. Why? Who knows?

East Coast media more cynical about teacher unions

The West Coast media continue to lag the East Coast media in their coverage of teacher unions and education policy. They’re only about 30 percent cynical. The East Coast media have been 80 percent cynical for decades. Do you know about Woody Allen’s 1973 movie “Sleeper”?

Woody Allen’s 1973 science fiction comedy Sleeper depicted teacher union leader Albert Shanker as a madman who destroyed the world …

That’s real-life Amercian Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker, not a made-up character, who brought chaos to New York public schools in the 1960s. We have plenty of Shankers out here.

Aren’t you sick of the Marriage Wars?

In the latest development a court — who cares which one — upheld the decision of a lower court — who cares which one — that same-sex couples have a “right” to marriage.

But consider this. Governments arrogated to themselves control over marriage only about 175 years ago. Before that, marriage was under the purview of a couple, families and religions or ethical groups.

Since government took over marriage, the divorce rate has shot up to 50 percent. Would you buy a car from a company whose cars crashed half the time?

Here’s a better idea: Privatize marriage. Get government out the marriage business entirely.

If you want to get married, then do so as people used to. Talk to family. Get a preacher. Get hitched.

If you’re an agnostic or an atheist, then get someone from an ethics group to perform the ceremony. Or do it yourselves.

Which reminds me of an old Woody Allen joke, “I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time. She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic.”

Religions should take the lead. The more conservative religions have led the movement against government imposing same-sex “marriage.” But religions always lose these battles.

What these religions should do is ask their members not register marriages with the government, but only to marry under religious auspices.

Imagine if nobody showed up any more with county clerks to register marriages.

I realize that this could involve some legal complications involving children, estates, etc. Well, work them out within your religion.

And here’s an even more radical idea: Don’t register your kids with the government either. Hatch them in secret. Raise them on your own. Don’t tell the tyrants.

The Jefferson Starship even wrote a song about it, “Child is Coming,” with these lyrics:

A child is coming
A child is coming
A child is coming to you

What are we gonna do when Uncle Samuel comes around
Askin’ for the young one’s name
And lookin’ for the print of his hand for the files in their numbers game
I don’t want his chances for freedom to ever be that slim
Let’s not tell ’em about him.

Instead of trying to control government for our purposes, let’s ignore it — and get rid of it.

Feb. 7, 2012

Here’s a YouTube of “Child is Coming,” from the Starship’s great “Blows Against the Empire” album: