Bill Perkins Beats Charter School Stooge: 76%-24%

Bill Perkins defeats Basil Smikle - by 52 points:

In the race that pitted State Sen. Bill Perkins against political operative Basil Smikle, incumbent Perkins seemed to enjoy the same sort of support from the community that Rangel did.

Perkins claimed victory late Tuesday night. Outside of Paris Blues, a bar on 121st Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., he said his election shows that his constituents do not want him to be silent on certain issues, such as charter schools.

Perkins has been critical of charter schools and charter school proponents had filled his opponents' campaign coffers.

"The hedge fund millionaires lost and they do not dictate the outcome of an election by virtue of their money," Perkins said.

"The vote tonight tells me that even charter school parents support me. They are not of the belief that my voice should be silenced when it comes to wanting more transparency regarding charter schools," he added.

The election numbers are here.

DFER and the hedge fund criminals threw an awful lot of money into this race to beat Perkins, once a charter school advocate who now supports more transparency and accountability for the charter school movement and the people running it.

It's good to see that sometimes hedge fund criminal money CANNOT subvert democracy and buy an election.

It's also good to see that Basil Smikle - despite endorsements by the NY Post and the NY Daily News - got his ass kicked and lost by 52 points.

That's a pretty emphatic victory.

It's even better to see former NY1 political reporter, current charter school advocate and convicted wifebeater Dominic Carter wrong as usual.

He declared Perkins in "serious trouble" and predicted the tabloid endorsements, along with Smikle's support of charter schools, had given Smikle the "momentum" over Perkins.

Nice work, Dominic - you got stuff wrong again, just like in the old days when you were still on NY1 and not writing your political commentary from a jail cell.

Journalism

Not much of it at the NY Post where they have three, count 'em, three (no link - go find them yourself if you want, but I'm not providing Murdoch with any extra revenue hits today) anti-Bill Perkins articles.

One of them actually starts with the sentence "Why Does Bill Perkins hate kids?"

Perkins is a state senator from Harlem who used to be pro-charter school but has since seen how charters skim off the cream of the crop of students in his district, suck up much of the money and space and leave regular public schools with what is left.

So he has decided that charter schools need to be better regulated, their finances need to be audited by outside independent sources to make sure they are doing things on the up and up and the cozy relationships between some charter operators like Eva Moskowitz and some public officials like Joel Klein need to be examined a little more closely.

He's not saying that charter schools need to be abolished, just that they need to be better regulated and should be forced to play by the same rules that public schools have to be play by (including financing and space rules.)

So he's decided to hold public hearings to shine a light on the doings of charter schools and their operators. He has also introduced legislation to regulate charter school financing and creation a little more than currently happens now.

For that, charter school proponents have made him Public Enemy #1 and the Post is attacking him today with THREE articles today.

He must be on to something for the Post to be going at him with full guns ablazing, saying he hates kids and all that jazz.