Former Sacramento mayor reenters politics in Hawaiʻi after dual scandals
Allegations of sexual assault, shady handling of public education follow former mayor Kevin Johnson and his wife, former D.C. school system chancellor Michelle Rhee, as they try to remake themselves in Hawaiʻi politics.
On January 18, 2017, the Hawaiʻi State Legislature convened the 29th Biennium Legislative Session. During his remarks, Senate President Kouchi introduced to the audience in the senate gallery Kevin Johnson, the former Mayor of Sacramento and a former professional basketball player. Kouchi proudly announced that “he has been meeting with Johnson and hopes to work with him to address many of the concerns in Hawaiʻi that mirror those of the Mayor’s hometown.”
Johnson and his wife, Michelle Rhee, a former school system chancellor in Washington, D.C., are proponents of charter school expansion and, it seems, Senator Kouchi invited them to Hawaiʻi to consult on the state of our public education system.
In addition to his appearance on opening day, Johnson has been making the rounds with legislators at other venues. He was most recently spotted last week at the Hawaii Business magazine “20 for the Next 20” event.
There are a couple big problems here.
First and foremost, Johnson is an alleged serial perpetrator of sexual assault, something that has been covered extensively in the media, including on HBO’s “Real Sports” news program. Among other allegations, Johnson was said to have used his standing in the community to keep his teenaged victims, many of whom he mentored, from coming forward.
While it’s possible that Senator Kouchi does not know about the allegations of sexual misconduct against Johnson, it seems unlikely. Wouldn’t staff at Kouchi’s office have done at least a cursory Google search on him?
But there seems little doubt that Kouchi must know about Johnson’s and Rhee’s track record of advocating in favor of school vouchers, including at events funded by controversial Trump Administration Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos: after all, they are clearly billing themselves as experts on the subject. And that is scary.
While Michelle Rhee was chancellor of the Washington, D.C. school system, she closed a number of Washington D.C. schools without any public hearings. She also made unsubstantiated claims that she had improved test scores from the 13th percentile to the 90th. Her eventual approval rating dropped to 43 percent before she finally resigned.
Kouchi’s stated intention to seek guidance from questionable former public administrators-turned advocates for the privatization of essential public goods like education could carry with it serious repercussions for Hawaiʻi’s students, teachers and taxpayers far into the future.
