The Race to Unseat a Veteran -- And Very Loud -- Voice
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Sam HodgsonScott Barnett, a budget analyst who once led the county Taxpayers Association, says he'd keep a closer eye on the business workings of the school district if elected.
Posted: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 8:20 pm | Updated: 8:29 pm, Wed Apr 21, 2010.
John de Beck has the longest memory and the loosest lips on the San Diego Unified school board. He called a new way of budgeting "cockamamie." He dubbed virtual gym classes "ridiculous." Fans who have helped elect him over and over say they love his straight talk, even when it stings.
The retired teacher has spent almost two decades -- nearly one out of every four days of his life -- representing the coastal stretches of the district from La Jolla to Point Loma to downtown. Elections are old hat to him. He has a stack of campaign signs in the trunk of his Prius, a rolling election headquarters.
But this time around, de Beck has earned the enmity of the teachers union, his former ally and a proven force at the ballot box. A new challenger has won the teachers' backing and argues that for all his talk and all his ideas, de Beck has achieved little because of his spats and sharp tongue.
"Anything he raises now is like a lead balloon," said Scott Barnett, a financial consultant and former head of the county Taxpayers Association who argues that he'll make sure the school district runs more efficiently. "He likes to be the violent, vocal minority. It's not productive. It's just throwing bombs."
His personality has become almost as big of an issue as his politics. De Beck is known for floating bold, sometimes radical ideas likesplitting up the school district. Some of his ideas, such as giving more power to parents at the groups of schools that feed into each high school, have slowly gained traction. Others have fizzled. His website is loaded with theories on stopping social promotion and saving historic art. He sees himself as an idea man, whether or not those ideas fly.
"If I raise ideas that don't take hold," de Beck said, "that doesn't mean they're bad ideas."
Barnett is one of two candidates who are taking on de Beck this spring, but the other one is actually a de Beck fan. School psychologist