Sharon El-Amin campaigned hardest of any of
the four candidates in Tuesday’s (6 November 2018) election for two At-Large
seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. She and her family, along with able campaign
director Undrea Patterson, the Isaiah group, other volunteers and myself,
campaigned all over the city and generated great enthusiasm for an independent candidacy
that had multiple endorsements of like-view agents of change.
The results of the election were as
follows:
Candidate Name Number of Votes Percentage
Kim Caprini 86,739 33.84%
Josh Pauly
73,994 28.87%
Rebecca Gagnon 48,567 18.95%
Sharon El-Amin 47,000 18.34%
To have garnered 47,000 votes and the
support of nearly one-fifth of the electorate was an enormous accomplishment for
Sharon El-Amin and her hardworking group of ardent supporters.
To understand the power of El-Amin’s campaign,
one must understand the political dynamics at work in this election for the two
At-Large MPS Board of Education seats:
Caprini and Pauly were endorsed by the
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), which in turn is allied with
Education Minnesota, the second most powerful political lobby in Minnesota, capable
of spending levels only topped by the National Rifle Association (NRA). Caprini is a well-known parent and community activist
in North Minneapolis, but Pauly is a largely unknown presence, a teacher of
short tenure at Sanford Middle School who is now a professional in a South
Minneapolis-based non-profit. Pauly
gives indication of caring about issues pertinent to the homeless and the dispossessed,
but he has none of the community involvements of Caprini and El-Amin, none of
the heart and soul understanding of key community issues in the manner of El-Amin,
and none of the political savvy of Gagnon.
Pauly had a slim campaign of his own initiative: His victory was entirely the result of MFT
support, with its member network, phone banks, and enormous publicity-generating
capacity.
The matter of Gagnon’s political savvy is
ironic, given that she committed a number of fatal political errors in the last
few months. In the wake of the 2016
elections, Gagnon’s star was on the rise.
She had gained a good deal of cache for her long chairing of the MPS
Board of Education Finance Committee. She
was well-connected to many school board groups across the state and nation and formally
served as member in many of these. She
was conniving but diligent, undergirding her political maneuvers with a thorough
knowledge of the public school establishment and the issues considered important
by that establishment. She was elected
chair of the board, albeit soon offending enough fellow members to lose a
subsequent election to current chair Nelson Inz.
Then when MPS financial woes became fully apparent,
she was implicated in those miseries via the financial tanking of the district
on her watch as finance committee chair. Next she showed
her disrespect for current MPS Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop by taking the lead
in restoring $6.4 million dollars to funding for high schools with the most
affluent populations, after Diop--- one
of the very best-trained, consummately well-educated school district finance
chiefs in the nation--- had worked with Superintendent
Ed Graff and the other chiefs over many months to craft a budget that put the
district on a course toward structural balance.
Gagnon sought Democratic -Farmer-Labor Party
endorsement for a legislative seat and was set to exit the board; but when she did not secure the endorsement, she
retreated to another run for an At-Large seat.
But by this time, Caprini and Pauly had secured the endorsement of the MFT/DFL
cohort for which Gagnon had long served as sycophantic go-fer.
The MFT/DFL political machine went into its
powerful motion once perennial candidate Doug Mann was eliminated in the August
2018 primary and the above four candidates had progressed to the general
election.
Thus, we have the context for Sharon El-Amin’s
strong performance. Those of us who
campaigned for her did so to win. Ms.
El-Amin is current head of the North Polar (North High School) parent group, is a community activist who twice a month
prepares 100 meals for those in need, for many years ran the successful El-Amin
Fish Shop on West Broadway Avenue, and has been involved in multiple community
organizations and issues. Husband Makram
El-Amin is the imam of Masjid An’nur mosque on Lyndale Avenue North; wife and husband have deep connections to the
Muslim community in general and the Somali contingent specifically. El-Amin’s natural base of support is
expansive and deep; the last of four school
board candidate forums in this 2018 election season brought forward a crowd at
the University of Minnesota community engagement center at 2100 Plymouth Avenue
North (across from the Minneapolis Urban League) that was overwhelmingly and
vocally expressive in support of her candidacy.
Sharon El-Amin went up against a canny and
seasoned political rival in Rebecca Gagnon and two endorsees of the powerful
MFT/DFL machine. She and Gagnon together
received 21,573 more votes than did Josh Pauly. El-Amin ran just a fraction behind
Gagnon; the two ran essentially even, garnering
18.34% and 18.95% of the vote respectively.
That Sharon El-Amin ran such a strong
campaign is testimony to a level of genuine public backing unmatched by Pauly, certainly,
but also unrivaled by Caprini and Gagnon.
For reasons that I will explore in
subsequent articles, Sharon El-Amin emerges from the MPS Board of Education
electoral campaign of 2018 as a major force for education change, a likely
victor over KerryJo Felder in the 2020 campaign for the MPS Board of Education District
2 (North Minneapolis) seat should she decide to run, and a key figure who will be
among those ringing the political death-knell for the Minneapolis Federation of
Teachers as I and others draw upon the kind of energy expended in that 2100
Plymouth Avenue Forum to build a powerful counter-force to the MFT/ DFL machine.
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