funny query re: post-election analysis

Hi Jonathan,
I was wondering: to what do you attribute the 2,000 vote increase New Action received this year?

I don’t get much mail from Gotham School reporters, so I noticed this.

After all the coverage they gave ICE through the elections, I’m surprised not to see anything from GS on the collapse of the ICE vote. This isn’t the first time that GS seems to go quiet on an issue when Norm Scott get’s tongue-tied!

And so much free coverage and space! Regular links to Scott and NYC Educator.  Quite a few more to others supporting Eterno.  Arthur Goldstein, an ICE Exec Board candidate, wrote no fewer than five feature columns on GS during the elections. True enough, the columns were not about the elections (and some of them were quite good), but Gotham Schools featured no candidates from other caucuses.

When I search for “UFT Election” on their website I find (just using  articles from this year):

March 11 Remainders (The UFT election is coming up and Norm says district reps are intimidating the…)

March 18 Remainders (Inside the UFT election: Chaz explains why he’s voting down the ICE ticket with one …)

March 19 Remainders (…  who is also a candidate on the ICE ticket for UFT elections, reminds teachers to vote.)

March 24 Remainders (UFT elections are coming soon and in the last few days before break, the …)  (this is a link to their own coverage)

March 25 article:  As ballots come in, a look at the teachers union elections This is a background piece, saying among other things, that Unity always wins

March 25 article: Teachers union elections: who votes and who cares This is an attempt at an article on turnout. The beginning describes the voting process. The end talks about retiree vote, and active member participation rates, and reads like an attempt to paraphrase Norm Scott explaining the same. The reporter apparently flubbed one word in the last sentence (she wrote “union” when Norm clearly said “leadership”), generating, ironically, condemnation among the ICE crowd including an angry NYC Educator column.

March 26 Remainder (A New Action candidate for a seat on the UFT’s exec board writes about the upcoming election.)  (that’s me!)

April 5 article: Teachers union election: a look at caucuses and candidates Another article that looks largely written by Scott. At least New Action gets covered. But GS takes ICE’s pov of New Action as spoiler. At least they didn’t respond to Scott’s request not to call us an opposition – he made a similar request last fall, and that time they complied.

April 6 article: Teachers union election: results in tomorrow Just a neutral update

April 7 article: Teachers union election: the ballot counting begins Ditto

April 7 article:  Returns begin to arrive in teachers union election

April 7 article:  Michael Mulgrew wins teachers union election in a landslide

But after the results were in? No analysis, no commentary from Gotham Schools.

My prediction?  Gotham Schools will have little to say about the election results until ICE figures out how it will spin its ugly loss of votes – almost 1500, dropping from 12.2% to 8.7%

In the meantime, I have some preliminary notes here. And there is an initial New Action reaction over here. And I will be writing more on this blog. Everyone is welcome to read it.