Neighborhood door-walker
That is the message of a door-to-door campaign volunteer meeting voters in East Medford.
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Walking door-to-door during a special election campaign is both frustrating and enlightening.
Frustrating, because the door-to-door canvasser -- let's call him Bill -- knocked on 70 doors this week and discovered that not a single person he spoke with had a clear idea who was running for school board, and what the issues were, if any.
Illuminating, because Bill said he met friendly people happy to visit about the state of the country, of whom about a third said they expected to vote in this local election even though they didn't know much.
The special election elects candidates for the library district, school board districts, the transportation district, the community college district, fire districts, and more. Ballots were mailed two weeks ago. They are due by May 20.
A voters pamphlet, with a short statement of candidacy by each candidate, is sent to every household about the time that ballots arrived. It is also available online. Here is mine, in Jackson County. Click.
Bill, the neighborhood door-knocker, has no special relationship to the candidates he was hoping would win. He had met them at candidate forums. He told me they seemed "normal," "intelligent," "well-intended." He put them in a general category of "responsible public-spirited citizens" -- the sort of people he thought would hire a reasonable new school superintendent to replace the one who resigned amid the growing culture war disruptions taking place at school board meetings.
Bill's favored candidates are Angela Zbikowski, Sandra LaNier McHenry, and Cynthia Wright.
Bill sees the disruption at school board meetings as part of the larger, populist war of opposition to professionalism and expertise, whether about vaccinations or education. There is a national movement to remove material that acknowledges past prejudices against Native Americans, Blacks, Asians, and other non-White people from libraries and curriculum. It is why baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson and the Black Tuskegee Airmen got scrubbed from federal websites. It isn't that Jackie Robinson and Black pilots did not exist. It is that recognizing that they overcame prejudice puts the White Americans who supported slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and broken treaties with Native Americans in a bad light. Students might feel less patriotic. White students might get a sense that they benefited from privilege.
So, who does Bill hope does NOT win election?
In Position One, Curt Ankerberg is well known locally. His voters pamphlet reflects his opinionated pugnaciousness. Less well known, but more potentially disruptive than Ankerberg, is another former office-seeker, Logan Leverette Vaughan. Running in the same position is Cheyla Breedlove. Her voters pamphlet statement leaves unacknowledged that her husband, Donovan Donnally, is also a candidate for the school board in Position Two. They are a mini voting bloc. Both Breedlove and Donnally received close questioning at a candidate forum, with questions designed to tease out to what degree they intended to bring a Christian nationalist agenda to their potential board service. They are widely suspected of that intention, but they answered questions carefully, saying that they respected a separation between church and public education. Bill heard them and doesn't believe them.
In Position One, there is a safer, better alternative to those candidates: Angela Zbikowski. She is the one Bill recommended to his neighbors.
In Position Two, Sanda LaNier McHenry is a candidate and the alternative to Donnally, so she is the one Bill recommended as the better choice.
Position Three has three candidates. Taryne Saunders also attended that candidate forum I attended. She presented herself as the angry outsider, someone whose comments at prior board meetings got her banned from the meetings. She said her removal was unjust. Her voters pamphlet language emphasized "working with," but her tone at the forum -- and her past behavior -- suggests she intends to be a disrupter.
There are two alternatives to Saunders in Position Three. Erik Johnsen is recommended by the Medford Education Association -- the teachers union -- and Cynthia Wright, a long-established veteran of the school board. Bill's own orientation is toward continuity and stability and attention to the task of hiring a new superintendent, so he prefers Wright.
Bill's preferences may not be the same as other local readers. People who want a real shakeup, one that redirects the Medford schools toward MAGA culture wars, and perhaps a surprising out-of-right-field new school superintendent, would probably do best to do the opposite of Bill. Voters who think that school board meetings would profit from continued disruption and conflict might choose to vote for Curt Ankerberg or Cheyla Breedlove in Position One, Donovan Donnally in Position Two, and Taryne Saunders in Position Three.
I personally am looking for stability and low conflict. I don't want school libraries and curriculum whitewashed. I don't want police to need to be stationed at school board meetings to keep order.
Like Bill, I voted for Angela Zbikowski, Sandra LaNier McHenry, and Cynthia Wright.
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11 comments:
Peter, You know nothing about Angela Zbikowski. She was living in Colorado 2 years ago, and she's only lived in Medford for 2 years. She knows nothing about Medford. She has a diploma-factory degree from an internet bible college. She has no financial or management experience, and she's a democrat puppet of the teachers union. The current crop of school board member are democrats owned by the teachers union, and they've destroyed the schools. I'm NOT MAGA. I'm a conservative concerned about academics. I understand that conflicts with your WOKE agenda. You're the problem, and not the solution. You really know nothing about the schools, since police have been stationed at school board meetings for years.
You really know nothing. Cynthia Wright has been at the center of disruption on the school board for years. The school district has had failing test scores every year Wright has been on the school board. She's a loser. You must love losers.
Apparently, Peter thinks that 3rd-graders should be able to read books about gay sex and transsexualism.
I had a door knocker come to my house yesterday, and he said that Peter Sage is a "liar, a faggot, and a pedophile". Since Peter Sage is a Democrat, what the door knocker said sounded logical.
This comment was sent anonymously, but it is written in the style of Curt Ankerberg, and I presume it is from him. Curt has a following within the local GOP community, which includes a segment of angry election-denying voters, and people who freely toss out insults like "cuckhold" "faggot" and ""pedophile." It is unfair to local Republicans to say that they are all comfortable with Ankerberg. Some are not. But a majority of local Republicans tolerate Ankerberg-type political messaging. He nearly won a local primary election for state senate.
Public schools are front and center in the culture wars. Attacks on public schools are a symptom of how far we as a nation have drifted away from the core principles of education. Democracy in a representative republic requires an educated electorate. Civics, reading, writing, and math are the core. Additionally, the science and languages curriculum rounds out the academic curricula. Physical education has taken a backseat to an emphasis on test scores. The school board's job is to be the force that advocates for schools. Lately, we've seen candidates for these thankless volunteer positions tack towards a public platform on the board as a platform for either higher elected office, to sound off on their pet peeve, to lower taxes, to disrupt, to fight the other of the culture wars, or all those above.
Thank you, Peter, for your insights on the upcoming election. The last thing Medford needs is to have its school board become a platform for MAGA’s trademark anger, acrimony and intolerance, of which Ankerberg is such a prime example.
Material that “acknowledges” past prejudices is not the problem. That has been de rigeur since at least the ‘60s.
Material that wallows in, fixates upon, and predeterminizes past prejudices is the problem. It undermines free will.
Was celebrating Jackie Robinson and the end of segregated baseball "wallowing"? Trump thought so. Was the breakthrough of Black pilots in a segregated military in WW2 a"wallowing"? The defense department had it removed from its records as a milestone; it must ha ve been wallowing to mention it. By remembering the injustice of the internment of Americans of Japanese ethnicity, we are less likely to repeat it again with Americans of Muslim faith. Remembering the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 makes us less likely to reinstitute race-based immigration laws now. The desire to codify others as second class Americans has been a perennial force in our history. Indians. Blacks.. Irish. Chinese. Jews.. Japanese. Muslims. "People from shithole countries." If L.D. Is a White, male, heterosexual, Christian Republican, he is probably safe for now. He doesn't need to fear this administration. But L.D. Writes with the vocabulary of an educated person. When the revolution's wheel turns, the mob turns on the intellectuals. They are going after left-coded ones now, but as the frenzy grows, the zone of suspicion widens. Past actions put law firms and former administration people onto blacklists. Chris Krebs thought he was safe. Think back. What have you written, ever? What has a friend said or done?
The (temporary) action on Robinson, the Airmen, and the Enola Gay (gay!) was the ill-wrought consequence of an algorithmic bludgeon.
What I wrote was no defense of the Trump team’s buffoonery. It was an attempt at context amid the post’s wider curricular suggestions.
You make a good point, Peter. The DoJ and DHS are now going after Comey. Their pretext is that he posted a picture of some seashells he came across that were arranged to say, "86 47." The DoJ and DHS decided it was a threat to kill their Feurer. Merriam-Webster makes no mention of "86' meaning "to kill." In fact, its 1930s slang meaning "to throw out" or "get rid of," but that obviously makes no difference to our neo-Gestapo.
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