Barrera holds sizeable lead, claims victory, in state superintendent’s race
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- Richard Barrera, the San Diego Unified school board president, claimed victory Wednesday over Republican Sonja Shaw.
- The winner will assume control of a re-shaped office that no longer controls the state education department.
- Barrera’s campaign drew strong teachers union support and millions in spending; Shaw’s platform includes opposing transgender athletes in girls’ sports.
Richard Barrera declared victory Wednesday morning after opening up a sizable lead over Sonja Shaw in the race for state superintendent of public instruction.
Shaw, a conservative Republican, could not be reached immediately on Wednesday. It was not clear whether she was prepared to concede based on the incomplete returns, with many votes still to be counted.
Barrera, 59, the school board president of San Diego Unified, was the heavy favorite as the Democrat in the race, even though the office is listed as nonpartisan.
He described his campaign message as “a positive vision for our public schools. We’ve got so many examples of great work happening in our public schools that deserve to be elevated.”
He also campaigned on increasing school funding and “a message that our public schools need to be healthy, safe communities for all of our students. I think that was a clear contrast to a message that our public schools are failing.”
Barrera also benefited from more than $9 million in independent campaign spending in support of his election by the California Teachers Assn., or CTA, which he said was instrumental in helping him get his message out.
The superintendent’s office has an uncertain future. In June, the Legislature signed off on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to reshape the position, transferring oversight of schools and management of the state Education Department to an appointee of the governor. By nearly all accounts, the state superintendent’s power has been dramatically reduced. Many of the new duties of the elected office have yet to be worked out.
Barrera said he hopes to move quickly as an education advocate, laying out specific budget proposals and policy priorities in setting an agenda for Governor-elect Xavier Becerra to respond to.
Shaw vied for connection with parents
A centerpiece of Shaw’s campaign was her opposition to allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports — a position that has strong support in recent polling.
Barrera supports California law on this matter, which allows transgender participation. He has noted that the number of transgender athletes is exceedingly small.
Shaw, 44, broadly characterized the public education system as failing because of liberal Democratic policies, although she praised the quality of the public schools where she lives, Chino, which is in San Bernardino County.
Overall, Barrera and Shaw fit squarely within their ideological camps.
On the November ballot, Barrera supported tax measures that benefit education. He also has consistently opposed Trump administration policies. He has sought to offer support for families affected by immigration enforcement as a senior official in the state’s second-largest school system.
Shaw’s views correspond closely with those of the Trump administration’s Education Department, although during the campaign, she repeatedly separated her policy positions from Trump himself, asserting, for example, in a campaign forum, that she “never even met with the dude.”
As a school board president, Shaw led efforts to ban non-sanctioned flags on campuses and in classrooms. Some conservative activists have promulgated such bans with the aim of targeting gay pride flags. Shaw also pushed for mandatory parent notification of their child’s gender-identity expression at school and approved a policy that allowed parents to challenge school library books with sexually explicit content.
CTA’s campaigning for Barrera was embedded in the union’s hard push for Proposition 3, an initiative that would establish as permanent the current higher tax rates on residents with the highest taxable income — about the top 2%.
Shaw opposed Proposition 3, which was well ahead in votes tabulated as of Wednesday afternoon.
Leading up to this race, CTA had backed the last eight winners for the office, going back 32 years.
With a crowded field of Democrats in the June primary, Shaw had an opening as a Republican and finished first in the primary with 22.6% of the vote, compared with Barrera’s 20.3%.
Analysts, however, expected Barrera to consolidate the votes of Democrats and predicted that the support of CTA, and other unions to a lesser extent, would make a difference for him.
Leaving the office is two-term incumbent Tony Thurmond, who was barred by term limits from serving again and ran unsuccessfully for governor.
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