While I dislike the "Popcorn!" meme so prevalent at DKos, it's hard to come up with a more apt descriptor for what's happening in Arizona between newly-elected Governor Douglas Ducey and newly-elected Superintendent of Public Schools Diane Douglas.
Many of you may remember that in the last election, Diane Douglas was elected on a platform of dismantling Common Core testing standards, despite many in the GOP endorsing her Democratic opponent, and a campaign site that listed "Check back later" under "My Record". As Mother Mags noted in a diary last year, Douglas's disdain towards education in general could be summed up with this quote from her web site:
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.
On the surface, you'd think that Douglas would fit right in with the Arizona Republican Party that produced Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaio, J.D. Hayworth and Russell Pearce.
Linda Valdez described Douglas as "Ev Mecham on steroids". Surely there is no greater compliment for an Arizona Republican? And by all accounts, Douglas and Ducey had a good relationship during the campaign; Douglas was endorsed by Ducey and the pair appeared in campaign events together.
Well, that all began to break down on Wednesday when Douglas decided to fire two members of the state Board of Education, a board on which Douglas herself is only one member. Douglas explained her rationale for the firing as justified because the Board members were "two liberal staff who have publicly stated they will block all efforts to repeal or change Common Core". Former Board Member Jamie Molera said this about the firing:
It’s very Nixonian... She’s trying to exact her authority over a constitutional body that she believes is wrong in her opinion, so she’s going to try to take it over.
It wasn't just board members reacting to the firings, however. They drew an immediate response from Governor Ducey, who described the firings as "
illegal", and insisted that "no one" has been fired. The problem stems from the fact that while Douglas is an elected member of the board, the other 10 members of the board are appointed by the Governor.
That, in turn, led to a further response from Douglas who complained that Ducey had "refused to take her calls since his swearing in", that he has "established a shadow faction of charter school operators", that he serves only his "corporate cronies", and accuses him of removing staff members for "purely political reasons" himself.
So here we are, fewer than 2 months after swearing in, with the Governor and Superintendent of Public Schools berating each other in public. Even better, while neither is a friend of public education, we have the spectacle of one Republican accusing the other of supporting "liberals" and being in the pocket of corporate charter school interests. I would say that next few months will be a lot of fun, but it's hard to be happy about what any of this will mean for Arizona schoolchildren. Still, it's going to be interesting.