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Supervisor Richard Elias + TUSD’s Augie Romero = BFF

by on Jun. 09, 2011, under Arizona, City Council, democracy, Democratic Party, education, Politics, Tucson, TUSD

As the result of the 2010 US Census, Arizona and other states are in the midst of redistricting.

On Monday, the Arizona Daily Star printed a relatively routine article about how little the Pima County supervisors’ districts will likely change in the future– Redistricting likely to shift supervisor areas slightly. If you didn’t read the jump text on this article, you would have missed some interesting facts about voter registration and the county redistricting committee.

The five-member panel tasked with the chore [county-level redistricting] – each member an appointee of one of the sitting supervisors – confronted a choice last week, when it gathered for its second meeting to begin redrawing lines.

The first option: Members could start with a blank slate, essentially using the county’s population center at Park Avenue and 18th Street as a starting point, and continue until the county was sliced into five shapes.

Or they could keep the lines essentially the way they are, with little modification.
On a 3-2 vote, with the Republican appointees on the losing end, they voted to keep the lines the way they are.

Much of the discussion boiled down to race, since, as a consequence of historical discrimination, the U.S. Justice Department has to OK all electoral changes that affect minority voting.

There are two districts currently that have a majority of minority residents. In District 2, represented by Ramón Valadez, minority voters make up 66 percent of its population. In District 5, represented by Richard Elías, minority voters make up 63 percent.

Elías appointee Augustine Romero, the former director of the Tucson Unified School District’s embattled Ethnic Studies program, said it made sense to stick more or less with the current configuration, since the Justice Department already signed off on it. Any redrawing of the lines based on some goal of statistical neutrality, he warned, could have the effect of disempowering minority voters.

But Supervisor Ray Carroll’s Republican appointee, Robert Fee, argued that putting race foremost may violate equal protection, urging his colleagues to instead let the district lines fall as they may. [Emphasis added.]

So, Pima County Supervisor and Mexican American Studies (MAS) Community Advisory Board Member Richard Elias appointed Director of Student Equity and Ethnic Studies Godfather and co-creator Augie Romero to the Pima County redistricting committee.

Elias has been an outspoken supporter of the No Compromise stance on the MAS reorganization plan– showing up at Tucson Unified School Board Meetings and giving fiery pro-MAS speeches like the one he delivered on May Day in Spanish. In turn, Augie Romero votes to protect Elias’ seat on the Pima County Board of Supervisors but he made the original motion to keep the boundaries basically the same as they are. I don’t know how this looks to you, but it sure looks like a classic case of “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine,” and I don’t like it.

The larger question is: Why have a sham Pima County redistricting committee made up of five friends of the five Pima County Supervisors? Obviously, as Mark Evans pointed out a few weeks ago, the committee’s structure has been rigged to secure the incumbents’ seats on the Board of Supervisors. Is democracy being served?

In the spirit of full disclosure, I usually agree with Elias’ politics– especially his pro-union stances– but I have been sorely disappointed with the lack of leadership from him and Tucson City Councilwoman Regina Romero (also an MAS Community Advisory Board member) on the MAS reorganization debate and the divisive nature of the rhetoric (1, 2) that has been tearing our community apart recently.

I don’t care if Richard Elias and Regina Romero personally support the No Compromise stance. As Latino leaders in this community they should rise above their personal opinions and show some leadership by working to bring all stakeholders to the table for civil discourse– rather than taking sides.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 9th, 2011 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Arizona, City Council, democracy, Democratic Party, education, Politics, Tucson, TUSD. Tags for this post: , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Fraser007

    Well thats what we get living in Tucson.

    • Pamela Powers

      Oh, Fraser, gerrymandering and cronyism are long-standing American traditions.

  • Proud to be a friend of Pam’s

    I know we’ve discussed the lack of political maturity before, but this graf just nails it:

    “I don’t care if Richard Elias and Regina Romero personally support the No Compromise stance. As Latino leaders in this community they should rise above their personal opinions and show some leadership by working to bring all stakeholders to the table for civil discourse– rather than taking sides.”

    Say what you will about Barack Obama, and, yes, quite a bit can be said, but at least he realized that he’d have to be President of all the United States. Not just of his ethic groups.

  • teacherx

    Since, in response to this post, 3Sons accused you of “Fuzzy Math”, I would like to point out that he posted a stat that the most common surname on the Vietnam Memorial wall was Johnson, and that the second most common was Rodriguez.  I refuted this by posting a webpage link of the 100 most common surnames on the wall (but anyone can do a simple search and fairly quickly ascertain that the most common surname on the wall is in fact “Smith”. Duh.) He responded to this comment that he got his stat from George Mariscal at UCSD.
    I then had the following two comments blocked from his column:
    (Comment #1)
    “The quote from that paper:
    “Two of the names that appear most often on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington are Johnson and Rodriguez. These two names tell us something about the composition of the U. S. military during the war, especially the combat units.” Aztlan and Vietnam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War, George Mariscal, ed.
    They are among the top 100 names that appear most often on the memorial (as are other Mexican-American surnames like Gonzales). They are not, however, ranked number 1 and 2 respectively in terms of most frequent, and that wasn’t actually what the author was saying.”
    (Comment #2, in response to another commentator who misunderstood the list I posted and didn’t believe I was blocked):
    “I’m not sure how to explain this in simpler terms, but I did not miss that heading.  That list of 100 names are the top 100 surnames that appear most often on the memorial by frequency (with the number of casualties by name).  All together, people with those 100 names (which would include people with the surnames Johnson, Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Garcia, Williams, Smith, etc.) comprise 20% of the total casualties, a large number.  The OTHER 80% of casualties had surnames not on that top 100 list.
    The other post I wrote had to do with the Mariscal quote in question, and I copied and pasted it.  It never made it up, possibly because he said that Johnson and Rodriguez were two of the most common names of the war dead, which would indeed be backed up by the stats on that list (and are still noteworthy statistics, as are all the other Mexican-American surnames in that top-100 list).  He did not say that they were actually number one and two, however.”
    Instead of just saying, “Whoops, my bad! Good catch,” or something of that ilk, which is generally what I’d say to a student, information that didn’t fit some sort of narrative was just censored. Time for the mathematician to check his own work, I’d say.
     
     

    • dead man

      I had posted something remarkable similar, including the original Mariscal quote. (It’s from page 3 of that book, and while Mariscal edited the compilation of essays it was from an introductory section that he himself wrote.) I also did a quick data sort, and found that the 82 instances of Rodriguez(s) made it tied at 48th place with Murphy and Gray. There are around 8000 soldiers on that list with more common names than Rodriguez.

      There is a tremendous amount of dishonesty at work here, and that’s just one example. Of course, now my postings are getting blocked as well, so I do hope you’ll keep posting, teacherx. It’s nice to hear the thoughts of an intelligent, critical educator.

      • dead man

        edit: I had “tried to post”, not “posted”. It was blocked. (And “remarkably”, of course, not “remarkable”.)

    • Pamela Powers

      Many people who are blocked from that other blog post their comments here. :)

      • teacherx

        That sort of childish response, upon being confronted with a simple error (and we all make them) from someone who purports to support critical thinking and turning students into scholars is most unfortunate. I had a professor like that once.  I pointed out an error she made in the translation of a poem (not unkindly, I swear) and she acted like I shot her dog. She held it against me for the rest of the semester and I lost all respect for her and her lack of professionalism.

      • dead man

        Since I can no longer post over on Three Sonorans, can someone else do so and point out the stupidity and hypocrisy of his continued “Huppenthal said he will stop La Raza” racism charge?

        He knows it’s childish, but he also knows it’s a juicy thing to say that will rile up less critical minds. He knows Huppenthal wasn’t referring to Latinos as a group, he was referring to a political movement. How hypocritical is it to act indignant about this when his fellow ethnic activists are advocating for “abolishing Whiteness”? People like him are making our society more stupid.
        He is proving that he really has no claim to the label “liberal”. To hear him continually attack Pamela is like hearing Fred Phelps attack Jimmy Carter for not being “Christian”.

        • Pamela Powers

          To hear him continually attack Pamela is like hearing Fred Phelps attack Jimmy Carter for not being “Christian”.

          Hahahaha…What a great analogy! I only skimmed his latest attack post about me. Someone said he called me a right-winger. That’s so far off the mark that it is absurd.

          I think it’s comical that all of the people the 3Sons has banned from commenting on his blog are coming here to comment. No censorship here– except posts that are limited to name-calling or physical threats. Those are deleted.

      • Fraser007

        See comment below! Very true.

  • cruz

    David doesn’t like people who confront him with the truth,  he has all those degrees so he sees himself as an intelligent intellectual and his columns are the product of all this education. Pamela pointed out that his column was full grammatical errors and he removed it.  If I were him I’d ask for my money back.

    • Fraser007

      Add  one more comment on that. I was barred from his blogsite. Never used a foul word once. Just challanged him on his views. He doesnt seem to like that. I wonder what he does with his students when they ask questions. Kick them out of the room?
      I may not agree with Pamela but I still am able to comment on her blogsite.

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The Tucson Progressive

Pamela Powers Hannley writes the Tucson Progressive blog on the TucsonCitizen.com and contributes articles to the Huffington Post and Salon.com. She has had more than 30 years of experience in written, visual, and electronic communication—including freelance writing, photography, graphic design, and consulting. In addition to blogging for the Citizen, she is the Managing Editor of an international medical research journal.

Hannley has authored medical research articles, print magazine and newspaper stories, and numerous cancer prevention and self-help publications.

She has been a blogger since 2006, joined the ranks of Tucson Citizen bloggers in October 2010, and started contributing to the Huffington Post in 2011 and to Salon.com in 2012.

Hannley holds a masters’ degree in public health from The University of Arizona and a bachelors’ degree in journalism from The Ohio State University. She is a native of Amherst, Ohio but has lived in Tucson since 1981.