Naturally, as soon as I put up a blog post about how teacher union elections routinely go, we had a few unusual results from a slew of state and local affiliate elections last week. Of course, the environment was different because these officers were elected by delegates and union reps, who are by definition the most involved. That way you deal with the problem of an uninvolved rank-and-file by institutionalizing it.

Here’s how it went across the nation:

* Education Minnesota president Tom Dooher was running for a third term, but he was unseated by incumbent secretary-treasurer Denise Specht. Specht says her election does not represent a major upheaval in the union. Perhaps, but incumbents rarely challenge other incumbents in NEA state affiliates. We’ll see what happens next in Minnesota.

* The Washington Education Association had three candidates running for the state presidency, including the incumbent vice president. But he was defeated by Kim Mead, president of the Everett Education Association.

* In Florida, members of the Hernando Classroom Teachers Association ousted president Joe Vitalo and elected Jo Ann Hartge, a former president, to a new term.

* Nevada State Education Association delegates elected Clark County Education Association president Ruben Murillo Jr. to the state presidency. I can’t find signs of any other candidate.

* Truer to form was the Wisconsin Education Association Council, which elected incumbent vice president Betsy Kippers to the presidency over two challengers. Similarly, Missouri NEA selected incumbent vice president Charles E. Smith as president.

Union elections are notorious for their low turnout. We can toss out a bunch of theories to explain why education employees have so little interest in choosing those who play such a huge role in determining their pay, benefits and working conditions. I don’t think it’s a fruitful exercise because I’ve yet to see a set of conditions that guarantee a high turnout.

Most elections for high union office are uncontested. When they are contested, it isn’t obvious to even an involved voter what distinguishes one candidate from another. And when you can distinguish one candidate from another, the deck is stacked so high against the challenger it’s usually not worth bothering about. In NEA, which practices term limits, this usually results in a Carolingian line of succession where everyone moves up one level – from a board seat to secretary-treasurer to vice president to president. In AFT, you end up with presidents who spend decades in office with little or no opposition.

Members of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City just re-elected Michael Mulgrew as president with 84 percent of the vote. That’s down from the 91 percent he received in his last election, and he was challenged by a candidate with distinctly different views on education policy and union management. That looks like a mandate, all right. But thanks to Norm Scott, we also know how many ballots went out, how many were returned, and who sent them in.

The largest teacher’s union local in the nation sent out 173,407 ballots, of which 43,138 were returned (about 25%). The most interesting detail is that Mulgrew received 34,919 votes, even though only 20,722 ballots were returned by working public education employees. How is that possible? Because 22,462 ballots came back from retirees – including many from Florida, where UFT has offices, and Mulgrew can visit on the union’s dime, but his challenger cannot.

None of this suggests UFT members don’t want Mulgrew running the union, or that they would prefer someone else. It does suggest that they don’t care. And if they don’t care, maybe the rest of us shouldn’t care quite so much about pronouncements from UFT headquarters.

The case of Sally Jo Widmer got even more bizarre. The Syracuse Post-Standard reports:

Mixing rum, opiates and painkillers, Sally Jo Widmer took her own life in November, two days before her 64th birthday and one day before the Auburn teachers union she ran for 37 years discovered financial irregularities in its books.

The Yates County Sheriff’s Office determined Widmer’s death was a suicide, Sheriff Ronald Spike said in an interview Wednesday. A toxicology report listed Widmer’s blood alcohol level as 0.09, with the presence of opiates, oxycodone and another pain-killer called propoxyphene.

Widmer left behind several notes in her Middlesex, N.Y. home, but no note mentioned the $808,000 found missing from the Auburn Teachers Association and none suggested that Widmer feared her union might investigate her.

…In her will, Widmer left $50,000 to the Auburn teachers union.

We’ll never know if Widmer had a final pang of conscience, but since she stole the equivalent of at least $2,000 from each and every one of her members, it was too little, too late.

When last we checked in on Indiana, U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker had rejected a motion to dismiss filed by the Indiana State Teachers Association and the National Education Association. The state is suing the unions for unlawful sale of securities related to the financial collapse of the ISTA insurance trust. Judge Barker was not sympathetic to the unions’ legal arguments and seemed eager to move the issue to trial.

But NEA has never been reluctant to pursue every possible tactic when it comes to court challenges, so it filed a motion to reconsider in an effort to at least have the national union removed as a defendant. Judge Barker, however, is having none of it.

In her ruling, she reminded NEA that the motion to reconsider is supposed to be used in case “the factual or legal landscape has changed since [the last decision].”  As Judge Barker put it, “Therefore, a party who finds himself paddling upstream after a ruling adverse to his interests may not use a motion for reconsideration as a life raft—especially not when his own strategic choices engendered his dilemma.”

What strategic choices are those? NEA claimed it did not have the opportunity to address evidence, namely, the UniServ agreement between it and ISTA. “This argument is both puzzling and preposterous,” wrote Judge Barker, because NEA itself entered the agreement into evidence.

“The NEA has failed to provide any new, significant, contradictory, or binding case law that might persuade us otherwise at this juncture; rather, it merely balks at a decision that was contrary to its own stated interests,” she concluded.

NEA’s efforts are mildly entertaining, but I still think NEA will be able to avoid direct financial liability at trial for the failure of the ISTA trust, provided its attorneys can clearly and accurately describe the workings of the UniServ program in court. It will be a hollow victory, though, since NEA will probably have to cover ISTA’s liability, or watch its Indiana affiliate sink slowly into bankruptcy.

When former Auburn Teachers Association (ATA) president Sally Jo Widmer passed away last November after more than 35 years at the helm of the small New York teachers’ union, former Auburn mayor Guy Cosentino eulogized her as “a true union leader who put her union first and personal niceties second.”

That’s because Cosentino didn’t have access to her checkbook.

Members were informed this week that Widmer misappropriated at least $800,000 in union dues during the period 2006-2012. “It appears that money earmarked for the Association was instead used for meals, gasoline, trips, gambling, clothing, grocery shopping – and for cash advances,” wrote new ATA president Cheryl Miskell. ”Because some old financial records are unavailable, we may never know the full extent of the misappropriations.”

This prodigious feat of embezzlement was accomplished in a union of 390 members, whose share of dues income ranged from $89,000 to $132,000 per year. It is highly likely that Widmer stole money earmarked for transfer to the New York State United Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers (similar to a case in Maryland). NYSUT records indicate that ATA was consistently behind on its dues payments by approximately $55,000 each year.

NYSUT conducted a forensic audit late last year and the evidence was turned over to local police and district attorney yesterday. The union is covered by a fidelity bond that may restore some of these losses.

Widmer was a fixture in the community who also served as secretary of the area’s NAACP branch. The high school where she worked closed for the day in her honor when she passed away. A colleague told the Auburn Citizen at the time that “Widmer was generous, sometimes using her own money to help young teachers complete courses so they would have the proper qualifications for teaching.”

“She went out of her way to financially help people,” he said. “She was amazing.”

She certainly was.

Click here to read.

The Clark County Education Association is looking to hire a new bookkeeper/accountant. Applicants will be expected to handle all payroll matters.

Ha ha ha ha!