Faculty board elections don’t sometimes encourage the soiled play that’s turn into customary in politics. So shenanigans within the marketing campaign to characterize Seattle Public Faculties are, maybe, a barometer of this 12 months’s excessive stakes.
That’s essentially the most charitable interpretation for a interval by which the brand new Faculty Board should sort out main cash issues and rent a brand new superintendent undaunted by the district’s appreciable challenges.
However Laura Marie Rivera’s marketing campaign is pushing the boundaries sufficient that it raises questions on her honesty, particularly since one of many new board’s most necessary jobs shall be repairing damaged belief with Seattle households.
In opposition to that backdrop, The Seattle Occasions endorsed incumbent Joe Mizrahi for the District 4 place, representing South Lake Union, Queen Anne and Fremont. He’d been appointed to a shortened time period final 12 months, and this newspaper’s editorial board really helpful voters return him to his seat.
In endorsing Mizrahi earlier than the first, we famous: “He has 4 opponents. Amongst them, Laura Marie Rivera is the strongest, and he or she clearly has a coronary heart for youths. However her views on fiscal stewardship aren’t grounded in actuality.”
Rivera’s marketing campaign extracted the center sentence, slapped it onto a marketing campaign flyer and printed the newspaper’s identify beneath. It conveniently elided the comment about her lack of practicality on cash issues and implied, inaccurately, that The Occasions has endorsed her candidacy.
Is that this wordsmithing unlawful? No.
Is it disingenuous? Much less-than-forthright? Completely.
That’s a disgrace as a result of beforehand, Rivera did appear to be a reliable contender. In her earlier race for a Faculty Board seat in 2021, she received The Occasions’ endorsement.
Her political marketing consultant apologized and complained, considerably absurdly, that since Rivera did so poorly within the main, netting solely 17% of the vote, making a problem of her marketing campaign’s dishonesty “feels disproportionate.”
Properly, no. That is about integrity and whom voters can belief. Rivera is hardly the one politician responsible of such chicanery. Voters must be cautious and check The Times endorsements, quite than counting on marketing campaign literature claims.
Modeling the values and habits we’d wish to encourage in college students is especially necessary within the context of a college board race. By that lens, Rivera now seems to be even much less just like the type of candidate we’d wish to see.
