As a former Columbus School Board candidate, I'm watching this year's race with both humor and envy. Hell, only three people screened for the Democratic Party nomination for three open spots: Loretta Heard, Board President Mark Hatch, and newcomer Reggie Anglen. There's a special election for the late Sharlene Morgan's unexpired term. Two Democrats are squaring off: Bill Moss and Brian McCann.
Let's see, Hatch is that new breed of Democrat. You know, a New Democrat. Not much leadership. Doesn't really offend anyone. And an obvious shoe-in for re-election. I'm sure he's biding his time -- he's confirmed he'd like to run for Mayor someday - hoping that he hasn't pissed off the Columbus Dispatch too much by defying their orders or editorials to close down some schools to save money.
Heard, you've probably heard, spent the last year fighting to be designated mentally disabled so that she could keep receiving a disability check that dates back to a 1958 sprained shoulder. The injury so affected her self-confidence that she had to take disability money for nearly forty years. Strangely, the injury which caused her so much mental distress and the inability to act normally in public has not deterred her from being a public figure. Of course, anyone who's ever heard Heard talk at School Board meetings may agree with the candid assessment of Bill Moss. He once said that if he was put under oath, and asked for his opinion, he's not sure he could say that Ms. Heard was mentally stable. He thought that a "check-up from the neck up" for Ms. Heard would be the best arbiter.
Reggie! Reggie! He made some news because he's sight impaired and only writes in Braille and our local Franklin County Election Board tried to throw him off the ballot. I served on the Friends of the Homeless Board with Reggie and he's a frequent caller to the Fight Back! radio show I co-host. It would be nice to have him on the Board. He's a wild card, nobody owns him and he speaks his mind.
Reggie's major obstacle will be Republican incumbent Dave Dobos. In a just society he would have quietly disappeared after his business went bankrupt as he chaired the School Board finance committee. Actually, the fact that he went bankrupt while he was on the School Board may qualify Dobos as an honest politician. In most cases, when you're elected to an office in Franklin County you get rich through your contacts and connections. So, perhaps I'm being overly harsh with Dobos. Although I know that if the Republicans were faced with such an opponent, as they have been in the past, bankruptcy papers would be plastered all over their TV ads.
Now, for the real point of this editorial. The key election this fall for progressives in Central Ohio is the election of Bill Moss to the School Board. Democrat Party Chair Denny White has found some hack to move in from the suburbs at the last second to oppose Moss. Brian McCann's his name. I lunched with him and he seems like an OK guy. It's just that he doesn't belong on the School Board, or perhaps any other elected public office. He was barred from a German Village drinking establishment for bad behavior. Those that drank there regularly said they had to watch their money when Mr. McCann was around.
Anyway, Moss remains the only person in recent memory on the Columbus School Board with enough guts to directly challenge the Daily Monopoly's version of reality. Mary Jo Kilroy, once the great hope of the progressive community, is a shadow of her former feisty self. Occasionally, she'll rise up in indignation, like when they pushed her too far on the arena issue, claiming that despite the abatements, it was all about helping school kids. But, for the most part, she's hunkered down, hoping to run for state representative next year against E.J. Thomas. She knows she'll probably lose, but it should make her the clear front-runner when Thomas gets bumped by term limits in the year 2000. But don't tell Clintonville-Beechwold Democratic Club President Tom Erney who's eyeing the same seat.
But back to why I like Bill. On September 8, Richard Carson the Dispatch editorial page editor invited Moss to screen before the Dispatch Editorial Board. Moss replied on Sept. 15: "Thanks very much for your invitation to me to screen at the Dispatch. However, because I entertain no delusions that I might be endorsed by your paper, I respectfully decline the invitation."
You gotta like that: brief and to the point. When I ran for Congress and the School Board, if I would have raised enough money, I would have loved to have placed an ad in the Dispatch that they would have been Constitutionally-required to run, laid out like a formal announcement. Something like this: