Why We Had to Rescind Two Endorsements

... John Jersin and Parag Gupta lost our endorsement due to their support for Matt Alexander who we would have recalled if eligible

There’s no drama like school board drama

• Less than a week after completing our endorsement process, we’ve had to change course.

• As you may remember we endorsed four candidates for School Board: Supryia Ray, Laurance Lee, Parag Gupta and John Jersin.

• We went through a process of reviewing candidate submissions and voting … with more than 730 people voting to determine our endorsements (thank you!).

• And then we learnt that Parag Gupta, John Jersin (two of our endorsed candidates) alongwith Jaime Huling had endorsed Matt Alexander in exchange for receiving the teachers’ union (UESF)’s endorsement.

• Matt was responsible for every one of the terrible decisions that triggered the school board recall — from renaming schools, to keeping our schools shut, to taking away merit admissions at Lowell HS. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Collins, Lopez and Moliga and would have been recalled alongwith them if eligible.

  

• Which is why our community earlier overwhelmingly voted against including Matt in the endorsement process … that’s how bad his track record is.

• These three candidates are also reported to be sharing the same political consultant with Matt Alexander. Its not clear what other agreements for collboaration were made between them.

• Despite multiple opportunites to engage with the group, answer questions and clarify the relationship neither candidate … John Jersin nor Parag Gupta … took the opportunity to clarify.

• Therefore our Facebook group, which serves as our exec or Guardian Council, voted 86% to rescind & redo these two endorsements.

So what’s next?

• This does not change our endorsement or support for the other two candidates — Supryia Ray and Laurance Lee. We are determined to help them win in November!

• We will re-run the endorsement process for the remaining two slots - look out for information on that soon!

How can you help?

• Support our endorsed candidates Supryia Ray and Laurance Lee get their campaigns off to a great start!

• You can contribute up to $500 to each of their campaigns:

  • Donate to Supryia here

  • Donate to Laurance here

• City-wide elections are expensive and our candidates need all the help they can get to rise up above the noise, especially in a presidential election year. So give them the maximum you can afford to give! Thank you!!!

SF Guardians | @sfguardians | sfguardians on Facebook

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