More on the BOE

July 29, 1990: Cos Cob School renovations scheduled

From a reader who wishes to remain anonymous:

As the whole MJMA thing went down, I was in the room when it happened. And I had a long conversation with Four Names himself in which he was incredibly deceptive for someone seeking the public trust. Shame on him. And shame on me for trusting him without checking. I should have known better. If you want to use the below, please don't say anything attributing this to me. Anyhow, here's my take:

The MJMA election is nothing new. It's just the most obvious example of the RTC's utter incompetence or deliberate malfeasance. Steve Anderson, Peter Bernstein and Barbara O'Neil are all former BoE chairs who were "Republicans" but voted with the Democrats on all the key issues. Joe Kelly or MJMA himself will be the next one. Here's the playbook for how the Democratic Party controls the BoE in a town where they consistently get fewer votes:

Step 1 - Make sure that you have at least one hard-core liberal who is registered as a Republican. (Easy to find in this town.)

Step 2 - Introduce them quietly to the liberal members of the RTC and teach them how to lie to the rest. When talking to RTC members, just randomly quote Reagan in response to whatever question you are asked. We eat that stuff up. Example:

RTC Member: What do you think about Critical Race Theory in our schools?

Liberal BoE candidate: I think it was Reagan who said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

RTC Member: I love you so much. Here's a check for $2,000.

Step 3 - Once the ballot is set, the Democrat-in-Republican-clothing can drop the act and the DTC and other liberal bodies tell all their supporters to vote for "their" candidate on the Republican ticket. Of course collecting votes from both sides leads to a huge margin of victory.

Step 4 - Control the BoE. Allow horrible Superintendents to ignore issues as teachers bring their politics into the classroom at every opportunity.

So how did MJMA make it so easy this time? Two reasons. First, he is much better at being deceptive than the others. Despite being a professional educator, he is probably much smarter than any of Anderson, Bernstein, O'Neil and Kelly. Admittedly a low bar, but M-A is no fool. He knew exactly what to do and how to do it. I wonder if he was coached by like-minded RTC members or officers. His performance was outstanding.

Second, the RTC is full of people who aren't bothered by his support of liberal causes. RTC Chair Dan Quigley clearly wasn't bothered by it and said so in emails. A substantial portion of the RTC is made up of people who either don't care at all about education policy or who wish the RTC would join the "Lincoln Project." Republican voters in town should understand that the RTC isn't really interested in representing them.

So when it came time to vote on the nominations, we had 4 candidates running and we could nominate up to 4 candidates. All seemed like reliable Republicans. So there you go. Just run them all! At least that way, someone even worse couldn't petition their way on to the ballot a la Bernstein four years ago.

Then, other (non-RTC) Republicans in town started to look at their new candidates. They found things that the RTC should have found if we had been curious enough to look. Why didn't we? Because we're idiots, myself included. Or because we did look and were OK with what we found. Sure enough, M-A has been a reliable donor to left wing causes going back many years.

What I don't know is whether or not the ignorance of his past was deliberate by RTC leadership and the members who ran the search committee, all of whom were appointed by Dan Quigley. But either way - incompetence or deliberate deception - Republicans should be furious with their "representatives" on the RTC. It's earned us at least another 2 years of 6-2 Democrat control of the BoE. More CRT, the curriculum ignored by teachers in favor of their own priorities, masks forever, perhaps vaccine mandates in the future? Who knows? When all those things come to pass, Republicans in town should remember how their RTC looks out for them.