Randi Weingarten Writes Another Letter

Randi Weingarten writes more letters than the characters in a Samuel Richardson novel.

First she wrote a letter to TIME Magazine telling them how bad their "Rotten Apples" cover was.

Then she wrote a "private" letter to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo after he promised the Daily News he was going to "break" the public school system "monopoly" in his next term.

Now she's written a letter to the AFT membership that Diane Ravitch posted a bit ago with a headline along the lines of "Randi Is Not Voting For Cuomo."

That caused some uproar on Twitter, as people started to read the letter and say "Hey, where does it say she's not voting for Cuomo?"

The headline's now changed on Ravitch's post, probably because nowhere in the letter does it say explicitly that Randi's not voting for Cuomo.

Here's the letter in full:

The difficult choices New Yorkers face at the polls

As I head back home to vote on Nov. 4, I’ll be casting my vote for the candidates endorsed by NYSUT, my statewide union, starting with Eric Schneiderman for attorney general, Thomas DiNapoli for comptroller, Tim Bishop for the U.S. House of Representatives, and a strong pro-public education, pro-worker majority in the state Senate and Assembly. And I’ll be voting on the Working Families Party line. If I lived in another state, I’d be starting with the governor—but not in New York.

It’s heartbreaking to see what’s happening in New York, especially after campaigning across the country for gubernatorial candidates who unequivocally support public education, respect teachers and will fight for the investment our schools need.

But in New York, the decision is painful. I am deeply disappointed and appalled by Gov. Cuomo’s recent statement that public education is a “monopoly” that needs to be busted up. (Frankly, it’s only hedge fund millionaires, right-wing privatizers and tea partiers who would use that terminology.) Public education is a public good and an anchor of democracy that is enshrined in our state constitution. Public education needs to be nurtured and reclaimed.

At the same time, the other major candidate, Rob Astorino, would be no day at the beach for New York’s students, educators and working families. His letter was a needed salve to teachers, but his embrace of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s politics of destruction, public education funding cuts and attacks on workers’ voices is not a model for New York.

Whichever candidate is elected governor on Nov. 4 needs to know that I (and so many others) will hold his feet to the fire to strengthen public education. Our public schools and our students are a sacred responsibility, and our educators are national treasures. It’s well past time to fund our schools, care for our children, support our teachers, and stand up for workers and working families everywhere in our state.

Randi Weingarten

It's Talmudic in its text, that's for sure.

She's criticizing Cuomo for making the monopoly comment, but she already did that in an interview with Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY.

She's using a bit Cuomo's line of attack against Astorino, characterizing him as an extremist who shouldn't be in power in a state like New York.

She did that with Bakeman too.

She writes that she's voting the Working Families Party line, starting with the AG and going down the line.

I guess we're supposed to take that as a gesture that she's not voting for Cuomo.

But she never actually writes those words.

Intead she writes:

And I’ll be voting on the Working Families Party line. If I lived in another state, I’d be starting with the governor—but not in New York.

What does that mean?

She's not voting for governor at all?

She is voting for governor, just not for Cuomo?

She's voting WFP because she lives in NY, but if she lived in another state she'd be voting Dem?

Who knows what it means because it's classic Weingarten - it's inscrutable and could mean just about anything, depending upon the weather, the phases of the moon and how the Dow Jones ended up the day.

In the end, I don't particularly care whether Weingarten's voting for Cuomo or not and I frankly am not assuaged by the letter in anyway.

When Weingarten spends a tenth of the time, resources and energy she put into the TIME Magazine boondoggle or the Pearson protests to fighting Andy Cuomo when he tries to raise the charter cap or revise APPR to make it more punitive (as he has promised to do) or "break" the public school "monopoly" by underfunding public schools and giving that money to charters, that's when I'll start caring about something Weingarten does or says.

Until then, this is just more Randi jive.

Her track record of giving in to deformers - from Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein to Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation to Andrew Cuomo and John King speaks louder than any words she posted at the AFT website.