In the race for the next state superintendent of public instruction, the voice of labor is split.
Richard Barrera grabbed the big enchilada of endorsements Sunday when the California Teachers Association announced it is backing him. With 310,000 members, CTA is the state’s largest teachers union. Its organizational strength and campaign coffers have underwritten the winning state superintendent candidates, all Democrats, for four decades, thereby providing unmatched influence over the office.
But in a rare lack of labor unanimity, three other candidates — all former or current legislators — have also received endorsements from labor unions ahead of the June 2 primary.
It’s “incredibly unusual” for labor to be so divided in its selection, said Kevin Gordon, president and CEO of the Capitol Advisors Group, which consults for California school districts.
Dan Schnur, press secretary for former Gov. Pete Wilson, who teaches political communications at USC and UC Berkeley, agreed.
“There’s no precedent for this,” he said. “In the past, a strong pro-labor candidate has emerged. Other candidates have backed off in deference. This is unique in that there are several candidates with strong pro-labor bona fides.”
The CTA endorsement will give Barrera, board president of San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest district, an edge in the seven-candidate campaign, Gordon said.
But state superintendent candidate, Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, also scored big.
The California Federation of Teachers, whose 120,000 members are allied with the powerful American Federation of Teachers, announced Monday it is behind him, and Muratsuchi can also count on the backing of the California School Employees Association, which represents non-teacher school employees, including bus drivers, teacher aides, and food service workers.
Muratsuchi has made raising teachers’ and other school employees’ pay statewide by increasing funding for the Local Control Funding Formula, which allocates about 80% of districts’ operating money through legislation, his top priority for several years.
Barrera also serves as a senior policy adviser to State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond’s Initiatives Office. It oversees the Whole Child Division, which includes school-based health programs and separate advisory councils for parents and students.
Barrera secured CTA’s endorsement of 650 delegates from its State Council of Education after a favorable interview with CTA’s leadership.
The splintering of support from other unions could temper CTA’s advantage. Muratsuchi can now claim he, too, has the support from teachers and other school employees, he said.
How much the unions will factor into the election will depend on how much money they decide to contribute to the campaigns, Schnur said.
“CTA is still the 900-pound gorilla in this conversation,” he said. “It can afford to make a much greater impact than maybe the others.”
But CTA will be preoccupied with other campaigns and issues, including its initiative to make permanent a temporary income tax on the state’s wealthiest income earners. At the same time, other unions must decide how much capital they will put behind the endorsements. “Even if they have a preference in this race, most are not going (to) be too upset if their second or third choice (of pro-labor candidates) wins,” Schnur said.
Able and willing to spend
CTA’s political campaign fund, collected from its members’ voluntary dues, is formidable. It’s premature to estimate how much it will invest in this race; in 2018, it gave Thurmond $8 million in his narrow victory for a second term against Marshall Tuck, a former charter school executive and administrator of two dozen independently run district schools in Los Angeles Unified, who is now CEO of the advocacy nonprofit EdVoice.
Meanwhile, Teamsters California and SEIU California, which says it represents 750,000 nurses, health care workers, janitors, social workers, in-home caretakers, and some school and university employees, are throwing their weight behind former Assemblymember Anthony Rendon. Rendon held the second-longest tenure as Assembly speaker, 2016-2023.
“Anthony Rendon knows that you cannot have a strong economy without a strong workforce, and you cannot have a strong democracy without strong public education. While others hesitated, he helped solidify a legislative supermajority dedicated to progress,” SEIU California President David Huerta said in an endorsement statement.
Former state Sen. Josh Newman received the endorsement of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California — a recognition, he said, of his work promoting workforce preparation as chair of the Senate Education Committee.
“Josh shares our belief that students should be informed about the full range of opportunities available to them after graduation — from traditional college pathways to state-approved apprenticeship programs that lead to high-quality union construction careers,” said Chris Hannan, president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California.
In its press release endorsing Barrera, CTA said his support “was instrumental in the San Diego Education Association achieving lower class sizes, more opportunities for bilingual instruction, and expanded science and career pathways in San Diego and beyond.”
CTA President David Goldberg added, “Barrera’s commitment to working families and public education is clear in his decades of experience.”
Barrera was elected to the San Diego Unified board in 2008.
In announcing its backing of Muratsuchi on Monday, the California Federation of Teachers said, “This endorsement reflects the importance of having a strong leader who brings the expertise and authority to increase investments in our schools and students.”
CFT President Jeff Freitas added, “As the Trump administration attempts to defund public schools, rip immigrant families apart, and roll back hard-won civil rights, California needs a superintendent of public instruction who won’t back down from a fight. Al Muratsuchi has been a relentless champion for public schools, standing up to extremists and fighting for the teachers and classified employees who make our classrooms work every day.”
Two of the remaining candidates are trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District — Nichelle Henderson and Andra Hoffman. The other candidate, Sonja Shaw, the Chino Valley Unified School District board president, is running as an insurgent conservative candidate, campaigning for school choice, including vouchers for religious schools, and parents’ rights, while challenging the state’s support for transgender students.
As a constitutional office, the election is nonpartisan; candidates cannot list their party affiliation. However, one distinct scenario is for Shaw to capture enough Republican and conservative voters to become a candidate for the November election, where she will face one of the union-backed Democrats.
Schnur said that a candidate who receives more than 25% of the vote in a seven-person race would likely make the cutoff.
The deadline for candidates to file for the primary is March 11.