[Sorry if the formatting is off – this was posted via Blackberry.]

FR friend Karen Hanretty sent this along, which makes it worthy of sharing:

"Today’s LA Times article about Gov. Schwarzenegger reappointing Joe Nunez to the Board of Education deeply troubles me.  Joe Nunez is the chairman of Alliance for a Better California, the union effort that spent $100 million to defeat the governor’s special election initiatives last year.  More troubling to me is the fact that Barbara Kerr, President of California Teachers Association, personally lobbied the governor last December to have him reappoint Nunez and the governor took her advice just one month after she celebrated his defeat. 

California’s public education system is in desperate need of reform, and Joe Nunez is a huge roadblock to improving our schools.  But that’s not all.  We know the current state of education in California is in trouble because of the extraordinary influence of organized labor.  Sadly, our schools are also under attack from a dangerous liberal element in the state legislature that wants to impose a radical agenda on our children.  Openly gay Senator Sheila Kuehl has introduced legislation, SB 1437, which would require California school boards to adopt materials including the contributions of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Governor Schwarzenegger had the opportunity to appoint someone to the Board of Education who would stand up in opposition to such nonsense as SB 1437 but he refused.  Rather, he made the miscalculation of reappointing someone from the enemy camp – and I mean that quite literally – who led an opposition effort against him last year and who will do the same again this year.  To his credit, Joe Nunez is open and honest about who he is and what his intentions are.  On his application for reappointment, in response to the question about whether he had done anything that could embarrass the administration, he honestly stated his involvement with Alliance for a Better California and that he led the fight against Schwarzenegger last year.  Despite all of this, he was rewarded with a very important and powerful political appointment.

I don’t think that as Republicans we can just sit back and allow this sort of unacceptable behavior to continue.  If Gov. Schwarzenegger continues on the wrong path of poor appointments, deficit spending, excessive borrowing and an agenda to promote Al Gore’s and Robert F. Kennedy’s junk science on global warming (which, by the way, will cost businesses in California), he will lose in November.  He needs to get that message."

This entry was posted on Friday, April 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.