State superintendent candidates brace for another round of big spending | EdSource Today

By John Fensterwald

Tom Torlakson nearly won another term as superintendent of public instruction outright Tuesday but will instead face second-place finisher Marshall Tuck in November. That’s not particularly good news for Torlakson or the California Teachers Association, Torklakson’s chief financial backer. The union faces the prospect of spending millions of dollars more of teachers’ dues to counter independent expenditures by self-styled education reformers who favor charter schools and an end to teacher tenure.

“CTA was hoping Torlakson could have ended it last night,” said John Pitney, political observer and government professor at Claremont McKenna College.

Torlakson got 46.9 percent of the vote, just shy of the majority vote that would have avoided a top-two candidate runoff in the non-partisan superintendent’s race. Tuck, a former CEO of a Los Angeles charter school organization and head of former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s nonprofit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a group of 17 low-performing schools, took second with 28.6 percent. The third candidate, Lydia Gutierrez, a Long Beach Unified veteran teacher who campaigned against the Common Core standards, got%

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