I’m sure most of you who read this blog are familiar with Lamont’s basic pitch: how he got into this race because he cares about education, how he got tired of Lieberman’s support for Bush, Lieberman’s support for Alito, the failure of Democrats generally to stand up to the forces of evil, and so on. He mentioned all that. And clearly, if all he cared about was building a career in politics, he could have gone in a lot easier of a direction than running for U.S. Senate. He could have run for state rep., worked his way up the electoral ladder, and so on. But instead, he saw that no-one was standing up to take on the Joementum, and decided that someone had to do it, so he just did. Sort of a modern day Cincinattus (you know, the Roman citizen soldier who reluctantly takes up the sword in defense of empire, kicks butt, and then retires to his farm and vineyards). O.K., maybe that’s a little grandiose, but you get the idea. I just didn’t get the impression that he was in this for the ego. So anyway, one of the things that stood out for me was that someone asked about his position on charter schools, and one of the first things he said was “I guess they’re o.k., as long as they’re not taking money away from other schools, and the unions are still involved.” That’s it. A little thing, but the fact that he took a moment, unsolicited, to voice support for teachers unions as if it were a given that they should be supported and have a role in education, impressed me. Now this, I thought to myself, is a real Democrat.
So that’s my report. I can’t vote for the guy, but I can contribute, which I did. You can too. Just go to nedlamont.com and sign up.
(I don’t know how to do that cool little volunteer/contribute thingy Done! –David).
but I found some anyhow:
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“I guess they’re o.k., as long as . . . the unions are still involved.”
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Translated into English, this means “over my dead body.”
Not necessarily b.s. There is the Pilot School model used in the Boston Public School system (elsewhere), where unions are involved, but the schools have autonomy and some relaxation of work rules, but remain part of the district. We were discussing this model in contrast to the charter school model when he made this comment. You also should have heard his diatribe about private school vouchers. Good stuff.