Richard Barrera was leading Sonja Shaw in early returns Tuesday night in the race for state superintendent of public instruction.
Barrera, the school board president of San Diego Unified, was the heavy favorite as the Democrat in the race, even though the office is listed as nonpartisan.
The education office they vied for has an uncertain future. In June, the Legislature signed off on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to reshape the position, transferring oversight of schools and management of the state education department to an appointee of the governor. By nearly all accounts, the state superintendent’s power has been dramatically reduced. Many of the new duties of the elected office have yet to be worked out.
A centerpiece of Shaw’s campaign was her opposition to allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports — a position that has strong support in recent polling.
Barrera supports California law on this matter, which allows transgender participation. Barrera has noted that the number of transgender athletes is exceedingly small.
Shaw broadly characterized the public education system as failing because of liberal Democratic policies, although she praised the quality of the public schools where she lives. Chino is in San Bernardino County.
Barrera defended the overall quality of public schools and advocated for expanding what works from successful campuses to those with poorer academic results.
Overall, both Barrera and Shaw fit squarely within their ideological camps.
In Barrera’s case, that means he is a mainstream liberal Democrat whose positions align closely with education-related unions, especially teacher unions, which endorsed him.
On the current ballot, Barrera, 59, supported tax measures that benefit education. He consistently has opposed Trump administration policies. He has sought to offer support for families affected by immigration enforcement as a senior official in the state’s second-largest school system.
Shaw’s views correspond closely with those of the Trump administration’s Education Department, although during the campaign, she repeatedly separated her policy positions from Trump himself, asserting, for example, in a campaign forum that she “never even met with the dude.”
On immigration enforcement, Shaw said government agencies should follow the law.
As a school board president, Shaw, 44, led efforts on campus and classroom flag bans — which were developed to target gay pride flags — pushed for mandatory parent notification of their child’s gender-identity expression at school, and approved a policy that allowed parents to challenge school library books with sexually explicit content.
Barrera embraced the support of the California Teachers Assn. and other unions backing him. CTA, as of late October, had spent about $7.8 million for an independent campaign in support of Barrera and close to $1.4 million in ads against Shaw.
CTA’s campaigning for Barrera was embedded in the union’s hard push for Proposition 3, an initiative that would establish as permanent the current higher tax rates on those with the highest taxable income — about the top 2% of state taxpayers. Under existing law, those higher rates would expire in 2031.
The union called its Proposition 3 campaign the “biggest canvassing effort in CTA history.”
Shaw opposed Proposition 3.
Higher-profile races on the ballot overshadowed the contest for the state superintendent’s office, but CTA funding and the association of teachers with a particular candidate have helped in the past.
Leading up to this race, CTA had backed the last eight winners for the office, going back 32 years. And Barrera acknowledged that CTA independent spending in the primary had pushed him to the front of a crowded field of competitive Democratic contenders.
With so many Democrats in the race, Shaw had an opening as a Republican and finished first in the primary with 22.6% of the vote, compared to Barrera’s 20.3%.
Analysts, however, expected Barrera to consolidate the votes of Democrats and predicted the support of CTA, and other unions to a lesser extent, would make a difference for Barrera.
Leaving the office is two-term incumbent Tony Thurmond, who was barred by term limits from serving again and ran unsuccessfully for governor.
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