"Fuentes World," part 1

Ever hear of Mark Bucher?

Now, bear with me here. Mr. Mark Bucher is a minor player in “Fuentes World,” the world of Orange County way-right-wingers who continually weave in and out of each other’s political plans and projects. The players of Fuentes World comprise a kind of Christian Neanderthal Rat Pack, and Bucher is maybe Joey Bishop.

EDUCATION ALLIANCE. Back in 1993, Bucher, then a businessman, and two pals—James Righeimer and Frank Ury—fought for passage of the “school voucher” initiative (Prop 174). Apparently, when that measure failed, the three amigos founded “Education Alliance,” in Tustin, an organization dedicated to placing “conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives, on local school boards” (Cosmo Garvin).

At the time, Frank Ury was a trustee on the Saddleback Valley Unified School District board—having been elected as part of a slate that took out trustee Raghu Mathur in ‘92!—but, owing to Ury’s support of the voucher initiative, he lost in 1996 to an opponent who was heavily financed by the California Teachers Association (CTA), of which, incidentally, Raghu was a member. (CTA is the parent organization of our own Faculty Association.)

THE CAMPAIGN REFORM INITIATIVE (1998) . Perhaps that experience helps explain Ury, Righeimer, and Bucher’s decision to author the so-called “campaign reform initiative” of 1998. You’ll recall that Proposition 226 would have required “all labor unions to obtain annual written permission from union members before allocating any dues for political action or political education efforts” (Garvin). Evidently, when a very similar measure passed in Washington state in 1992, union coffers took a huge hit. (See Garvin and Cristopher Rapp.)

In other words, Prop 226, whatever its intrinsic merits, was a major threat to the clout of unions in general, and to the clout of teachers unions in particular. The CTA’s continued uber-clout in California definitely depends on the failure of such measures as Prop 226.

By 1998, Education Alliance’s campaign reform initiative had attracted the attention of big-time national Republicans. Bucher and his pals got much of their support in their battle for 226 from out-of-state Republicans who dreamed of passing such measures all over the country. One big contributor was J. Patrick Rooney, a close advisor of Newt Gingrich. Another was Gingrich crony Grover Norquist.

Well, 226 failed.

But wait! What’s all of this got to do with US in the good old SOCCCD?

WAGBERG. Well, in a way, a lot. Back in 1998, the Faculty Association secretly used mucho union funds to elect two anti-union trustee candidates: Don Wagner and Nancy Padberg. Both Wagner and Padberg were affiliated with Bucher/Ury/Righeimer’s Education Alliance.

No surprise there. Over the years, Wagner has openly advocated the school voucher concept, and he was a big supporter of Prop 226. As a conservative, he’s clearly way out in the darkest Fuentes right-wing frontier. In fact, you’d have to say that he’s a denizen of Fuentes World. (Not so Padberg, evidently.)

Wagner helped found, and is presently on the Executive Board of, the Orange County chapter of the Federalist Society, a right-wing attorney group with strong ties to the Bush White House. The FS is associated with the philosophy of “strict constructionism” (as opposed to judicial “activism”).

Only a month ago, the OC Federalists hosted a debate at Gulliver’s Restaurant in Irvine about Proposition 75—you know, this year’s version of the GOP’s anti-union “campaign reform initiative.” (The Republicans are gonna keep pushing this thing until it takes! It’s just a matter of time.)

The debaters? Beverly Tucker of CTA, and—you guessed it—Mark Bucher of Education Alliance.

There are other SOCCCD/Education Alliance connections. According to Kimberly Kindy of the OC Register, Trustee John Williams, who has long portrayed himself as the unions’ friend, “has strong ties to members of the Education Alliance, which supports opponents of union-backed candidates” (10/31/98).

FUENTES. And there are Fuentes-Education Alliance connections aplenty. According to the OC Weekly (in 2000), Education Alliance’s Jim Righeimer is the “longtime trusty lieutenant to [Dana] Rohrabacher and OC Republican Chairman Tom Fuentes….”

Perhaps you know—and perhaps you don’t—that there are three notorious right-wing “Board Majorities” among OC school districts. Fuentes, being the sort of guy he is, has hovered in the background, and sometimes the foreground, of all three. They are: (1) the Orange Unified School District “Board Majority” (which was offensive enough to be successfully recalled in June of 2001), (2) our own SOCCCD “Board Majority” (which was much dissipated by the inclusion of Bill Jay and the awakening of Nancy Padberg), and (3) the notorious Westminster School District “Board Majority,” which has taken aim at laws requiring fair treatment for gays. (Re Fuentes and the OUSD Board Majority, see OC Weekly, 12/28/01)

Mark Bucher was the Orange Unified BM’s attorney—yes, he quit his contractor's business in favor of the law in 2000—but he was quickly fired after the BM was replaced. Later, he became the Westminster School Districts BM attorney.

These guys sure do get around!

Plus, Bucher is the current Treasurer of the OC Republican Party—the organization that Fuentes chaired for twenty years and until recently.

Got all that straight?

AHMANSON. One more thing (for now). The initial sugar daddy of Education Alliance, and the chief backer of the OUSD’s Board Majority, was Orange Countian Howard Ahmanson. According to Jerry Sloan (http://www.skepticfiles.org/fw/alliance.htm), Ahmanson is a “Christian Reconstructionist idealogue and daddy deep-pockets [who has] embarked upon a plan to capture California’s school boards.”

What’s a Christian Reconstructionist? Well, according to Wikipedia,

Christian Reconstructionism is a highly controversial religious and theological movement within Protestant Christianity. It calls for Christians to put their faith into action in all areas of life including civil government, and envisions the private and civil enforcement of the general principles of Old Testament and New Testament moral law, including those expounded in the case laws and summarized in the Old Testament Decalogue.

(Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Reconstructionism)

In 1992, Ahmanson, a creationist, was quoted as saying: “My purpose is total integration of biblical law into our lives.” (See website of American United for Separation of Church and State.)

Funding the Education Alliance in its early years was, according to Sloan, part of Ahmanson’s plan to carry out his Reconstructionist philosophy in California/Orange County. (It appears that Ahmanson stopped funding EA by the late 90s.)

Ahmanson is on the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute. Guess who else is on CI’s Board?

That would be Tom Fuentes.

That's some world, that Fuentes World.

More soon. —Chunk

(For a brief bio of Mr. Ahmanson, see:

http://www.nndb.com/people/374/000058200/)