New Schools Chief Says Media Have `Ambushed’ Her Anne Fox Says People Don’t Want Her To Succeed In Improving Education

New state schools Superintendent Anne Fox told a United States Militia Association meeting that media “distortions” about her are the result of her attempts to raise Idaho education standards.

“We were literally ambushed,” by news accounts of Department of Education employees being fired, expenditures on a luxury car and controversy about her appointees, Fox said Saturday. “I have become a target mostly because there are people who don’t want me to succeed.”

She and Secretary of State Pete Cenarrusa spoke at the Statehouse to about 80 association members - men, women and boys, many wearing olive green military-style sweaters and trousers with black boots. Several legislators also were invited to the regional leadership meeting for Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

Samuel Sherwood of Blackfoot, founder and national director of the conservative, constitutionalist United State Militia Association, said Fox was invited because she agrees with the group’s call for less federal interference and more local control.

Since income from state-owned public land benefits Idaho’s school endowment fund, “If the federal government claims 65 percent of the land of the state of Idaho, who’s being hurt?” he asked. “The schools.”

Sherwood said more than 1,000 militia members manned phone banks and otherwise supported Fox’s Republican candidacy for superintendent of public instruction. And he told members she has gotten a bad rap from the press.

“You might have noticed the papers lately. This is as good a character assassination as Richard Nixon went through,” Sherwood said. “But he deserved it.”

Fox said she believes in the group’s stands against gun control and for states’ rights. And it is her back-to-basics approach to public schools that has rankled the education establishment and media, she said.

At one point citing a friend’s comment comparing her first six weeks in office to Anne Frank’s persecution by the Nazis, Fox said the media have blown her actions out of proportion.

She specifically said criticism of the $530-per-month lease on a new car for her office was unwarranted since she must pay for her own mileage and the monthly payment is high because the lease is short-term.

In addition, dismissal of employees like the Education Department’s leading expert on the school funding formula and the science curriculum chief were aimed at cutting costs by eliminating relatively high salaries.

“I guess no one’s ever cut people before,” Fox said.

She acknowledged having to fire the head of her newly formed architectural design division over exaggerations on his resume. But she did not mention firing her chief deputy and former campaign manager, Terry Haws, after it was disclosed he was charged with soliciting sex from a minor in exchange for drugs a decade ago in Alaska.

Meanwhile, Sherwood said a winter storm apparently kept some of the 200 or so militia leaders he had hoped would attend away from Saturday’s meeting.

He said most of the people on hand represented local units of 10 to 250 militia members.

He said his organization has members in about 35 states from coast to coast. But Sherwood would not estimate the total membership because many people who participate do not want their names on a list.

“They’re afraid of government persecution,” he said.