Villaraigosa, Unz, and bipartisanship

As many of you might already be aware, Democratic Speaker of the Assembly Antonio Villaraigosa’s recent appointment of me to his Commission on state and local government finance generated quite a bit of controversy. Some bilingual education activists deeply resented the appointment and criticized the Speaker—their perceived ally—for his choice.

But the views of these few activists have been overwhelmed by major editorial support across most of California’s newspapers for the Speaker’s praiseworthy decision to follow the path of bipartisanship.

Thus, an important collateral benefit of Villaraigosa’s decision has been to reaffirm and emphasize the bipartisan, unifying positions of today’s increasingly important Latino leaders, an idea very well presented in the opinion piece by Gregory Rodriguez presented below. In the spirit of one good turn following another, the prospects for California finally putting to rest the divisive social conflicts of the recent past appear excellent.

Finally, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer presented a long and generally reasonable follow-up segment on Prop. 227. Unfortunately, the segment was produced in December, before the recent newspaper reports of the remarkable early successes of English immersion. The transcript is available on our web site.

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