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| Congratulations to Tyron Hampton |
Which was, of course, their real goal all along.
So what happened? With these new subdistricts in place, 3 of the 4 that were permitted to vote elected the same people that were there before redistricting. The area that had no incumbent, District 3, went on to a runoff. And last night, in one of the more heavily Hispanic areas of Pasadena, the voters turned out to elect a young African American, and Republican of all things, businessman.
All of which goes to show it is just not all that easy to socially engineer human behavior. Perhaps it was just the old white guys at ACT who believed that people would only vote for those of their own ethnic background. If so, then somebody please send them off for a bit of sensitivity training.
It is also important to remember, both now and in 2015 when we finally do get to elect a representative of our own to the Board of Education, that the same people who decided Sierra Madre would not be allowed to vote until two years after the majority of other subdistricts, lost badly again last night. Their candidate, Ruben Hueso, backed by $10s of thousands of dollars coughed up by some of the most powerful machine politicians in California, received only 38.9% of the vote. It was a devastating defeat for some people who truly deserved it.
Here is how James Figueroa at the Pasadena Star News called the results (click here):
Hampton wins election for Pasadena school board seat - Tyron Hampton Jr. won Tuesday's runoff election for Seat 3 on the Pasadena school board, beating Ruben Hueso with 61 percent of the vote in unofficial results, a marked turnaround from the March primary.
Hampton was the clear-cut leader from start to finish on Tuesday night, steadily increasing his lead as election results came in Tuesday. The final tally was Hampton, 694 votes, Hueso, 489, with late mail-in and provisional ballots to be counted next week.
In March, Hueso barely missed winning the board seat outright in March, slipping below the 50 percent plus one threshold only after a late surge by Hampton.
"I'm feeling great, I know this is going to be a lot of work ahead," Hampton said at Pasadena City Hall on Tuesday night, after hearing the results. "The community has shown that they're behind this movement and they're ready for a change in their schools. "
Hampton will represent District 3, primarily Northwest Pasadena, on a school board that didn't change much in the first year of the school district's new voting districts.
With Hueso's loss, there also won't be any Latinos on the board in a district where Latinos constitute the majority of the student population. Current board member Ramon Miramontes decided not to run again, along with Ed Honowitz.
So how badly did the political establishment want Hueso to win? If in politics money talks, and it usually does, then last night it was screaming for this one last chance at a victory. This from the Pasadena Weekly (click here):
In the one case, Hampton, who in the primary raised only a few hundred dollars for a seat representing some of Pasadena’s poorest families, is African American and a Republican, apparently incomparable terms in the minds of many, and unworthy of their support.
In the other case, Hueso has raised more than $30,000 in a bid to represent this sub-district of the Pasadena Unified School District containing less than 30,000 people, much of that money coming from big-name Democrats, among them state Sen. Kevin DeLeon of Los Angeles, former Speaker the Assembly Fabio Nuñez of San Diego, and former Assemblyman, now state Sen. Ben Hueso, Ruben’s brother, also of San Diego. These three men alone have provided more than two-thirds of Hueso’s funding — all of it coming from his brother’s past campaign fund and two accounts already set up by the others for runs at other offices.
More than $30,000 spent to get 577 votes in a runoff and lose to a guy who took in hardly any money at all. Can this be one of the worst dollar to vote ratios ever? Ruben Hueso would have done better if he'd just gone around the district and paid people $50 a head to vote for him. At least then that money could have been turned into groceries rather than things such as Ruben's unfortunate Boy Scout postcard.
The big Pasadena political establishment losers last night? Ed Honowitz, Tom Selinske, Bill Bogaard, Peter Dreier, Chris Holden, John Buchanan, Ken Chawkins, Bart Doyle, ACT, PEN, IiPK, PEF, and the rest of the too familiar suspects. Like I said, it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of folks.
And you know who you can count among the winners last night? Sierra Madre. Because the very same people who stole our vote got the stuffings knocked out of them again last night. And in a race they absolutely needed to win. Perhaps it was their karmic reward for stealing our right to vote for a Board of Education rep in 2013.
What goes around comes around, as they say. In 2015 it will be our turn. And we won't forget.
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