The good news: Apparently, super right wing radical Cynthia Dunbar will not run for reelection in 2010 to the State Board of Education's 10th District. This is great news for Texas, as well as for those in Austin and elsewhere who live in the district. She only disrupts and distracts from potential progress in education.
The bad news: Ms. Dunbar plans to pick her successor.
APPEARS DUNBAR WILL NOT SEEK RE-ELECTION TO SBOE
SREC member Brian Russell says she recruited him to run for her open seat.
Republican Cynthia Dunbar, a lightning rod for controversy on the State Board of Education for her ultra-conservative views, appears to have told supporters she will not run for a second term on the board and likely will be replaced on the ballot by Austin intellectual property attorney Brian Russell, who currently serves on the State Republican Executive Committee.
Another clue she may not be running: Her website, cynthiadunbar.com, brings you to a pretty looking website that mentions the State Board of Education relatively little. Completely ignored is cynthiadunbar.com/index.htm, which directs you to a campaign site as of this posting.
He may not be quite as virally appalling as Ms. Dunbar or her colleague Don McLeroy, but Brian Russell is also a Christian Conservative that would put politics before education.
As Austin's member on the State Republican Executive Committee, he signed a letter about the 2009 Speakers race. The letter implied that the Anybody-but-Craddick Republicans were "working against their own Party."
He is the Austin contact and "Volunteer" with the Texas Eagle Forum. If you don't remember, this is the far-right conservative organization from where Cathie Adams hailed.
Hopefully, the Republican primary voters will pass on Mr. Russell. The party has a reasonable looking candidate in Rebecca Osborne. Unfortunately, she no longer has Cynthia Dunbar's absolutely repugnant record to fight against. And Republican primaries tend to favor the more conservative.
That also means that the Democratic candidate also won't be able to fight against such repulsiveness. With Lorenzo Sadun stepping aside, now could be a prime opportunity to help Judy Jennings. She's currently the only Democratic candidate for the SBOE 10 seat, which is the only seat Democrats can reasonably hope to gain in 2010 . Right now, it looks like we'll need our candidate to be strong. We need a candidate that will win over Texans in the fight for truly better schools.
Update: We still do not have direct confirmation that Dunbar will step aside, but the Statesman has it that, in an email, she said a statement would be released later. They also hear from other SBOE member David Bradley that she will not be returning.
Update by Matt: This statement just came in from Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller:
"If this report is accurate, then it appears that Cynthia Dunbar realized her extremist track record made her a damaged brand in next year's election. But the only difference between her and Russell is she wrote a book savaging public education and he hasn't done that yet. Nobody should be fooled here. He holds the same anti-science and extremist views that Dunbar does, which is why she recruited him to run for her seat."
In her 2008 book, One Nation Under God, Dunbar called public education a "subtle tool of perversion," "tyrannical" and unconstitutional. During the 2008 president election, Dunbar attacked then-candidate Barack Obama as a Marxist and a terrorist sympathizer who wanted another attack on America so that he could declare martial law and throw out the Constitution. Dunbar has also been a leader of efforts by the State Board of Education's far-right faction to politicize our children's social studies classrooms and to promote creationist arguments against evolution in science classrooms.
In March of this year Russell successfully persuaded the State Republican Executive Committee to pass a resolution demanding that all Republican state board members obey the Texas GOP platform by supporting creationist arguments against evolution in new public school science curriculum standards. He also has served as treasurer of Legacy PAC, a Christian-right political action committee. In 2004 he served on a committee that drafted the Texas Republican Party platform, which called separation of church and state a "myth," demanded that public schools teach "intelligent design"/creationism in science classrooms and opposed including medically accurate information on contraception and disease prevention in sex education classes.
In 2008, no Democrats ran for State Board of Education in district 10. This year, we were poised to watch two qualified candidates go head to head in the primary. Today, Lorenzo Sadun, the write in candidate against Mike McCaul in Congressional District 10 and long time Travis County Democrat, announced he was not running for the office and throwing his support immediately behind Dr. Judy Jennings.
The e-mail he sent out was forwarded to me in full:
Dear friends,
I have decided not to file as a candidate for State Board of Education. The only office that I will be seeking this year is Democratic Precinct Chair in Travis County Precinct 214.
In part, this decision is for personal reasons, recognizing the strain that the campaign is placing on my work and on my family. A bigger factor, however, is my primary opponent, Dr. Judy Jennings. As I have come to know Judy better and better on the campaign trail, I have come to respect and admire her commitment to quality public education, her understanding of educational issues, and her discipline and determination. I have also watched her grow as a candidate. There is a learning curve to being a candidate, and Judy picks things up very quickly. Much as I would like to serve on the SBOE, I cannot allow my own ambition to stand in the way of Judy's bringing necessary change to a dysfunctional board. Going forward, she has my full support.
I owe a debt of gratitude to all of you for your support and encouragement over the last six months. I also owe a debt of money to those of you who contributed financially to the campaign, since we have a lot of unspent funds! In a few weeks, after all the bills are paid, I will partially return contributions in proportion to how much was given. Please consider redirecting this refund to Judy Jenning's campaign.
Democratically yours,
Lorenzo Sadun
This is a classy decision by Sadun. Nobody can argue Sadun has the interests of the party at heart and his early decision will allow Democrats to get behind Jennings who is running against Republican Cynthia Dunbar. For more information about how bad Dunbar is, visit Jennings page about SBOE here.
I have decided not to file as a candidate for State Board of Education. The only office that I will be seeking this year is Democratic Precinct Chair in Travis County Precinct 214.
In part, this decision is for personal reasons, recognizing the strain that the campaign is placing on my work and on my family. A bigger factor, however, is my primary opponent, Dr. Judy Jennings. As I have come to know Judy better and better on the campaign trail, I have come to respect and admire her commitment to quality public education, her understanding of educational issues, and her discipline and determination. I have also watched her grow as a candidate. There is a learning curve to being a candidate, and Judy picks things up very quickly. Much as I would like to serve on the SBOE, I cannot allow my own ambition to stand in the way of Judy's bringing necessary change to a dysfunctional board.
I am very grateful for the encouragement and support that people have given me, and hope that you will work just as hard to elect Judy. I will be returning the unspent portion of all campaign contributions to date, and encourage everybody to redirect that refund to Judy.
With only 15 State Board of Education districts in all of Texas, running for office can be daunting for those who wish to serve. Twice the size of congressional districts, SBOE seats are gerrymandered to ensure the state board is Republican controlled, although it is split 8-7 on some of the most contentious issues from textbooks, religion, and sex education.
So while important, it's a tall order to challenge or switch these seats and in the past even serious Democratic challengers have not piled up huge sums of cash. In fact, the most any Democrat has raised is $100,000 by Laura Ewing in the District 7 race in 2008. Donna Howard raised $70,000 in the District 10 race back in 2000 where she held Republican incumbent Cynthia Thornton to a 50-45 margin.
Candidates running for the SBOE-10 seat held by Cynthia Dunbar include Democrat Judy Jennings, who has just reported having raised slightly over $10,000 in her first reporting period, with 85% of that still on hand. Former TX-10 write-in candidate Lorenzo Sadun has reported raising just over $3,500 (most of which is a personal loan by Sadun) and has retained an equivalent amount on hand.
Former Lee Leffingwell for Austin Mayor campaign staff member Susan Shelton, while considering her options, is not an announced candidate at this time.
