By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Last winter a woman with a low public profile was turning up at local conservative meetings around here, hoping to stir some interest in her identity and her candidacy. Was the task hopeless, like trying to sell snow shovels in Phoenix?
Her message? I’m Diane Douglas, I’m against Common Core, and I’m asking for your vote to be Arizona’s next superintendent of public instruction.
Her snowstorm came in on August 26 when the mild-seeming Republican candidate buried the GOP incumbent under a blizzard of ballots in Arizona’s primary election. It wasn’t even close.
Douglas beat State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, 57.99 percent to 41.27 percent. There also was less than one percent of write-in votes.
Nearly a half-million GOP votes total were cast in this primary race for schools chief. The primary had a customarily low turnout of 27.06 percent.
Huppenthal was quoted in the Phoenix-based Arizona Republic on August 27, “The voters have spoken, and it [Common Core] was the defining issue.”
Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer and Huppenthal supported Common Core. When opposition to the program started to percolate here, Brewer simply changed its name to Arizona’s College and Career-Ready Standards. It was the same animal, just wearing a different skin.
Opposition to the federal education standards has become a national rallying point for conservatives and parents favoring local control. It probably doesn’t help Common Core because it’s closely identified with the deeply unpopular, completely arbitrary Barack Obama.
In an August 31 statement about her victory to The Wanderer, Douglas said, “Certainly a large part of the success of this campaign is the ever-growing opposition to federal control of our education system….Now that parents are finally becoming aware of what is being done to their children, the opposition is growing by leaps and bounds.
“The issue of this election is who controls the education of our children — the federal government, unelected bureaucrats, and a small handful of special-interest corporations, or parents through their locally elected school boards,” Douglas said.
Asked if she’d seen indications she’d do so well in the primary election, Douglas replied, “Polling we had seen indicated that we were ahead. I believe the margin of victory is indicative of the growing level of dissatisfaction on the part of moms and dads with the education methods being imposed upon their children’s classrooms.”
She said she thinks her message will resonate against the Democrat candidate in the November general election.
An August 30 Associated Press story noted challenges to Common Core in states including Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Carolina, Missouri, and Louisiana.
The story said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal “has sued the Obama administration, accusing Washington of illegally manipulating federal grant money and regulations to force states to adopt the Common Core education standards.”
On August 27, the Washington-based Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal news site said the conservative Republican Jindal’s suit “alleges that the U.S. Department of Education under President Obama used a $4.3 billion grant program and waiver policy to trap states in a federal ‘scheme’ to nationalize school curriculum.
“That plan, Jindal said, violated the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment and federal law by forcing states into adopting the Common Core education standards or risk losing billions in federal funding,” the Daily Signal story said.
Both Huppenthal and Douglas ran as pro-life Arizona Republicans, but Huppenthal hit a bump in the road during the summer when it was revealed that he’d posted snarky blog comments under pseudonyms on topics like the need for Hispanics to learn English. He apologized at a tearful June news conference.
Of the two candidates, Huppenthal had the lengthier record in public office, having been a city council member in a Phoenix suburb and both an Arizona state representative and senator before being elected to a four-year term as superintendent of public instruction in 2010.
“Over an 18-year career at the Arizona state legislature, he successfully authored and passed over 200 bills, with a substantial number of them focused on improving education in Arizona,” his biography at the Arizona Department of Education says.
Born in Indiana and brought to Arizona as a child, Huppenthal holds a master’s degree in business administration from Arizona State University.
Douglas’ campaign site (dianedouglas.com) is topped with an illustration of an old-style personal chalkboard saying, “Stop Common Core.” The site presents the philosophy that led Douglas to service on a suburban Phoenix school board:
“I began studying the American education system and the federal government’s ever-increasing intrusion into our local control since the early 1990s. I did it on my own, for my own edification rather than through a college of ‘education’ in order to add letters after my name. I’ve studied the history of our education system; the intent of our Founding Fathers for public education; curriculum trends and fads; lawsuits that have changed our education system by judicial fiat, and so much more.
“I went wherever the trail led,” she continued. “So much of what I studied ‘in theory,’ I then experienced in practice while serving on the Peoria [Ariz.] Unified School District governing board.
“The two most important duties we have, as a society, are protect our country, borders, and sovereignty; and to educate our children to perpetuate the liberty with which we have been blessed as a nation. The prior is the proper, constitutional role of the federal government, the latter is not. Currently the federal government has its roles reversed,” Douglas said.
She holds a bachelor of science degree in business and marketing from Rutgers University.
Michelle Malkin
Douglas’ campaign received a valuable boost when national blogger and columnist Michelle Malkin endorsed her on May 16. Malkin noted how widely the Common Core issue had grown nationally, from receiving only a few minutes on Fox News to being covered “wall to wall.”
Malkin celebrated at her blog as Douglas’ winning results came in on August 26: “With a shoestring budget and relentless grassroots campaigning, Diane Douglas slayed a Fed Ed giant.”
Ron Ludders, chairman of Phoenix’s Arizona Project Tea Party, told The Wanderer on August 28 that he warned Huppenthal, a longtime friend, “You’re going to have to drop your support of Common Core. This is the big issue.”
Ludders said he told Huppenthal that if he managed to win the primary, “it’s going to be a squeaker,” and he still would have to stop supporting Common Core.
“I’ve been a personal friend for a long time….I hated to see him go down in flames,” Ludders said.
As for Douglas, Ludders said, “She kept pounding on a message that was getting through….She’s a lovely woman.”
Media Blitz
One well-known GOP name that wasn’t on this year’s primary ballot was Jan Brewer, who decided to stand down as governor rather than face a possible legal dispute.
As Arizona secretary of state in 2009, Brewer ex officio succeeded Democrat Gov. Janet Napolitano when Obama chose that radical leftist to be his secretary of Homeland Security.
When this year’s elections approached, Brewer argued that because she served only a portion of Napolitano’s second gubernatorial term, then one full term of her own, she could run for another full term now without violating Arizona’s two-consecutive-term limit.
However, Brewer didn’t try to pursue that legal case, creating a vacancy on the gubernatorial ballot for the first time in 12 years, when Napolitano won in 2002.
Six battling Republicans tried to fill the post in this year’s primary, all of them claiming to be conservatives, some less plausibly than others.
Brewer waited until a few weeks before the election to endorse Scott Smith to be her successor. Smith, the former mayor of Mesa, Ariz., was understood to be among the least conservative of the Republicans. Brewer specifically cited their shared commitment to the Common Core and Medicaid expansion programs as reasons she backed Smith for her legacy.
Smith came in second in the split field with 22.03 percent of the vote, behind victorious Doug Ducey, the current state treasurer and former magnate at Cold Stone Creamery, with 37.05 percent. In a race where candidates vowed to fight massive illegal immigration, Ducey received endorsements from such figures as Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Sen. Ted Cruz.
Rob Haney, immediate past chairman of Phoenix’s Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer on August 30 that it’s hard for average voters to pick through competing claims.
“The voters are not discerning enough to work their way through the establishment-generated media blitz. Only the small percentage of well-informed conservatives knows that Gov. Brewer cannot be trusted to carry the conservative flag,” Haney said.
“She has destroyed any legacy she might have had with them through her tax increases, her backing of Obamacare through Medicaid expansion, and her backing of the federal takeover of education through her support of Common Core, among other apostasies.”
A Late Entry
The conservative gubernatorial vote also was fractured by the late entry of a former California congressman, Frank Riggs, who lacked local conservative credentials, Haney said.
“There will usually be a conservative spoiler who will come into the race as an unlikely candidate,” Haney said. “…The former conservative California congressman moved to Arizona in 2002 and had been absent from the political scene for 12 years. He established neither name recognition nor a political record in Arizona, but his entry split the conservative vote.
“The united conservative front former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas had hoped to build was destroyed before it had a chance to develop,” said Haney, a strong supporter of Thomas’ gubernatorial candidacy.
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