CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION : No Strong Front-Runner Emerging From Field of 12

It was in June, 1990, that Bill Honig rode the crest of an education reform wave to a third term as California’s superintendent of public instruction. He easily gathered the majority vote needed to win the state’s only nonpartisan office in the primary election, avoiding a November runoff.

What a difference four years can make.

Today, with Honig out of office and convicted on conflict-of-interest charges, and amid strong signals that voters want changes in the state’s public schools, a June 7 primary victory for any of his would-be successors seems all but out of the question.

The race has drawn 12 candidates, including some prominent members of the state’s education Establishment and a foot soldier in last year’s failed ballot effort to provide parents with tax-money vouchers to spend on private or parochial school tuition.

Two Democratic women with strong ties to the state’s education community are widely considered to be among the front-runners. They are Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin of Fremont, the choice of the California Teachers Assn., and Maureen DiMarco, a former school board member from Orange County who is Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s secretary for child development and education.

Among the others mounting substantial campaigns are:

* Joseph Carrabino, a retired UCLA management professor and controversial former president of the State Board of Education. He helped reduce the size of the superintendent’s office in a power struggle with Honig that wound up in court.

* Wilbert Smith, a former Pasadena school board member and a champion of last fall’s voucher initiative campaign, who recently won the endorsement of the California Republican Assembly, the influential right wing of the state GOP.

* Orange County elementary school teacher Gloria Matta Tuchman, a Tustin school board member. She has a base of supporters from her long crusade against bilingual education.

Eastin is a former community college instructor and corporate planner who was elected to the Assembly in 1986 and appointed by Speaker Willie Brown to lead its Education Committee three years ago. She had raised more than $500,000 for the race by the mid-March reporting deadline, according to campaign finance documents on file with the state and county election offices.

DiMarco, who once headed the California School Boards Assn. and was a consultant to Honig, reported having raised $7,550 since entering the race earlier this year. One of her campaign advisers said her late start and her political ties to both major parties make fund raising difficult.

But the adviser, Luke Breit of Sacramento, said her position as an experienced Democrat working in a Republican Administration bolsters her appeal as someone who can depoliticize an office long undermined by partisan fighting.

Eastin’s campaign backers are trying to link DiMarco with the governor’s policies, which they say put prisons ahead of schools. The DiMarco camp criticizes Eastin for being too indebted to special interests, especially the teachers unions, to bring about needed reforms.

Wilson has said he will make no primary endorsement.

Carrabino has enlisted political consultant Sal Russo, a key player in the conservative Republican Administration of former Gov. George Deukmejian, to run his campaign. He got a late start in fund raising, reporting only a $1,000 loan to himself by mid-March.

Smith, who is black, is seeking support among minorities as well as from voucher-initiative backers, conservatives and others calling for drastic overhaul of the school system. Smith had raised about $200,000, including a $100,000 loan from a family member who controls the Wal-Mart discount chain.

Tuchman reported raising $67,000, including about $52,000 she and her husband loaned the campaign.

An April survey by Mervin Field’s California Poll tested the popularity of the top candidates among registered voters and those who said they are likely to register in time for the primary. Carrabino and DiMarco were each the choice of 11% of those surveyed, 9% chose Eastin and 6% chose Smith; 63% said they had not made up their minds. Tuchman was not included in the survey.

Also running are Lewis S. Keizer of Santa Cruz, the founder of a private school for academically gifted students; David L. Kilber of Los Angeles, a follower of political radical Lyndon LaRouche; attorney, former teacher and ex-Municipal Judge Carol S. Koppel of Apple Valley, who got 17% of the vote when she ran against Honig in 1990; engineer Perry L. Martin of Yuba City; research engineer Frank Joseph Anthony Mele of Sacramento, and two other Orange County teachers, Hal Rice of Anaheim and Robert (Rob) Stewart of Stanton.

Of these candidates, only Keizer and Stewart had filed the required financial statements, showing each had raised about $2,000, election officials said.

That’s a lot of action for an office that has not been a steppingstone to a bigger political job and whose powers were narrowed by the courts last year.

Established in 1849, the superintendent’s job is to serve as executive officer and secretary of the State Board of Education and to run the day-to-day operations of the state Department of Education.

Before his conviction for funneling state funds through an education program run by his wife, the liberal, high-profile Honig used the office to push for reforms. During his 10-year tenure, the dropout rate declined, more students completed courses required for admission to college and the state created tougher, nationally praised curriculum guides in several key subjects. Honig is appealing the conviction.

But he tangled openly with two governors, legislators and many conservatives, including the combative Carrabino, who, while leader of the State Board of Education, was a key figure in a power struggle between the board and superintendent.

Last year, the 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled that the board has policy-making authority and granted it powers to review the superintendent’s choices for top Department of Education staff, help formulate department budgets and review department directives before they are sent to schools.

By the time the court ruled in the board’s favor, however, Carrabino had quit the board in the face of almost certain Senate rejection of his reappointment. Opponents had accused him of making racist and anti-Semitic remarks and furthering the politicization of the state’s education system, charges he denied.

Despite some important gains in the last decade, the state’s education system has plenty of problems, including deep public dissatisfaction. Voters strongly rejected last fall’s voucher initiative, but polls showed that although people did not want to undermine the public school system, they clearly wanted changes.

The state’s four-year recession has eroded school funding at a time of rapidly growing enrollments. Class sizes have grown to the second-largest average in the United States, and California’s ranking has slipped dramatically in the amount it spends per pupil. Student achievement, especially in reading and math, is lagging behind that in many other states, and campus violence is a growing concern.

Most recently, controversies over content and scoring have dulled the luster of the state’s nationally heralded student testing system and have prompted even some supporters to question whether phasing in the expensive system should continue on schedule.

Some say the state’s many school-related problems have been exacerbated by the vacuum in political leadership since Honig left. An acting superintendent was named from within the Department of Education.

“It is the most important job, with the exception of governor, in California now,” Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), longtime leader of the upper house’s Education Committee, once said of the office he had considered seeking until just a few months ago.