Marcos Breton: Republican city schools chief fights to bring GOP around on taxes
mbreton@sacbee.com
PUBLISHED SUNDAY, MAR. 13, 2011
It's not commonly known that Jonathan Raymond, superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District, was once a Republican congressional candidate who was anti-tax to the point of favoring tax breaks for the rich.
That was in 1996, in Raymond's home state of Massachusetts, when he was 35 and driven by the spirit of his Republican role models, Ronald Reagan and Orrin Hatch.
"Raymond pledges that he will never raise taxes except in time of war," wrote the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass., when describing Raymond back then.
Today, it's a different story, a different context, and Raymond is a different man who doesn't have the luxury of holding fast to ideology when he has a payroll to make and thousands of schoolkids impacted by his decisions.
He is still Republican, maybe the only one in Sacramento who has openly supported Gov. Jerry Brown's bid to hold a June special election where voters would be asked to extend three different taxes that could prevent doomsday cuts to public education if enacted.
Time is almost up. Preliminary pink slips go out to teachers on Tuesday.
For Raymond, the 21st century public schools chief, reality means taking a stand that would have drawn the condemnation of Raymond the 20th century GOP candidate.