The suburban strategy for BESE’s ‘Black’ seat
14th November 2011 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer
Kira Orange Jones spent much of last week in St. Charles Parish in a bid to win woo suburban voters in her increasingly tight race against 2nd District incumbent Louella Givens. It was an acknowledgement that the pro-Charter reformist candidate for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education actually lost the Upriver precincts of the Black-majority seat on October 22, 2011.
Desperately fighting to win them in the November 19 runoff, Orange Jones engaged in her second St. Charles “candidate meet and greet” in as many days, at the home of Insurance Agent Richard Garrity. Unlike her previous open house two nights before – with the champagne flowing at a mansion backing up to Ormond Golf Course – Garrity’s gathering was far more “the beer drinking crowd”, as he described it to The Louisiana Weekly, the middle-class locals who choose Pam Matus over Jones 35 percent to 30 percent in the primary (ie, a margin of 4,830 to 4,106).
Orange Jones now has a good chance to pick up those voters. Matus did not make the runoff, and Givens polled just three quarters of Orange Jones’ total in St. Charles, earning only 2,808 votes. Moreover, Givens has never stood for election in large portions of newly sprawling district. That creates the reality that even if the BESE incumbent prevails in Orleans Parish, significant wins by Orange Jones in West Bank Jefferson, St. John, St. James, and the Eastern Half of Assumption could deliver victory to the Teacher for America executive when the polls close this Saturday evening.
In Givens’ two previous elections to BESE, she needed only to win voters in Orleans Parish, where the education stalwart had an established base of support. Following Hurricane Katrina, however, in a desire to maintain an African American-majority seat on the BESE Board, demographic changes forced a redistricting of the white precincts of Lakeview and Uptown into Jim Garvey’s East Jefferson-and-St. Tammany-based seat, and the addition of the aforementioned parishes in the 2nd BESE District. It transformed the boundaries from an Orleans Parish seat to one that stretches up the Mississippi River.
This leads some to believe that voters in the River Parishes will likely decide an election between two candidates with very different visions for the RSD schools still under state control in New Orleans.
Orange Jones has been on the forefront of charter reform in the last eight years, providing teachers in recent years for many of these Independent Public Schools from her position as head of Teach for America for Southeast Louisiana.
An advocate of school competition, unlike her opponent, Jones sees no problem with public education dollars following a child to a new school, in whatever parish failing schools occur. And, those destinations could include parochial or private schools, in her view, a step beyond the current RSD policy.
Orange Jones has little objection to the RSD’s authority extending beyond New Orleans to some 16 parishes — at current count — across the state, seeing state control as a positive as long as educational choice is expanded.
Givens, on the other hand, has been one of the loudest critics in Louisiana of the Recovery School District, its dependence on the charter school model, its ambition to take over failing schools in other parishes, and its (and BESE’s) lack of enthusiasm for returning schools in the Crescent City to the control of the Orleans School Board. Givens sees local control as the overwhelming issue, and has argued that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education exceeded its legislative mandate. In her view, parishes should run public schools as they see fit, not the state. And, she rejects school vouchers in nearly all cases, no matter who is in control of public schools.
As to which viewpoint carries the most weight in Orleans, the Parish where three-fourths of all public schools are overseen by the RSD, the answer is mixed. On Oct 22, while Orange Jones had beaten Givens 39 percent to 31 percent district wide (a 7000 vote difference), in Orleans the margin between the two women was much closer, 46 to 42, with a deficit of less than 1,900 votes.
This month, in Orleans Parish at least, thanks to a projected 20 percent turnout, Givens believes she has a chance to beat the better financed Orange Jones. While low runoff turnout usually benefits the primary frontrunner, especially if she can outspend her opponent, this election may prove the exception. Teacher’s Unions and Labor groups are highly motivated to get out and vote for Givens, their loudest defender of union pension and tenure rights on BESE. In a low turnout election, labor voters could theoretically swing Saturday’s contest to the underdog incumbent.
Getting out Labor, and particularly left-leaning African-American voters, was the root cause of a press conference on the steps of City Hall less than two weeks ago. Givens criticized Orange Jones for taking an out-of-state campaign contribution from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as other non-local advocates of Charter reform. “I don’t tell Michael Bloomberg how to run New York, and I ask him to leave us alone,” the BESE incumbent complained, seeking to earn points with a Black electorate suspicious of political carpet-bagging.
Sowing suspicion was also the root of the lawsuit brought by Givens’ ally Tracie Washington over whether Orange Jones’ actually voted for Barack Obama. The Teach for America exec had claimed in her campaign literature that she had, but Washington argued to the court that Orange Jones was “not registered in Louisiana or anywhere else” and therefore could not have voted for the first Black President. It was a public charge to reinforce Givens’ whisper campaign that Jones was little more than a GOP plant in the BESE race.
It is a ridiculous claim, Orange Jones responded, pointing out that she, like most African-Americans, is registered Democrat, and, regardless, Barack Obama is as enthusiastic about Charter Schools as she. That Jones received a $5,000 contribution from Bloomberg should hardly count as a negative, or proof that she is a closet Republican beholden to Gov. Bobby Jindal.
As to whether Orange Jones voted in the 2008 Presidential election, she recounted that she had pursued a graduate degree in Education at Harvard University, leaving Louisiana for over a year ending in 2007. She had kept her voter registration in her home city of New York until that time, voting for Obama there, according to the candidate.
(It was not enough of an argument to dismiss the lawsuit. As of last week, Orange Jones’ registration in the Empire State had yet to be confirmed, and as such Judge Sidney Cates ordered her campaign to stop claiming Orange Jones voted for Obama.)
Givens’ credibility campaign has had an impact on her challenger by most estimations, however; hence, Orange Jones’ latest focus on the suburbs. She is hoping that voters in the River Parishes will serve as her insurance in this increasingly tight contest. If the Teach for America exec falters in Orleans on Saturday, the suburbs could save her.
The election is November 19. Polls open at 6 a.m. on Saturday.
This article was originally published in the November 14, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
