Sunday, October 22nd, 2006...9:07 am
What Is Linda Lopez Up To?
Last week, Linda Lopez led a group of three members in a sort of coup d’etat on the Sunnyside School District board and removed District superintendent Raúl Bejarano and board president Eva Carrillo-Dong.
The board had to relent and reinstate Bejarano after public objection. The most silly part of the Bejarano move was that his contract was up in a few months anyhow.
Lopez is now the president of the board. So, one might ask, can she be president of the school board and still make her run at being house Democratic leader? (against, by the way, the similarly-but-Portugese-named Phil Lopes)
Some might be suprised to learn that there is nothing illegal about serving in two elected offices, as long as one of them doesn’t actually pay. Many members of the legislature serve on school boards, and when he was Secretary of State, Dick Mahoney served on the Central Arizona Water Conservation District board (the less said about him the better).
What many of us were wondering is whether someone could be a school board president and have a serious leadership role at the legislature and do both jobs well. Geography works against Lopez somewhat, since the two bodies meet a good 120 miles away from each other. Also, this fight could have resulted in a distraction from legislative duties, there were people talking about recalling her and her main ally on the board Luís Araiza over the handling of Bejarano.
She seems to have solved this little problem, since she submitted a letter in the last day or so resigning her School board office effective December 31. Presumably, so she can pursue her goal of being House Democratic Leader.
2 Comments
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:28 am
Given that our family has had close ties with the Araiza family since the early 20th Century, you should at least learn how to spell the name.
October 23rd, 2006 at 10:16 am
Hey, don’t you have, I dunno, some motorized bicycle nonsense to work on or something?
Leave a Reply