A Vote For The Incumbent

Preparing to spend the day painting my porch, I heard a knocking at the door. It was a canvasser for Sacramento School Board challenger candidate, Paige Powell. I asked the canvasser what did he see as the problem with incumbent Sacramento School Board candidate, Ellyne Bell.

"She's trying to close down Sacramento High School, and its college prep program," the canvasser said. "Ellyne Bell spends her time caving in to the unions' demands. She doesn't care for the students. Paige Powell is the only one of the candidates who has been a teacher, and who understands the students' needs."

I didn't tell the canvasser that I actually know Ellyne Bell, but not in her role as school board member. I used to take Sunday morning ballet with Ellyne, in Pam Kay Lourentzos' class (I've had to take a sabbatical this year). I never discussed school board matters with Ellyne. Instead, I knew Ellyne as a fellow dancer.

I asked the canvasser for a Paige Powell campaign flyer. He produced a flyer with a picture of the candidate that I took a dislike too. In the photo, Paige Powell seemed to be dressed like a teacher. Powell didn't seem to have Ellyne's whimsical and fun-loving sense of fashion.

It's my experience that politicians have a terrible - utterly dreadful! - sense of what performing artists, and artists of any and all sorts, really need to do their art. Politicians instinctively try to rope artists into political campaigns that have nothing to do with art. The modern American fetish over test scores has nothing to do with learning and everything to do with setting up educational fiefdoms and carving out budget turf. I see politicians - all politicians! - as guilty in this regard, until proven innocent.

The only saving grace is if the politicians are actually engaged in art forms of their own. Then they learn, on their own, what artists really need.

Ellyne Bell is a dancer. She's paid her dues. She "gets it."

And as far as unions are concerned, I've always considered it a plus to be able to work with unions.

If Ellyne Bell is considered to be anti-Kevin-Johnson in some way, so much the better. The "strong mayor's" instinct is to make people buckle to his will. What is the role of art in that? Art suffers in that kind of environment. Learning too.

I thanked the canvasser, saw him off, and somehow managed to lose the flyer.