The GOP Tell On Public Education

By Jeff Simpson  

A tell in poker is a change in a player's behavior or demeanor that is claimed by some to give clues to that player's assessment of their hand. A player gains an advantage if they observe and understand the meaning of another player's tell, particularly if the tell is unconscious and reliable. Sometimes a player may fake a tell, hoping to induce their opponents to make poor judgments in response to the false tell. More often, people try to avoid giving out a tell, by maintaining a poker face regardless of how strong or weak their hand is.

There is an important election coming up on Tuesday.   Unfortunately it is not the Supreme Court election, the Democrats in Wisconsin dropped the ball on that one and far right wing Justice Ziegler is running unopposed.  

The race that matters is for Director of Public Instruction.  where incumbent Tony Evers is facing Lowell Holtz.

The far right wing, led by the unlimited well of money in Bradley Foundation, have been working on taking over the state of Wisconsin, with a combination of stealth candidates, lots of money and dark money groups attacking the opposition.   Their success is unparalleled in WI.  They are so good at winning elections that they have even elected such horrendous people statewide as homophobic hateful Justice Rebecca Bradley and unethical unintelligent Mike Gableman (among others).

The one office they have not been able to touch was Superintendent of Public Schools.   This year, fresh off right wing victories we have not seen since 1984 they were empowered and had momentum, yet the best they could come up with was Lowell Holtz.

Open records requests show us that while Mr. Holtz was a sitting superintendent of the Holman School District, a former State Legislator and former candidate for this very office, Don Pridemore, was emailing and recruiting Mr. Holtz.

Now everyone knows that is off limits, but breaking the law has never been of much bother to the WISGOP because they know there will be no consequences (see far right justices Ziegler, Bradley, Gableman).  The problem is Mr. Holtz was more than willing to spend his work time at the School District planning and working on his campaign using his public email and school time to plan out his run.  

Then when another person, who I forget his name already, decided to also challenge Evers, Bradley Foundation gopher and long time Republican donor, Stephen Einhorn, initiated a meeting between the two challengers.  The purpose of Mr. Einhorn initiating this meeting was to get one to drop out with the promise of a cushy job and power within DPI when the person who stayed in the race won.  

Mr. Holtz, having a lackof desire to do much of his own work, asked for a 6 figure job, the ability to take over some of our bigger school districts in WI, to suppress wages and increase voucher schools in those districts and have the State of Wisconsin supply him with his own personal driver.

Who cares if the kids are being starved and their schools are crumbling, Mr. Holtz has no interest in visiting these schools unless he can ride in style.

Luckily, this situation will never materialize because Mr. Holtz nor his primary challenger will never be Superintendent of Public Instruction in Wisconsin,

However, there is a moral to this story.   It shows how little the state power infrastructure of right wing Wisconsin, understands and feels about public education.  

They have no problem whatsoever recruiting a candidate illegally(they know the rules of no campaigning on public time) and have so little respect for Dr. Evers and our public school system, that they would put someone like Lowell Holtz in charge.

It is not about competence, or ideas, its about having complete power.  

If you will notice, Bradley and the boys have thrown in the towel.   They have decided to stop throwing dirty money after bad and have pretty much conceded this election.  

They know Lowell Holtz will not win, so they have decided to save their money for 2018 where they will bury good public education advocates running for the legislature in Wisconsin and bury them in bullshit with dark money.

We can address that when the time comes but for now we need to send a message.  

Our public schools and our kids education is off limits.  

Please make sure and show up and vote in force for Dr. Tony Evers on Tuesday!

PS:   Also please do NOT vote for Justice Ziegler.   She is guaranteed a win, lets make sure that her under vote if considerable and telling.  

Lowell Holtz's Comedy of Errors

By Jeff Simpson

Molly Beck of the Wisconsin State Journal reported on the Superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction race after the primary but there are some holes that need to be filled in.

On the April 4 ballot will be two-term incumbent Tony Evers, a public school advocate backed mostly by liberals and teachers unions who has been at odds with Republicans for years over his adoption of the Common Core State Standards and his opposition to the expansion of private school vouchers in the state.

While it is true that Superintendent Evers has been a supporter of Common Core, it is not necessarily true that he has been at odds with Republicans for years over this.   It was just a few years ago that Governor Walker ws a supporter.  While Common Core is far from perfect, the biggest objection to it seems to be that President Obama supported it.

His challenger, Lowell Holtz, is backed mostly by conservatives and school voucher supporters. He is making his second run for the position and opposes the Common Core State Standards and favors expansion of educational options — including taxpayer-funded vouchers — other than public schools.

So teachers unions (the bogeyman) supports Superintendent Evers and Dr. Holz just has generic 'school voucher supporters" in his corner.   In case you need some clarification.  School voucher supporters are funded by this woman and enacted by this formerly convicted felon.  

Holtz got 23 percent of the vote Tuesday, and was dogged by allegations he sought to get out of the race in exchange for a guaranteed, taxpayer-funded $150,000 job that would let him oversee the state’s largest school districts, including Madison.

Its not allegedly! 

Evers is seeking a third term in the wake of massive membership losses for the state’s largest teachers union — a strong campaign contributor for Evers in the past— setting the stage for the potential of third-party groups spending on behalf of Holtz to ensure the election of a voucher supporter.

The states largest teachers union, has massive membership losses strictly because of the passage of ACT10, which was put in place to punish Scott Walkers "enemies".  

 “We have absolutely no control over whether that comes in or not,” Holtz said about outside spending. “It’s illegal for me to work with them. I’m supposed to run my own race. If they do get involved, I have no control over it.”

Cough  cough

A spokesman for Wisconsin’s arm of the pro-voucher group American Federation for Children did not respond to a request for comment. 

The whole point of outsider, dark money, and past history of moral failings by their spokesman, Scott Jensen shows us they are not always the most forthcoming.   However the money to attack Tony Evers will be forthcoming.    Count on it!

 “If it’s all in, it’ll be very difficult to compete with that amount of money. There’s just not that much in the state that’s available,” Evers said. “And we’re talking about Amway money and the money from the family that owns Walmart and I don’t know any of those people.”

While Superintendent Evers has never been the best campaigner, coming off his massive primary drubbing of his opponents, is very much in the drivers seat.  We do have to stay vigilant though! 

Holtz said he has not sought any money from outside groups.

Yo, Lowell!

  

 

Republican lobbyist and former state party official Brandon Scholz said the donors to outside groups that typically spend on behalf of conservative candidates in spring races are not necessarily going to spend in a state superintendent race, even if the candidate is aligned with their ideology.

 In other words, why throw money at this race, when they have already bought the legislature.  

Holtz is the latest conservative Republican and ALEC candidate for state superintendent to try to defeat an incumbent backed by Democrats and teachers.

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 There fixed it,.,... 

Holtz was recruited to run by a former Republican lawmaker. He was one of more than a dozen candidates interviewed by a nonprofit group headed by former Rep. Don Pridemore of Hartford called Wisconsin Needs Necessary Education Reform, or WINNER.
An email released Wednesday by the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now written by Holtz when he was superintendent of Whitnall School District shows Holtz in January 2016 expected the group to do organizing and fundraising for him.  

Does anyone really think Don Pridemore is running the opposition?  He was the candidate last time, got destroyed and his candidacy was so bad that even GOP sycophant and gopher James Wigderson did not endorse him.   

The person who is running the show, which we were able to find out thanks to One Wisconsin Now obtaining these emails, is Billionaire widow, and high school diplomaed, Diane Hendricks.  

Holtz and Pridemore had these discussions, via school (ie Government funded ) email, which really upsets our friends on the right when a Democrat does it.    Also as a School district superintendent and former long time state Assembly Rep, both know better than to actually have those discussions via school email.  Yet did not care.   

 Between now and the April 4 general election the group will seek to “educate voters” about the race. “If we want any education reform, the only way to get it is through the DPI superintendent and (Evers) shows no sign of reforming anything,” Pridemore said. 

I hate to have to point out to former Assembly Rep Pridemore, that a true way to education reform would be through the assembly.    Of course Mr. Pridemore would not know that because the way our current Government works, people inside the GOP party are told what to do and how to think if they want to keep their job.     

“So far, he’s shown us an abysmal lack of ethics and commitment to public service in pursuit of his personal political ambitions and enrichment,” OWN research director Jenni Dye said. “Now we find out he never even intended to do work on his own campaign, claiming that outside groups were going to do the organizing and fundraising for him.”

Yes Jenni is correct he never intended to do any of his own real work, because we know from experience, like Dave Blaska, Holtz is just a figurehead for the right in their bid to buy Wisconsin,    They want people who will do what their told, no matter how much heat they get.   Hoping to get rewarded with some of the wing nut welfare money they hand out.  

The Holtz-Humphries controversy in the last week of the race, contested school board races in Madison and a burst of political interest following the election of Donald Trump as president may have contributed to a larger turnout than usual in spring primaries. And unusually warm February weather might have helped get people to the polls, too, observers say.

Mentioning some of the most ridiculous slimy people in Wisconsin(Coward Clarke, Orv Seymer, etc...) and the one person they want to distance themselves(even in private) from is Robin Vos.  

 In the end we had about an 8% voter turnout for the primary which is hardly something to rave about.   However with the people that turned out,. like communities all over Wisconsin, have shown that they overwhelmingly support our public schools.    

We see the lengths that our friends on the right will go to to tap into public education money.   Ethics, law and logic get thrown out the window when there is an opportunity to make a buck! 

Finally, a few interesting observations that have surfaced during this race.  

*  John Humphries garnered a whopping 6% of 8% of the electorate.  That translates into about family members only.  Humphries tried a new "bipartsian" approach by having Jeremy Thiesfeldt( R- far far right) and Jason Fields (D- AFC) as his campaign co-chairs.    Apparently Mr. Thiesfeldt and Mr. Fields are not as popular or as respected as they think they are.  Lucky for them they were drawn very safe seats.   

*  In their email correspondence, they gushed over how much they like Orville Seymer and CFG.   Anyone who has followed CogDis, knows that Mr. Seymer is the true definition of slime.   He makes used car salesmen seem like the Pope.    

*  Another interesting topic, which our friends at Democurmudgeon pointed out :

In the email, Holtz describes being supported conservative Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Republican state Rep. Jim Ott. Holtz's wife wrote back and suggested not mentioning Vos: "Fitzgerald seems to be more well liked in the republican camp," she said.