Big D Democrat

Big news on the Democratic front, for those of you that aren’t registered Democrats you may choose to skip this, or read on if you want to get the down and dirty on some questionable Democratic endorsement business.   I recently learned that the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee — I’m not a part of this group, I can barely remember to keep up to date with the local Alameda Democratic Club — placed Trish Spencer on the consent agenda for endorsement.

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This is big news because being placed on consent essentially means that she would secure a pretty important endorsement if no one got around to pulling her name off the consent agenda for discussion.  Generally the consent names are for folks that meet the agenda and the platform of the Democratic Party.   I’m guessing Barack Obama is on the consent and folks like that, but Trish Spencer?!?   I mean, I think my blood may have run a little cold when I found that out that she was being considered without much widespread consideration.

While Trish Spencer is a Democrat, I mean, the running joke is that it’s hard to get elected in this town — even for the non partisan offices — if you aren’t one, but that she was just given a pass given her previous record is stunning.   Still, the Alameda County Demo Central Committee can be excused for not knowing the minutiae of the world of Alameda City School Board politics particularly since Trish Spencer’s Candidate Statement and early endorsement from the teacher’s union were probably overwhelming factors in favor of a consent endorsement.    But for those of us aware of Trish Spencer’s record and aware of the Central Committee’s previous endorsements and platforms, the fact that the Central Committee would consider rubber stamping a candidate that stands for almost the complete opposite of what the Central Committee has endorsed in the past is really puzzling or just proof of the clout of the teacher’s union, AEA, in the endorsement process.

For example, the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee pretty much consistently endorses school parcel taxes.   We can get into the whys of why the Alameda County Democratic party endorses all school parcel taxes — and often helps in the campaigns — some other time, but for brevity’s sake, the Central Committee has endorsed Alameda’s last three parcel taxes : Measures H, E, and A.   Measure E, of course, fell just short of passing and Measures A and H were successful.  Despite this rather consistent position of being yay for school parcel taxes, the Central Committee placed on consent, a candidate whose record with Alameda’s local parcel taxes has been rather spotty.

With regard to the first of the parcel taxes: Measure H, after two lawsuits were filed challenging the validity of the parcel tax structure, then former president of the PTA Council, Trish Spencer declared:

“Measure H is fatally flawed,”

As the article in the Alameda Sun went on to report:

Spencer then asked the board not to waste any of the district’s money on attorneys. She requested the board fully disclose any fees paid to attorneys hired to consult on Measure H. “We need to rewrite the measure as a community,” she told the board. “We must step up and do this so the measure works the next time.”

In the meantime Spencer suggested the residents of Alameda voluntarily write a check for the $120 that the measure has assessed to each Island City house.

And while Trish Spencer believed Measure H to be “fatally flawed” a judge disagreed with her assessment.

The next parcel tax, Measure E, which fell slightly short of the two-thirds threshold, was not only not supported by Trish Spencer — now a sitting School Board member — she voted against placing the parcel tax on the ballot and urged individual school supporters to come out to speak at the School Board meeting to protect their individual school interests.

The latest parcel tax, Measure A, which finally passed, Trish Spencer was quiet on the endorsement front of Measure A and literally ascribed the success of Measure A to low turnout.

In addition to being outright against local parcel taxes or remaining quiet on her endorsement of said parcel taxes, Trish Spencer has also dipped her toes into Alameda city wide issues, including most recently the Measure C sales tax initiative, which was also endorsed by the Democratic Central Committee.   I’ll point out that the Central Committee worked pretty hard to help pass Measure C as well.

When the Alameda City Council first voted to place Measure C on the ballot, Trish Spencer came up to support it, even declaring that she would:

I’m fully expecting to be supporting this tax and being out there with the entire community to make it happen.

And then only a few weeks later she decided that she was now against Measure C and urged the City Council to remove Measure C from the ballot because the ballot question was not written to her satisfaction.

While there are other examples of Trish Spencer not representing the Democratic ideals of the Central Committee, the final example I’ll cover is that of Lesson 9.   Lesson 9, for the Central Committee members who might not be familiar with this, thrust Alameda into the national spotlight because of the content of the lesson which was to curb bullying by teaching kids about LGBT issues in an age appropriate way.    Trish Spencer, despite her Candidate Statement to the contrary, repeatedly tried to block  the School District’s attempts to pass a curriculum.

While at first, Trish Spencer declared that only curriculum that “goes to reducing bullying against all of our students and enumerating the six protected classes: religion, gender, LGBT, disability, race, ethnicity… ” would be appropriate for Alameda.   When the school district pulled together a committee to create that particular curriculum,  Trish Spencer immediately flopped to the other side declaring that only a generic, off the rack curriculum was necessary for Alameda students.

Trish Spencer also was an ally to the Pacific Justice Institute plaintiffs that sued the Alameda Unified School District in order to force an opt-out option for students and parents that didn’t want to be subject to the anti-bullying curriculum.   She even suggested (and made a motion) at a School Board meeting that because there was the existence of this lawsuit that the curriculum be suspended until the matter was settled.

In fact, the only consistent thing about Trish Spencer’s position on the LGBT curriculum was her insistence on impeding the implementation of the curriculum and the Associated Press story about the issue noted about Trish Spencer:

“This has torn apart our community,” said school trustee Trish Herrera Spencer, the board member most opposed to the gay curriculum and who opposed adding the supplemental books. She said the board’s latest action did not take into consideration “the strong beliefs” of all in the community. [emphasis added]

Is this the person that reflects the values of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee?   I don’t think so. Fortunately, I understand that while Trish Spencer has been pulled from the consent agenda, she will be under consideration at the larger September 15 endorsement meeting.   This is a chance for Democrats that care to come out and urge the Central Committee to allow the local Alameda club to make an endorsement.

You can also email the Central Committee at: info@acdems.org if you can’t make it out to the September 15 endorsement meeting.