Who are these people?

The following post was entered on a blog called Masooma (http://masooma.blogspot.com). The author is the secretary to the Colorado Springs Education Association, the union that represents D11 teachers:

Thursday, August 11, 2005
AR Training, School meeting AND NTO (just added)
Tuesday we had Association Representative (AR) training at Sky Sox Stadium. It was a room with a nice view. Marti Hauser explained some legal benefits and rights of CEA members, Ron Brady and David Duvall explained some of the financial problems for public education and what is being done about it. We talked a lot about the upcoming school board race and met "our" candidates: (hint, hint - tell everyone who lives in D-11 to vote for these people) Sandra Mann, John Gudvangen and Tami Hasling.

Who are Gudvangen, Hasling, and Mann? What was their message when they ran for the D11 Board, and from whom did they receive their support?

As is apparent in the Masooma blog, these three did not want the public to know that they were chosen by the union. At the meeting mentioned above, Ron Brady, head of the CEA, educated the 3 candidates on how the election would work. He pointed out that the union and its liberal allies would use 527's to provide a message that the public would like. This message included such popular ideas as reducing wasteful administrative spending, adopting a site based management approach for the district, demanding strong accountability, and bringing "civility" to the Board. The instruction to the candidates was that although the union would never support any of those ideas, nor would it allow the candidates to support any of them, the 527's provided deniability. The candidates could always say that they had no control over the 527's, and therefore, they really did not support any of the ideas espoused by the 527's. After spending over $1 million to fool the public, the trio of stealth union puppets won in a squeaker against a campaign that spent only 1/5 of that $1 million. The sad reality is that the losing candidates DID actually support all of the ideas that were falsely attributed to the union puppets.

By law, candidates can have no coordination with 527's during campaigns. Although the 3 union candidates claimed no coordination with their 527's, the following mailer from RISE, the most vicious of the 527's, tells a different story. The images are grainy, but it is clear that these pictures include the candidates and their families. While one can assume that each of the candidates might have had an individual photo online somewhere for the 527 to use for its mailers, there were no photos of the candidates' families online. The candidates clearly violated campaign law by providing family photos for the 527 mail pieces.

The 3 union candidates clearly were not sincere in their pledge to bring "civility" to D11 as the 527's with whom they coordinated directed the most vicious campaign ever seen in D11 against 3 truly respectable (and accomplished) candidates.

Interestingly, John Gudvangen did not run on his past experience as a school board member from Harrison District #2. This is not surprising since residents of D2 will report that Gudvangen never brought a single idea to D2 in his 8 years on that Board. While D2 struggled with the honor of being the lowest performing school district in Colorado Springs, Gudvangen could not bring himself to find one policy or practice that needed to change in D2. Unfortunately, Gudvangen has Lyman Kaiser as one of his handlers, and he also subscribes to the theory that minority students are not as able as white students to learn to read or perform math tasks. D2, in his view, was doing the best it could considering its student population. Gudvangen's only other claim to fame is that he sat on the board of the Colorado Association of School Boards. In other words, John likes to sit on boards. Actually doing anything is a bridge too far.

Hasling was a registered Democrat who changed to "unaffiliated" to try to attract Republican voters. She was a body builder and one of the lead plaintiffs who sued the state legislator for daring to create a law that would give parents control over their children's education. Hasling, like her mentor and personal handler Karen Teja, is vehemently anti-parent. Hasling filed a false statement for the official file that was used to reprimand Eric Christen. She falsely claimed that Christen hit her in the hallway during a past board meeting. Hasling had to admit to the Gazette that it was actually she who struck Christen during that meeting. Hasling also told a local business owner that Christen had kidnapped his nephew from his sister because he did not want his nephew to be near a black man with whom Christen's sister had a relationship. In reality, when Christen's sister died suddenly and unexpectedly, Christen and his wife had been trying to adopt his nephew to provide him a home. These types of lies come from the current D11 Board Vice President.

Much has been made of the criminal history of Eric Christen, but not much has been found or is true. Sandra Mann almost did not run for the D11 Board due to her history in Colorado Springs and Pueblo, yet the press has shown no interest in her past (most likely because Mann was and is a fellow member of the press - free pass for one of their own). Mann readily admits that she only won due to her name recognition. She admits that she has almost no knowledge of the issues in D11 and has never followed the happenings in the District very closely.

All 3 of the winning candidates were selected for their ability to follow instructions. All 3 have been assigned handlers and have their every comment scripted prior to Board meetings. Mann has recently been scolded for voting with the reform board members, and Mary Ellen McNally used the recent recall petitions to warn Mann that she (McNally) had the power to remove Mann if Mann did not stay in line.

The candidacies of Gudvangen, Hasling, and Mann were financed by liberal groups from across the country. The Progressive Majority from Washington D.C. takes credit for their victory on its website. The Gay & Lesbian fund, as well as Planned Parenthood, also spent thousands of dollars to elect the trio. Although the 3 unionites called themselves "constructive conservatives" on their mail pieces, they were supported by some of the most hard core leftist groups in the country. The following is from the Progressive Majority website at www.progressivemajority.org:

It's a great time to be a progressive - Americans are demanding new leadership, and we've got the winning agenda.In Colorado Springs, Tami Hasling and John Gudvangen's wins on November 1st cemented a progressive majority on the District 11 School Board. This region is home to James Dobson's Focus on the Family and conservatives have tried to use the District 11 School Board to move public money to fund private schools.In this race, Progressive Majority was part of a large coalition to elect these progressive candidates and confront the well-funded right wing. Tami and John's victories not only block the conservatives' strategy, it gives progressives a foothold in a seemingly conservative region where we can now move forward on strengthening our public schools and communities.

Notice that the site admits that this campaign was funded by a large coalition of left wing groups intent on thwarting the will of an unsuspecting conservative city. This information has never made its way into your local papers.

So who are the 3 Board members who were elected in 2005? They are left wing ideologues who are intent on keeping the public schools out of the hands of the parents who fund them. They are liberals who are directed and funded by left wing groups from across the country, and their focus is clearly on Colorado Springs.