Susan Estrich - If you're wondering why the Democratic Party is in trouble, you need look no further than Sacramento, Calif., where for the first time since the new governor took office, Democratic legislators have rejected a Schwarzenegger appointee.
Who, you might ask, was this terrible right-winger who earned this dishonorable distinction?
What horrible position did he take to deserve such a public humiliation?
Here's the surprise: He was no right-winger at all. He wasn't even a Republican.
Democrats rejected one of their own. The governor was trying to reappoint a Democrat. And not one of those token Democrats, either. No Zell Miller, not by a long shot.
Reed Hastings is one of the leading Democrats in Silicon Valley and one of its strongest supporters of public schools. He was a major donor to Democrat Gray Davis, who first appointed him, and to fellow Democrats.
"I'm ashamed today to be a Democrat, to have to come up here to convince Democrats that this is a good thing," my friend Steve Barr, the president of Green Dot Public Schools, one of the most successful charter school groups in California, said. Steve was one of the founders of Rock-the-Vote and has worked at the highest levels of Democratic politics for 20 years. He went to Sacramento to testify for Reed. It didn't matter. The Democrats had already decided at their caucus to oppose him. First, they delayed confirmation hearings. Then, yesterday, the Rules committee voted along party lines to kill the nomination.
I met Hastings a few years ago at an event of Steve's and was immediately impressed. He is the gazillionaire founder of Netflix, the DVD-by-mail system. But unlike much of Silicon Valley, he is a passionate Democrat, and his issue is public education. He has twice served as president of the State Board of Education. The idea that Democrats could reject him had me checking the local headlines this morning twice, to make sure that this wasn't some joke edition. Have these people lost their minds? This is the most talented guy on the team, not to mention that he's responsible for about $15 million to Democratic campaigns in the last couple of cycles.
Then I got it. Cut to the chase.
This isn't about qualifications or performance. So what if he killed himself for the last five years working on the Board of Education, running all over the state encouraging charter schools, using his own money when necessary to help provide start-up funds, while running a multimillion dollar business as his day job?
He failed the bilingual education litmus test.
He thinks children in bilingual education classes in public schools should be taught at least two-and-a-half hours a day in English.
That's why he wasn't confirmed.
Imagine: demanding that children whose parents can't speak English get at least two-and-a-half hours in a day where they are spoken to in the language they will need to survive in the country they live in, in some cases were born in, in many cases are citizens of. Talk to the parents of these children, and you'll find out that, just like my parents and grandparents, they're desperate for their children to learn English.
Reed had actually opposed Proposition 227, enacted in 1998, which limited bilingual education, but he changed his mind when he saw the scores of the children in the English-only schools soared. The number of schools where bilingual classes are taught has dwindled, but Hastings and the board had taken the position that even in such schools, kids deserved at least two-and-a-half hours in English, and they used the carrot and stick of federal reading funds to get schools to teach English.
Ultimately, the policy was overturned in court, but yesterday, Democrats attacked Hastings for overstepping his authority in trying to force schools to teach English. Earlier, in a closed-door meeting of the 25-member Democratic caucus, it was clear that the Hastings nomination would not win confirmation.
"I'm not disappointed for myself. I'm disappointed for the 100,000 students who are in bilingual education and get less than two-and-a-half hours in English," Reed said after the vote. "They will have a hard time catching up ..." He's right. And when they do, my guess is they'll vote Republican. You can't blame them. |
