Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor, said he hadn't seen it but he said if voters think city schools are better today than they were under Thompson's leadership at the Board of Education, they should vote for Bloomberg.
The record will show that the control of New York City Public Schools was firmly gripped by the New York City's Mayor's office.
Rudolph W. Giuliani made New Yorkers three promises when he campaigned for mayor in the early 1990s: He would fix troubled schools, cut crime and boost the economy.
New York City schools went through eight years of political chaos during Giuliani's terms, which ended in 2002. His bare-knuckle tactics contributed to the departure of three chancellors, according to interviews with former school administrators, Board of Education members, teachers, parents, union officials and outside experts.
This was the Rudy Giuliani Show. Chancellors made guest appearances and the Board of Education, students and parents were a captive audience.
(The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center is a progressive coalition working on ballot initiative stategies for progressives around the country. I helped co-found it 10 years ago and am still on their board. Their exec director, Kristina Wilfore, sent this important guest post in today. - promoted by Mike Lux)
Electoral gimmick deployed for the second time in California. Giuliani-linked campaign hires signature firm with a history of fraud allegations. Ballot Initiative Strategy Center releases new report on possible signature fraud.
You may remember that last month the original authors of the effort to reassign California's presidential electoral votes by Congressional district backed out of the campaign. Their reason? The initiative's main funders - a shadowy group from Missouri - refused to disclose their main backer.
Alas, sometimes you can't keep a bad idea down. The monster has been re-animated by yet another group of national right-wing strategists - many of whom also have close ties to the Giuliani campaign. They claim to have the funds (nearly $2 million) to collect at least 650,000 signatures by the end of November. Republican consultant David Gilliard told the LA Times, "Our budget is going to be whatever it takes to make the June ballot."
The short timeline for petitioning in California makes this effort to steal the Presidential election particularly open to signature fraud on a massive scale. One key member of this "Team Frankenstein" is Mike Arno, whose signature-gathering firm over the years has racked up fraud allegations from attorneys general and boards of elections in five states since Ballot Initiative Strategy Center began tracking signature fraud.
STATE BLOGS
