September 08, 2010 09:46 PM UTC

Effort to Recall Andrea Merida Underway

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

There’s really no reason that a freshman member of the Denver School Board should be getting as much publicity as Andrea Merida has received in the last year. But then again, there’s really no reason that a Denver School Board member should have made so many pointless, and avoidable, mistakes in less than one year.

So it is that the large Denver newspaper is reporting that a recall effort has begun to remove Merida from the Denver School Board. We can’t say we’re surprised at this; we wrote in late July that her political career was probably coming to an end sooner than she expected. As we said after it was revealed that Merida had been working for the Andrew Romanoff campaign in a paid position, at the same time that she was openly attacking Sen. Michael Bennet (who was the former Denver Schools Superintendent):

Merida seems to think it is an important point that she endorsed Romanoff before she was hired by his campaign, which, of course, is completely irrelevant. And her defiant “to suggest that my work on the Denver Board of Education is for sale” statement misses the point that it was her own nondisclosure that brought up the question in the first place.

The fact that she was a paid staffer for the campaign trying to bring down the former head of Denver Public Schools, and did not disclose this, all the while politicizing the DPS board’s policymaking in ways that directly sought to benefit the campaign she was employed by, provokes grave questions about Andrea Merida’s fitness to serve in any capacity. The fact that Merida barely seems to understand why it was wrong in the first place only makes those questions grow louder.

Once the petition language is certified, supporters of the recall (led by community activist Jose Silva) have 60 days to collect 4,032 signatures from registered voters living in Merida’s District 2 (which is Southwest Denver, South of 6th Ave. and West of I-25), which is not really an onerous task. If sufficient signatures are gathered, a two-part ballot would be presented to voters; one question would be to approve the recall, with the second question a choice between a new group of candidates.

Merida has stumbled over her own feet literally from day one on the School Board, and we’d be surprised if she’s still on the Board this time next year.