Challenger poised to unseat schools chief

Published 10:37 pm Wednesday, November 5, 2008

In what could be one of the biggest upsets of Tuesday’s state election, Randy Dorn is narrowly leading incumbent Terry Bergeson in the race for state schools chief.

Bergeson has run Washington public schools for 12 years, and if she loses, Dorn promises change. She won the primary, but was trailing Dorn by 35,876 votes — about 2 percentage points — in the general election as of 9:30 p.m. Wednesday.

“It’s getting closer,” said Dorn, a former legislator and head of the state’s classified school employee union. “We like the numbers. We think they’re moving a little more our way, but you want to wait until it’s a little more comfortable.”

Dorn credits his early lead to Snohomish County, where he led Bergeson by nearly 16,000 votes. As of Wednesday afternoon, he had received 92,171 votes in the county compared to 76,454 votes.

Bergeson plans to wait until at least Friday to make any announcements on the election, her campaign consultant Alex Hays said. She was in a state board of education meeting all day Wednesday and didn’t have time to speak with reporters, he said.

“It is too soon to say that she has lost, but I know for a fact that she’ll continue to serve the public education system regardless of the outcome of the election,” he said.

Though Dorn is endorsed by the state Democratic party, early results show him neck-and-neck with Bergeson in King County, traditionally a Democratic stronghold.

There are still plenty of ballots to count and it’s possible, but unlikely, Bergeson will pull ahead, said Cathy Allen, president and chief executive of The Connections Group consulting firm in Seattle.

“This takes over as being the squeaker of the year,” Allen said. “I don’t know what to say on the final outcome of this race other than to say it does look like it was a mandate on the WASL.”

Dorn is winning because he succeeded in making the Washington Assessment of Student Learning the only issue in the race, Allen said.

Throughout his campaign, Dorn criticized the state test and vowed to get rid of it or dramatically change it.

If Dorn maintains his lead and becomes the next superintendent of public instruction, he said the high school WASL will be shorter by a third to a half by spring 2010. The math portion of the test will feature less writing, he said Wednesday.

Dorn plans to study the effectiveness of the WASL and other states’ standardized tests. Federal law mandates that students take standardized tests, and Dorn said he supports continuing to require students to pass reading, writing and math exams or alternatives, in order to receive their diplomas.

However, with shorter tests, students and teachers will have more time for other activities, like drama, art and sports, Dorn said. If he’s elected, Dorn expects participation in these activities to rise in the next year and a half, while the dropout rate falls.

Bergeson agrees that the WASL needs to change and she recently shortened the test. She had hoped the new president would change the federal No Child Left Behind law and give states more flexibility with testing.

Election results illustrate how successful Dorn was at associating her with the WASL, Allen said.

“His strength was making this only about the WASL, even depersonalizing it from Terry and making it all about the WASL,” she said. “He didn’t say, ‘This is an evil person.’ He said, ‘This is a mandate on the WASL. If you like the WASL, vote for Terry.’”

Bergeson’s campaign consultant Hays believes special interest spending played a bigger role in the race than the WASL. The Service Employees International Union, which is connected to the union Dorn leads, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars campaigning against Bergeson, turning public support against her, he said.

“It is an easy thing to say this is a referendum on the WASL,” Hays said. “I don’t think that’s valid. … I don’t think that bears out to further scrutiny.”

As more ballots are counted, Dorn plans to keep checking the state elections Web page and speaking with his advisers. He’s hopeful.

“I feel confident that the numbers are headed in the right direction,” he said. “We’re ahead in the right counties. Snohomish County was huge for us. All the time we spent there going to meetings and going to forums and people actually meeting me … I think that’s what made the difference. Snohomish County is truly making the difference.”

Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.