Three conservative incumbents were seeking re-election to the Orange County Board of Education, and the voters re-elected all three despite vigorous and often nasty campaigns to unseat them by teachers union-backed candidates.
Trustees Tim Shaw (District 4), Jorge Valdes (District 1) and Ken Williams (District 3) all won by wide margins:
Williams’ district contains much of the Orange Unified School District (OUSD), where the recall of two conservative OUSD trustees was also on the ballot. Williams and the two trustees, Madison Miner and Rick Ledesma, are political allies. The strong voter turnout effort mounted by the teachers unions and the Democratic Party of Orange County in support of the recall appears to have had a depressive impact on Williams margin of victory compared to his two OCBE colleagues and allies.
This cycle was the latest in a series of failed attempts by the union-dominated education establishment to regain a beachhead on the OC Board of Education.
In an governmental sector – public education – that is politically dominated by teachers unions and other education establishment interests, the Orange County Board of Education is one of the few boards controlled by trustees who are strongly supportive of expanding school choice and parental oversight, and opposed to the seepage of radical critical theory and transgender ideology into school curriculum. All five-members of the OCBE are pro-charter school conservatives – which is particularly significant since the board is charged with hearing appeals for charter school applications denied by local OC school districts.
Local school districts are typically governed by trustees elected by virtue of teacher union support – and halting the expansion of charter schools is a top priority of the California Teachers Association and its local bargaining units. Absent a pro-school choice majority on the OC Board of Education, few if any new charter schools would come into existence in Orange County.
That political reality is backdrop to a extra-political maneuvers by establishment interests to re-structure the OC Board of Education in hopes of overcoming the repeated failure of their candidates at the ballot box.
In early 2022, an obscure agency called the Orange County Committee on School District Organization, (OCCSDO) in a departure from its customary habit of approving re-districting maps from local school districts, take an activist approach to the OCBE, threw out the balanced map submitted by the board. In a highly unusual move, the OCCSDO – many of whose members came from a background of teacher union activism or allyship – drew their own map instead.
At the same time, progressive Senator Dave Min introduced legislation to moved the OC Board of Education elections to from the primary ballot to the November general election, when Democratic voter turnout is traditionally higher and electioneering efforts by Democratic special interest is more pervasive. The unspoken but real rationale was to make it harder for the conservatives to win OC Board of Education races.
READ: OC Board Of Education Fights Two-Front Battle Against Union-Backed Foes
Min’s legislation ultimately went nowhere, but this year he and Sen. Josh Newman are making another run at the OCBE by co-sponsoring a bill to not only move the Board’s elections to November, but increase the number of trustees from five to seven. The legislation issues from what has become tradition in the years since the state legislature has ben dominated by a Democratic super-majority: when opponents of progressivism begin winning elections anywhere, change the rules of the game to tilt the electoral odds back in favor of their special interest supporters.
