Luna recall drive falls short

BOISE - An effort to recall Idaho state Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna over his controversial school-reform legislation has officially failed, with backers falling well short of the 158,000-plus signatures needed by Monday’s deadline to force a special election in August. Morgan Hill, campaign manager, said, “It’s not that we didn’t have support for it. I think that people all over the state were looking to sign a recall petition. We’re still getting people even today who are coming up to us. But a lot of people didn’t have access to us, they didn’t know about it. … A lot of folks didn’t even know who Tom Luna was to begin with, which was the most surprising thing.” Luna, in a statement, said, “Students Come First has always been about reforming education so we can educate more students at a higher level with limited resources. Opponents of the laws have tried to make it personal. Reforming education has never been about me; it’s about giving our students more opportunities. Our focus and priority has been and will continue to be implementation of the laws.” The laws still are targeted for possible repeal in a referendum in November of 2012; that signature drive succeeded. Hill, a Boise pilot, said the recall campaign raised only about $4,500, plus another $15,000 worth of in-kind advertising donations, and relied entirely on volunteers. Though it reported in early June that it had more than 75,000 signatures, Hill said an “error in the numbers” forced a recount yesterday, which led to the conclusion late last night that the campaign had gathered only about 50,000 signatures for the statewide recall petition. An effort to target two Boise legislators for recall, GOP Sen. Mitch Toryanski and Rep. Julie Ellsworth, for their support of Luna’s “Students Come First” school reform bills, also fell short, gathering only about a quarter of the required signatures. “Yeah, the bar was very high, and maybe unachievable, but we did a very great thing, and that’s involving people in the political process,” Hill said. “Something we can look forward to in the future is that we have so many more people, tens of thousands more people now, who are involved in the political process who would not have been otherwise.” The three new laws eliminate most collective bargaining rights for teachers, impose a new merit-pay bonus system, and shift funding from teacher and administrator salaries to technology investments and a new focus on online learning. Hill said the campaign plans to transform into a new nonpartisan watchdog group to keep tabs on Idaho’s Legislature and leadership. “It would be irresponsible to shy away from this high level of public enthusiasm,” he said.