There are certain issues — abortion, gun control or capital punishment to name but three — that stir very strong emotions and are, therefore, political minefields. No matter how a politician punches one of these hot buttons, it will irritate lots of voters, and anger can be a very powerful motivating political factor.
A case in point is Gov. Gray Davis’ saturation ad campaign castigating his leading Republican challenger, Richard Riordan, over abortion and capital punishment. The ads are clearly attempting to drive wedges between Riordan and significant blocs of voters as Davis takes the popular side — pro-death penalty and pro-abortion rights.
As it happens, however, an old hot-button issue, bilingual education, is re-emerging, and Davis is coming under fire from both supporters and opponents for how his appointees on the state Board of Education are dealing with it.
Last week the board adopted regulations to implement Proposition 227, a 1998 ballot measure that seemingly settled the long-running debate by mandating English immersion for students not proficient in English and placing severe limits on bilingual instruction. And the board also dumped the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation as the defender of Proposition 227 in court and handed the case to Attorney General Bill Lockyer, which 227 backers say could lead to a back-door agreement to eviscerate the measure.
Riordan was a proponent, and financial backer, of Proposition 227, which garnered more than 60 percent of the vote in 1998, including about half of Latino voters. Davis strongly opposed it, although he insisted that he would not undermine what voters wrought. The state school board’s actions now give Riordan an opening to allege that Davis is thwarting the voters’ will.
The measure’s chief proponent, Silicon Valley businessman Ron Unz, in an e-mail to supporters, described the new regulations as “a stunning political development.” He said the rules allow “bilingual education teachers rather than parents to make the decision on whether children should be placed in to bilingual education programs, thereby nullifying a core provision of Proposition 227.” Unz also is unhappy about another rule that mandates less English education than he believes the measure requires.
Bilingual education advocates, meanwhile, staged a series of meetings late last year under the aegis of the Legislature’s Latino Caucus and thought they had a compromise with the board but are now complaining that the new rules don’t provide parents with enough alternatives to English immersion.
Both sides are citing state test data to bolster their cases — Unz arguing that Latino students’ scores have skyrocketed since English has been stressed and the bilingual advocates contending that there is a “widening gap” between English speakers and those who come to school without English skills. “English-immersed students are not keeping up academically, and they are not becoming English-fluent as promised,” says one coalition analysis.
The bilingual coalition has also challenged Proposition 227 in federal court. The Pacific Legal Foundation was chosen to defend the board under Davis’ Republican predecessor, Pete Wilson, and won a trial court victory, which is now on appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Both PLF and the Department of Justice, now headed by Democrat Lockyer, had filed briefs in the appeal, but last week, without warning, the state school board gave Lockyer the entire case.
It’s a move that pleases Latino groups that had long jousted with PLF and displeases Proposition 227 advocates, who believe that Lockyer will, in the words of one, “take a dive” to placate Latino political leaders in an election year. Davis did that in 1999 when he came into office with Wilson’s anti-illegal immigration Proposition 187 still pending in court, arranging for a “mediated settlement” that effectively killed the measure without leaving his fingerprints on the carcass.
John Mockler, a former top Davis education adviser who now is executive director of the state school board, insists that its actions last week were not designed to undermine the measure. “We can’t change the law,” Mockler said Monday, noting that the board’s regulations were opposed by both sides in the issue.
The Bee’s Dan Walters can be reached at (916) 321-1195 or [email protected].
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