Overnight, San Diego Unified Trustee Richard Barrera’s bid for state superintendent transformed from an upstart campaign to a serious contender thanks entirely to the endorsement of California’s biggest teachers union.
The last time a candidate endorsed by the 310,000-member-strong California Teachers Association lost the state superintendent race was 1982.
Yes, but: Barrera’s road to victory may not be as much of a cake walk as previous CTA-backed candidates. While union support has generally coalesced around a single candidate, statewide organizations have splintered this election cycle.
CTA President David Goldberg told Voice of San Diego that the endorsement is a marker of where education in California sits, which, in his telling, is at the intersection of desperation and hope.
While federal chaos has battered educators and inflation has driven the cost of living up, the union has embarked on an ambitious coordinated statewide organizing push to increase pay and get more mental health support for students.
“It was a clear choice about the particular moment we’re in,” Goldberg said. “We need someone who has the skillset and can speak to the desperation that folks are feeling right now and to the hope people need.”
Goldberg stressed that their endorsement of Barrera was not a slight of the other higher-profile candidates in the race. Rather, it was a vote of confidence in Barrera’s ability to do the job.
“He’s been an incredible ally,” Goldberg said. “We’re really excited about Richard’s leadership on the big picture and … the aspirational and his on-the-ground know-how and savvy.”
Barrera’s ability to advocate for bargaining teachers as a policy advisor in the state superintendent’s office impressed CTA members, Goldberg said. Some of his key priorities as a potential state superintendent, like securing increased investments for schools, align perfectly with CTA’s goals.
But what ultimately sealed the deal was his record at San Diego Unified.
Barrera, whose background is in labor organizing, has spent 17 years as a district trustee and has become the ideological cornerstone of the board. During his tenure, he’s helped steer the district in a decidedly union-friendly direction. Goldberg specifically shouted out achievements like the district’s high teacher pay, fully funded healthcare benefits and the district’s work spearheading community schools initiatives.
“The people that carried the day were folks who worked with him in San Diego and have seen incredible work he’s done there,” Goldberg said.
Even given their confidence, Goldberg acknowledged that because of Barrera’s much lower profile, the union’s choice to back him was, in some respects, playing the upcoming election on a more challenging difficulty level.
He described the endorsement as something of a “structure test.” It’s a race that will prove – or disprove – how capable the union’s organizing power is by whether they could get Barrera across the finish line in a race wherein union support is fractured.
“We all gotta’ take our shot in life,” Goldberg said. “Endorsing Barrera, it’s a sign of our willingness to leave it all out on the line right now.”