School board elections do not typically inspire the dirty play that’s become standard in politics. So shenanigans in the campaign to represent Seattle Public Schools are, perhaps, a barometer of this year’s high stakes.
That’s the most charitable interpretation for a period in which the new School Board will have to tackle major money problems and hire a new superintendent undaunted by the district’s considerable challenges.
But Laura Marie Rivera’s campaign is pushing the limits enough that it raises questions about her honesty, especially since one of the new board’s most important jobs will be repairing broken trust with Seattle families.
Against that backdrop, The Seattle Times endorsed incumbent Joe Mizrahi for the District 4 position, representing South Lake Union, Queen Anne and Fremont. He’d been appointed to a shortened term last year, and this newspaper’s editorial board recommended voters return him to his seat.
In endorsing Mizrahi before the primary, we noted: “He has four opponents. Among them, Laura Marie Rivera is the strongest, and she clearly has a heart for kids. But her views on fiscal stewardship are not grounded in reality.”
Rivera’s campaign extracted the middle sentence, slapped it onto a campaign flyer and printed the newspaper’s name underneath. It conveniently elided the remark about her lack of practicality on money matters and implied, inaccurately, that The Times has endorsed her candidacy.
Is this wordsmithing illegal? No.
Is it disingenuous? Less-than-forthright? Absolutely.
That’s a shame because previously, Rivera did look like a legitimate contender. In her earlier race for a School Board seat in 2021, she won The Times’ endorsement.
Her political consultant apologized and complained, somewhat absurdly, that since Rivera did so poorly in the primary, netting only 17% of the vote, making an issue of her campaign’s dishonesty “feels disproportionate.”
Well, no. This is about integrity and whom voters can trust. Rivera is hardly the only politician guilty of such chicanery. Voters should be wary and check The Times endorsements, rather than relying on campaign literature claims.
Modeling the values and behavior we’d like to encourage in students is particularly important in the context of a school board race. Through that lens, Rivera now looks even less like the kind of candidate we’d like to see.
