According to an article* in archives of the North County Times written by NCTimes reporter Michael J. Williams, Jim Gibson received $9000 for his successful 2002 Vista Unified School Board campaign from the Lincoln Club of San Diego County--a fund raising arm of the San Diego Republican Party.
The Lincoln Club of San Diego County is the same organization whose current president T.J. Zane says that public employees 'are like drug addicts and taxes are their drug of choice.'
In the November 2002 article entitled, "Funds pour in for two VUSD candidates," Jim Gibson is quoted as saying, "the Lincoln Club representatives just like my philosophy...these people know me."
The reporter in this November 1, 2002 article points out for the first and only time in any North County article that Jim Gibson was a former Republican Central Committee member.
Jim Gibson also said he viewed the 2002 VUSD school board race as between Republicans and Democrats and that is how he has treated all subsequent school board elections.
The position of school board is a NON-PARTISAN position. In California there are no party affiliations listed in the Voters Guide because in our state party affiliation is irrelevant. The first priority of all elected non partisan school board members is supposed to be to getting the best education possible for local students. There are not supposed to be party politics, nor party grandstanding, nor use of the office for political advancement. The office is supposed to be about putting the education of our children ahead of all else.
Jim Gibson does not seem to understand the NON-PARTISAN concept. Like all bullies, he is always looking for an unfair advantage to take for the advancement of his personal power and influence.
The race in 2002 was one in which a registered Republican and school board incumbent, Letha McWey received NO support from the local arm of the local Republican party, the Lincoln Club of San Diego County. That is correct. An incumbent VUSD school board member, who was a Republican in good standing, received ZERO money from the local Republican Party.
Not so odd you think. It was a NON PARTISAN race. So nobody should have received money from a POLITICAL PARTY.
Yet one person did indeed receive money from a political party. Running as a Republican for a NON PARTISAN office, School board member (Jim Gibson) on the same VUSD school board as Letha received NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS from the Republican Party.
How strange that he received any POLITICAL PARTY money at all in a non partisan race. Stranger still that the other incumbent (Letha McWey) who was also registered as a Republican, received ZERO money from the Republican Party. Could Letha's snub have anything to do with Jim Gibson's POLITICAL connections on the Republican Central Committee?
Another similar odd incident happened four years before in the 1998 school board campaign, the first school board election in which Jim Gibson ran for VUSD school board. Letha McWey was at the time, a first term school board incumbent. The incident happened at the local North County women's Republican club. Their meetings were held at the Shadowridge Country Club.
The women's Republican club had invited all the Republican School candidates to speak at their regular October 1998 meeting. Letha McWey, as a registered Republican and prominent, incumbent VUSD school board member running for re-election , came to the meeting to speak. I also attended, as I, too, am a registered Republican. I came to support Letha whom I had known for the last a decade through Y Indian Guides. I, and several other of her supporters, expected to applaud wildly after her chance at the podium.
The event was advertised as a forum for Republicans school board candidates to address this North County Republican women's Club. A little odd, seeing that it was a non partisan race but still we went to support Letha.
The Republican women of Shadowridge allowed Jim Gibson to make his campaign speech at the podium in the front. His speech was filled with very impressive and very emotional, but wholly fabricated, stories about how he and his family had been picked on by evil, union thug, school teachers. The 'supposed' abuse in his most prominent fictional story had purportedly happened at a recent school board meeting where he spoke. I happened to have attended that meeting.
His story(ies) had no basis in fact or reality, but the Shadowridge Republican Women members ate them up--applauding loudly at his 'bravery'. They were the typical "poor Jimmy" stories, he has become so famous for. None of Republican women had been at the school board meeting. How could they know he was lying? In his stories, he cast himself as the lone voice for the taxpayers who was being bullied by those mean teachers. Had I not been at the meeting in question, I might even have believed Jim Gibson. He is a very convincing raconteur.
Letha was ready to speak next. She was sitting up front at the candidates table not with us in the audience. But when her time came to speak, the chair denied her the podium!
The chair 'dissed' Letha to her face while all of us sitting at her table of supporters looked on in shock.
The chair was refusing to allow a Republican candidate for VUSD school board to have equal time with another Republican candidate. We could not believe it. What was going on?
There Letha was, a registered Republican who had paid to attend a meeting advertised as a Republican school board candidate forum and she was not allowed to speak! She had a table full of supporters who had also paid to attend. How rude! How wholly unfair! Why?
Neither she nor we, her supporters, made a scene. We left quietly at the conclusion of the meeting. We were bewildered by this turn of events.
Only some Republicans were allowed to be heard. Other Republicans were silenced. Letha was silenced. Her views were not heard.
Only much later did we find out about Jim Gibson being on the Republican Central Committee. Apparently Gibson had used his influence to prevent her from speaking at Shadowridge Women's Republican Club.
Jim is not a nice guy. He does not like competition. The free enterprise of ideas is something he avoids. He hates to allow folks with actual facts to contradict his made up stories. He prefers folks only hear his fables of personal heroism against the terrible bullies that pick on him, cheat taxpayers, and don't educate children in VUSD.
One of the reasons Gibson opposed Letha McWey in the 2002 election was that she had voted as part of the three person, fiduciary responsible, majority in favor of a Board Resolution to support Proposition 47. She had supported our local bond, Prop O. She also advocated for the immediate building of the third high school which Jim Gibson opposed and was in the process of trying to kill through delays.
More unbelievably Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti VOTED AGAINST a VUSD resolution in support of Prop 47, the state school bond potentially worth tens of millions of dollars to our district, the district that they were school board members of and supposedly running for the benefit of students and taxpayers.
At the time Gibson and Guffanti voted supporting Prop 47, it was projected to provide as much as 103 million dollars for school construction in VUSD!
Thankfully this state school construction proposition did ultimately pass, but with no help from Jim Gibson or Dr. Stephen Guffanti.
Jim Gibson was Letha McWey's political enemy because she supported fact based public education in 1998 election when both he and Letha were elected. He remained her political enemy in the 2002 election when he was re-elected and Letha lost.
Jim has apparently used his considerable political influence with the local Republican party to hurt Letha because she had supported both our local school bond, Prop O, passed in March of 2002, and the statewide school construction bond (Prop 47) resolution which brought so much more money to our district for new schools. Jim has never been in favor of building new public schools that teach a fact based curriculum.
Jim mostly subverted Letha chances because he could. Bullies are like that. Bullies fear competition. Bullies fear facts and fairness. Bullies make up stories when confronted with the facts of their misdeeds. Bullies cheat to win. Jim Gibson fits the description of a bully to a 'T'.
*NOTE: The North County Times archives have been corrupted apparently by a virus, so the article may no longer be available. Most from before 2005 are not. I have a cut out copy of the article and can reproduce it for anyone interested.
ADDITIONAL EDITOR NOTE AND CORRECTION:
After I first posted this article a few days ago, I realized that the incident at the North County women's Republican Club where Letha McWey was publicly snubbed by her fellow Republican women must have happened in the 1998 school board campaign, not the 2002. My apologies for any confusion it may have caused. My only excuse is 'old man brain'. Sorry.
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