Once upon a time, as a member of the California Republican Party State Central Committee, I 
would enjoy spending time at the hospitality suite of the California Teachers Association at State GOP Conventions. Why? Because they always hosted the most sumptious of tasty treats – an ice-cream sundae bar with all of the fixins. All convention-goers know that the most popular suites are the ones with the best taste treats!
One day though, I along with many, many others woke up to the fact that while we were eating this particular union’s ice cream, they were spending over 95% of their political dollars to elect DEMOCRATS. Suddenly those of us who had partaken of their high-calorie give-aways became resentful of this group that would come into state GOP conventions and feed our faces, yet were fundamentally opposed to our party and its candidates and causes. Their liberal giving policy was especially aggregious since they would market themselves at conventions by talking about how something like 40% of their members are registered Republicans!
Well, a group of us got together and decided that enough was enough. We asked the State GOP leadership to ban the CTA from our conventions until they gave at least 40% of their political contributions to Republican candidates. Ultimately, we ended up bringing a bylaw amendment to the floor of the convention, which passed overwhelmingly, creating an "Unwelcome Organization" clause, said status was then immediately conferred on the CTA by the GOP. The message was sent: if you want to be ‘welcome’ in the GOP tent, equalize your political giving.
Over a decade has gone by now, and still the CTA spends almost all of its political capital supporting Democrats, and opposing GOPers. Still they remain unwelcome, unable to host a suite or even have an informational both at GOP conventions. A relative minor gesture on the party of the State GOP, but very symbolic!
Only in the last year or so have I started to hear whispers of attempts to "welcome back" the CTA — but not because they are now stepping up for Republicans, but because they think enough time has gone by that perhaps the reasons for their ban are forgotten….
One of the leaders (if not the most significant one) in our battle to ban the CTA from GOP conventions was FR friend Mike Arata of Contra Costa County. When I called Mike and told him that, once again, the CTA was trying to stick their Donkey-head into our GOP tent — he said that he would be pleased to pen something to remind everyone about why the CTA is "unwelcome" at our conventions…
So here it is…
False Pretenses: CTA’s “Republican Caucus”
by Mike Arata
“Who dares take on religion, free enterprise, patriotism, and motherhood? We do — and we must”! (California Teachers Association, Guidelines for Academic Freedom in the Public Schools, 1984)
Ten years after California Teachers Association snarled its defiance of common American values in a manifesto about “academic freedom,” the California Republican Party (CRP) finally had enough of the teacher union’s radicalism. Delegates attending CRP’s February, 1994 convention declared CTA an “unwelcome organization,” thereby denying CTA an official presence at future conventions.
As a twenty-year chemistry and mathematics teaching veteran who left what remained of “the profession” in 1989, and as a member of Concerned Educators Against Forced Unionism, I was astonished when I began attending state GOP conventions to see the anti-Republican CTA not only with a display table and ice-cream social, but with subversive, counter-reform interjections that torpedoed beneficial objectives of CRP’s Education Subcommittee. So I wrote and submitted the rules change [CRP Bylaws, Section 2.02.04] and accompanying resolution which banished CTA.
“Republicans for Clinton/Gore”
My resolution noted that CTA’s “Republican Caucus” had proudly trumpeted its “Republicans for Clinton/Gore” campaign in 1992. During convention floor debate, I pointed out that CRP Chairman Tirso Del Junco and numerous delegates sported buttons commenting that “If Clinton is the answer, it must be a very dumb question”; yet one group in our midst — CTA — clearly thought Clinton was the answer.
The resolution enumerated just a few of the destructive attitudes and policies on display in CTA’s own 1992-93 Handbook: hostility toward performance-based merit pay for teachers (p.305), and toward testing programs which can be "used to evaluate teachers, schools, and school districts" (p.234); characterization of crossing teacher-strike picket lines as "unprofessional" behavior (p.260); efforts seeking "elimination of school dress codes" (p.196); insistence that "students should have access to condoms," without reference to parental prerogatives (p.192); and express intent to control California’s school boards (pp.265,267).
Another “whereas” identified the public Policy Positions of both CTA and its parent organization, the National Education Association [NEA], as “frequently if not universally inimical to, or in direct contradiction with, Republican philosophy and principles as expressed in our state and national platforms.”
I had debated Ralph Flynn, CTA’s then executive director, at San Francisco ’s Commonwealth Club the previous fall. While discussing Prop. 174 vouchers, I observed that CTA was a dedicated obstacle to reform, and that if teacher unionists actually lived up to the teaching mission, millions of parents wouldn’t have to arrange tutoring sessions or purchase Hooked on Phonics to catch their kids up with grade-level standards.
The debate was pretty much over when a red-faced and perspiring Flynn said that it had taken 100 years for public education to get where it had, and it would probably take another 100 years for serious reform to occur!
Meanwhile, as data from the Rand Corporation, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and other evaluators of academic achievement find: California kids (much like the infantile reporters who pestered General Honore in New Orleans ) remain stuck on stupid.
Dialing for Democrats
The Los Angeles Times reported last September that every candidate endorsed by CTA in 2004’s General Election was a Democrat. And during 2005, CTA’s Issues PAC spent at least $58 Million, an average of $173 for each of 335,000 members, pushing the union’s agenda. Most of those millions opposed three of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s reform initiatives (Prop. 74, teacher-tenure reform; 75, paycheck protection; and 76, budget restraint). The same CTA committee donated at least $1.1 Million directly to the California Democratic Party.
The CRP designed a website, Stop the Teacher Tax, to help teachers oppose extra new dues for CTA’s anti-reform politics. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed suit to require CTA refunds, to any teacher requesting same, of the $60/year dues increase CTA levied for its anti-reform campaign.
CTA Maneuvers for Renewed CRP Convention Access
At February 24th’s meeting of CRP’s County Chairs’ Association, Ron Edwards, a sixth-grade teacher at Riverbank’s Cardozo Middle School and CTA’s “Republican Caucus” chair, showed up to lobby for reinstatement of CTA organizational credentials for CRP conventions. Edwards in turn introduced a woman, who did most of the talking. I haven’t been able to confirm her identity, but she may have been Shawna Adam.
The Washington Times reported last July that Adam, who had staged a coup to take over NEA’s “Republican Educators Caucus” in 2005, obtained $171,125 in NEA funds “for a beefed-up advocacy campaign against education policies of the Bush administration, Republican governors and state legislatures with whom the union disagrees.” Adam told 9,000 NEA Convention delegates meeting in Los Angeles that “NEA Republicans are the obvious choice to change their party from within, [and] help infiltrate the Republican Party with an anti-voucher agenda.”
“Ron Edwards, Pacific region chairman for the Republican caucus and a supporter of Miss Adam, said he agreed with the NEA-supported advocacy funding.”
When she isn’t busy with NEA activism, Adam teaches kindergarten in Orange County ’s Hacienda-La Puente.
A former “Republican Educators Caucus” member said that 132 of 167 members had quit the group following Adam’s takeover. The ousted chair was Diane Lenning, 2004 recipient of a US Senate Medal of Freedom, author of Call of the American Dream, English teacher in Garden Grove , a candidate for California Superintendent of Schools, and a signatory to the demand by educators that CTA notify its members of their right to be refunded their $60/year dues surcharge.
At the Feb. 24 meeting, an alert Ron Nehring, San Diego County GOP Chairman, asked Edwards and the CTA/NEA woman whether they had supported Gov. Schwarzenegger’s reform initiatives, all strongly endorsed by the state GOP. After some prodding, they admitted meekly they had not — but then tried to pass that off as simply having to toe the CTA line.
That too was apparently a gross misrepresentation by both CTA operatives. CTA Action and CTA.org News show (as of this writing) that Edwards and Adam were enthusiastically involved in CTA’s cynical campaign to defeat Props. 74, 75, and 76. Edwards complained about Schwarzenegger’s “wealthy corporate backers” and said that “as Republicans, we resent this governor’s deceptive attempts to stop CTA from spending our dues to keep our public schools improving.”
Adam said the public was “being suckered into holding a costly, unnecessary election that is pitting Republicans against Democrats with our students’ education losing out in the process," and that Prop. 75, in particular, was “all lies.” But it wasn’t Republicans who told the lies in November’s special election.
CTA has influential allies within the CRP. One of them is Bob Naylor, a former Assembly Republican leader, former CRP Chairman, and now partner in Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor, LLP. Naylor’s firm has been on the wrong side of issues ranging from same-day registration/voting to new bond money for the Bay Area’s spendthrift BART system. And Nielsen Merksamer received over $500,000 for legal and accounting services in helping pass Prop. 39, the deceptively advertised measure which repealed California ’s 121-year old requirement of a two-thirds supermajority for passing school bonds, beginning the unraveling of Prop. 13. Naylor has himself periodically sought Convention reinstatement for CTA.
So here’s hoping that California Republican Party’s current and future leaders will continue to be especially vigilant in turning back CTA insurgents. As Joseph Cannon, 46-year Republican Congressman and 1903-1911 House Speaker reminded, Republicans should never attempt to buy the favor of enemies at the expense of friends.
Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?
Just click here to go to the FR Weblog, where this Commentary has its own blog post, and where you can read and make comments.