Sacramento, CA -- When given the chance to have their say with a ballot measure, California citizens have let it be known that they don’t like government racial preferences nor bilingual education. Long out of step with the vox populi, political liberals have looked to unelected judges as a robed politburo to implement their policies by judicial fiat. But now liberals are learning that this trick cuts both ways.

Delaine Eastin, a Bay Area Democrat and former Assemblywoman, is running for re-election as California’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, one of the most important posts in the Golden State. In a breathtaking but little noticed move, (the Sacramento Bee ran the story on page three of its metro section), the state’s most powerful education bureaucrat sought to describe herself on the ballot as a "teacher," even though she has never taught K-12 and last appeared as an instructor in 1979, at a community college.

On August 26, Superior Court Judge James T. Ford ruled that Eastin could not use the job description of teacher. This was not the result the superintendent and her team of handlers expected because they had clearly gone judge shopping. It might be remembered that Ford, one of the state’s more liberal judges, ruled that Ward Connerly and opponents of race preferences had to say that they were trying to eliminate "affirmative action." A higher court then overruled Ford. Likewise, in Houston, a judge recently threw out last year’s election in which a measure like Prop 209 lost because the city council changed the language from race preferences to affirmative action. A judge in Washington state, facing a November vote on the issue, blocked a similar gambit from the preference lobby there.

Meanwhile, Eastin’s attempt to describe herself as a teacher may well mean she wants voters to ignore her record as State Superintendent. But another dynamic is surely in play. One of the characteristics of the powerful is that they like to deny they have power, and that is surely the motive for Eastin’s daring ploy, which raises some interesting questions.

If candidates were allowed to use job descriptions two decades old then Pete Wilson could describe himself as a mayor, Matt Fong a student, Barbara Boxer a housewife and speaker, Gray Davis as a soldier, speaker Antonio Villaraigosa as a community activist and ACLU official. Bill Clinton could describe himself as a lawyer, musician or aspiring state politician. The possibilities are endless.

Delaine Eastin is the candidate of choice for the powerful California Teachers Association, but that is not the same as being a teacher. Gloria Matta Tuchman, Eastin’s Latina opponent, is in fact a first-grade teacher in Orange County and that is how she is billed on the ballot. Tuchman helped head up Proposition 227, the voter-approved measure eliminating bilingual education, and which is running into the typical court challenges from supporters of the status quo seeking to trump the voice of the voters.

The lesson here would seem to be that, in the interests of honesty, candidates for key offices should be judged on their record and describe themselves as what they are, not what they were or would like to be. As Delaine Eastin just learned, even liberal judges insist on it.

--By K. Lloyd Billingsley