If there’s ever a question that voters put party over qualification, untrue sound bites over facts or that hiding is a great campaign tactic, one need only point to a single race in the 2014 Arizona election:
Superintendent for public instruction.
Diane Douglas, a tea-party Republican whose entire platform consisted of parroting “Common Core” and “federal mandate,” and who refused a mountain of invitations to public debates, appears to have defeated David Garcia, a man who is unquestionably qualified to run a large state agency like the Department of Public Instruction.
Garcia has ideas, information, plans, critical analysis about the beleaguered state of public education in Arizona and practical strategies to improve schools. He knows what he’s talking about, and it looks like that was his downfall. It’s hard to fight the simple ideological appeal of fighting President Obama with information.
Douglas, assuming she maintains her lead, is in for a surprise. There is more to being the superintendent of public instruction than Common Core. There’s no federal control cord in the office that she can unplug or Obama-Be-Gone magic wand she can wave. And let’s not get started on the millions in funding tied to the federal standards that, for the record, do not tell schools how or what to teach. Real life will collide with ideology soon enough.
The Department of Education also oversees educator certifications, Title 1 programs, special education, free and reduced breakfast and lunch programs, standardized testing, English Language Learners, complicated school funding formulas, career and technical education, state standards (Arizona’s version of Common Core), other assessments, and the list goes on.
But enough about her. Even if Garcia pulls it out, Douglas’ performance tells us that the road to change is steeper than many Arizonans, particularly in Pima County, thought.
So, the status quo won on Tuesday. And Arizona will face the same challenges as always — the anemic schools funding and achievement that repels employers, the deteriorating infrastructure, the low-wage economy — with the same response. Instead of investing in all Arizonans, lawmakers will favor tax loopholes that benefit the few and a narrow conservative social agenda that business leaders have said hurts the state.
But enough about that. We know how this will turn out, because we’ve been living it. We’ve seen the evidence that these policies don’t work for the middle class and poor Arizonans — and that didn’t matter to thousands on Tuesday.
But to thousands of other Arizonans, it did. Facts mattered. Solutions mattered. Protecting the vulnerable mattered. Looking forward to how we can work together mattered.
There just weren’t enough of us to turn the page for Arizona — this time.
So, we’re in for another rough stretch where civil rights will remain under attack, where protesting President Obama will continue to be a legislative sport, where education funding will still be seen as a burden to escape, not an investment to make, and where magical economic trickle-down thinking will continue to hold sway.
But people who hold different views, the thousands and thousands of Arizonans who did vote for change and progress, don’t get to accept defeat. Inertia in support of the powerful was effective this time — but the Republicans’ true victory would be convincing those in opposition to give up.
So remember the beauty of the American system is that nothing is forever.
And that if you want change, you must find new ways to work for it.
