The Minneapolis Star Tribune had an article today and a whole slew of opinion pieces on Cheri Pierson Yecke yesterday. The final confirmation hearings on her appointment are scheduled for tomorrow, 13 April. I sincerely hope she goes down, but rather expect politics as usual will take over and she’ll be confirmed. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve come to expect that politicians will rarely do the right thing.

One article today, Confirmation hearings are heating up, points out what is going on, and many of the articles on Sunday said the same thing.

Pawlenty and other Republicans are complaining loudly. They accuse DFLers, who are at their lowest political ebb in 30 years, of using confirmation as a last-ditch weapon for budget negotiations or political point-making, in a way never envisioned by the authors of the state and U.S. constitutions.

This really irritates me. Do the Republicans think they can nominate any slack-jawed worthless yokel to a position, and that they can then claim that any opposition is solely motivated by partisanship? There are good arguments against these people, and none of them are, “She is a Republican."

But for now, Rest said, DFLers do not accept the GOP argument that issues of policy, philosophy and job performance since appointees took office should be off-limits.



In reference to Yecke, in particular, Rest said: “We have a right to expect a commissioner not to be a radical, divisive person in an area [education] where they must serve a broad constituency, where we expect them to be a uniter,” Rest said.

That’s the reason; not her political affiliation, but that she has been a terrible commissioner. I’ve talked to a number of local educators, and none of them like what she’s been doing. At the state hearings for the education standards, you’d see teacher after teacher getting up to say how awful this unfunded mandate, the NCLB act, was, and even if they liked some parts of the standards, they opposed how they were being rammed down their throats. And over and over again, the people who voiced support for her were all right-wing extremists who’d also speak out against evolution, the UN, and those godless liberal America-haters. Her supporters generally seemed narrow, vocal, and stupid (I will allow that there may be intelligent supporters of her policies, but they weren’t there shouting “amen!” to her ideas in the public meetings I attended.)

The “institutional voice of the Star Tribune”, the summary column titled “Our Perspective” came down hard against Yecke and the transportation commissioner, Molnau, in a piece titled Yecke & Molnau/Outside the mainstream.

While each is clearly qualified, Yecke’s views and policies on education and Molnau’s on transportation lie well outside the mainstream. Nothing in Pawlenty’s campaign led voters to expect the extreme course these commissioners have steered. In Minnesota, as in Washington, Republicans ran campaigns from the center, won elections without getting a majority of votes, and now are governing from the extreme right.



This is an arrogant formula that invites rage from opponents and encourages the confirmation tactic now employed against Yecke and Molnau.

It’s a familiar story, isn’t it? Campaign as a centrist, govern as an extremist. Appoint radicals as hatchetmen to appease the wealthy who bankrolled the campaign and to take any future heat for their dirty work.

Despite Yecke’s hard work and obvious qualifications, no other cabinet appointee in memory has become such a polarizing force. A parent-teacher group collected 4,500 signatures to block her confirmation. More than 20 University of Minnesota professors took issue with her approach to standards.



What has caused such an uproar? Not a single action or comment, but the cumulative effect of Yecke’s expressed beliefs, policy choices and interpretations of state and federal law. Though she stresses inclusivity, scores of parents and others did not feel they were heard during the school standards or ratings processes. Her evasive manner and her directives on some issues have damaged relations between the department and the wider community. She is perceived as an ideologue with an agenda, not a fair-minded leader.

My opposition to Yecke is simple, and based on a single, clear issue: her handling of the science standards. The committee that put together the science standards did an excellent job and assembled a document that reflected a reasonable scientific consensus, but throughout the process Yecke was plainly trying to undercut their work. She tried to declare that evolution would not be discussed in the standards, because it was “too controversial”; the committee ignored her idiotic stance and went ahead and put it in. When the first draft was released, rather than the version produced with the approval of the committee, she dumped a version that had been tweaked by her Intelligent Design creationist collaborators; when the committee complained, she called it a “mistake”. When it was obvious that the product of the committee reflected good biology and did not pander to creationist gobbledygook, she authorized a ‘minority report’ cobbled up by those same creationists. She is someone who will allow her derangedly conservative ideology to taint the task of her office.

If Republicans want to claim that creationism is an implicit part of their party platform, though, then I would feel comfortable saying that she ought to be thrown out of office for the crime of being a Republican. I don’t think Republicans in general accept that, though; I sure wish they’d come out and say so.