Election season is here! Signs are popping up on every street corner. Candidate emails are hitting inboxes with a fury. It’s a *fun* season of the year, and Gilbert, Arizona has its own traditions of *fun.* Signs pop up, signs disappear; once in a while, a camera nabs scurrilous partisans in the act of sign stealing.
It’s the time of year when the ends justify the means for many people. One example is that GPS sent out emails with the subject line “Legislative & Congressional Candidates Meet & Greet” on August 3, 2016, the very same day that Westie posted about how Irene Mahoney-Baloney-Paige gives out free advertising using the GPS email database and email servers. That was a a bit of incredible stupidity that you can’t make up. Maybe the political action committee bought the GPS database so they could send their invitation using email addresses collected from parents of GPS students, purportedly for official educational purposes.
We won’t get into the ethics of using personal protected information gathered under false pretenses for nefarious political purposes right now. We just think there ought to be a law about that … oh, wait, there is a law about using school district resources for electioneering! GPS Top Dogs must figure their lawyers will get them out of trouble … again. Maybe Kishimoto just sold their database to a political action committee that hosted the Meet & Greet. That woman sure does love revenue streams!
What happened at the GPS Convocation before school started for 2016-2017, when Queen Christina Kishimoto addressed her loyal subjects and gave them her *charge* to propel their forward motion, would have been funny if it were not just another example of Kishimoto’s arrogant flouting of Arizona laws. Let’s take a look at how she’s so practiced, she can amass countless violations without even breaking a sweat. In other words, it’s business as usual in Gilbert Public Schools, especially since the arrival of Superintendent Christina Kishimoto.
(1) Kishimoto claimed the convocation was NOT a public meeting. Au contraire, girlfriend: any time you invite all five board members to any event, you should have a notice posted on the GPS website home page that a quorum of board members may attend. If you took that simple step, the Arizona Attorney General wouldn’t have nearly so many investigations of Open Meeting Law violations … for which taxpayers foot some hefty legal bills, including paying for Open Meeting Law monitoring under an agreement with the Arizona Attorney General. This is what Christina Kishimoto sent to the GPS Governing Board on July 21, 2016: “This is not a meeting open to the public; this is a targeted Superintendent meeting with my teachers and Principals.”
(2) Kishimoto changed her mind, but still didn’t give public notice that a quorum of the GPS governing board was attending her “targeted Superintendent meeting” — which automatically transformed the meeting into a public meeting, according to Arizona Open Meeting Law. This is what Christina Kishimoto sent to the GPS Governing Board on July 29, 2016: “Mayor Daniels and several Town Council members will be in attendance.”
(3) Those reserved seats in the front for Board members expanded exponentially — attendees included several candidates for various open seats on the GPS governing board and on the Gilbert Town Council AND in Congress … the U.S. House of Representatives, to be precise. Oh my goodness, apparently not all of the candidates for these various offices were invited! Only certain candidates appeared, which technically included Mayor Jenn Daniels, but she was running unopposed in the August 30, 2016 primary election, so maybe you can give her the same pass Kishimoto gave Lily Tram, who is running to keep her seat on the GPS governing board.
Birdies chirp that Christina Kishimoto immediately was trying to deflect the blame for this fiasco, news of which spread far and wide very quickly. Once again, think of the stupidest thing GPS (and Christina Kishimoto) could do, and they’ll exceed expectations every time … with even greater stupidity. For example, when Christina Kishimoto pulled this stupid stunt, the date to turn in petitions to qualify as candidates for the GPS governing board was still a week into the future. “But I didn’t invite them,” she reportedly told a non-invited candidate for the GPS governing board. Oh no, we’re sure that she PERSONALLY did not make those phone calls or click the send button on her email software. That’s what *agents* are for. That Christina Kishimoto is one slippery little sucker!
GPS posted photos of Queen Christina’s Third Coronation, including photos that prove the truth: some candidates for public office were seated in the front rows of the audience, and some were introduced to the audience. A candidate for Arizona Legislature was introduced by her husband’s previous title, while his successor sat in the front row. A candidate for the Arizona Senate sat nearby. GPS Chief of Staff Alex Nardone genuflected in front of a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. A candidate for Gilbert Town Council was locked out of the auditorium.
In other words, Christina Kishimoto’s preferred candidates sat in the audience during an event she herself convened: “this is not a meeting open to the public.” The audience was not the general public or taxpayers or ordinary citizens of Gilbert. The meeting Christina Kishimoto convened was a private affair in front of some 5,000 employees of Gilbert Public Schools, who now know the selected candidates favored by their Dear Leader. To be sure the message was clear, Christina Kishimoto posted her *endorsement* of Christine Jones for Congress on her own SuperDork Twitter feed. You really can’t make this stuff up!
It gets worse: the candidates themselves boasted on their campaign websites and Facebook pages that they attended the GPS Convocation, celebrating that they had been anointed by the Dear Leader herself, including the candidate before whom Alex Nardone genuflected. In other words: “Nanny nanny boo boo” to those who were not thusly raised above the others.
The absolute worst (that Westie knows about right now) is that Christina Kishimoto DID IT AGAIN on August 3, 2016 for the First Day of School Bus Tour! Note the two candidates featured by a Town Council member: Joel Anderson and Christine Jones (again).
We know the candidates and Gilbert Public Schools will appreciate the extra audience reach of Westie’s posts. We figure that these guys were just being honest about what happened when Christina Kishimoto gave them preferential treatment so that GPS employees would get the message and vote accordingly.
BTW: Silly Jilly Humpherys posted photos of the muffins served at Christina Kishimoto’s Coronation. We can’t make this stuff up!!!