“President Trump’s proposed budget is an out and out theft from the least of us to give to those with the most.” California needs “universal preschool, full-day mandatory kindergarten to make education a priority from preschool to graduate school.” President Trump’s budget “is a clear statement of his values. I do not believe it is reflective of what the majority of Californians believe.”

That is Bay Area Democrat Delaine Eastin in the April 5 San Jose Mercury News. The piece notes that she is a candidate for governor and a former state education superintendent but says nothing of her record in that powerful post. From 1995 to 2003 Eastin showcased the kind of values she would deploy as governor of California.

K-12 education gets the biggest share of the budget and the state education department (CDE) serves as a clearing house for state and federal funds, a gold mine for California’s far left. On Eastin’s watch, an interlocking directorate of “Community Based Organizations” (CBOs) sought money intended for the education of immigrant children, citizenship classes, and English language instruction. The leading CBO was Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, founded by Bert Corona, an old-line Stalinist of considerable ferocity.

Born in El Paso, Texas, Corona went to the University of Southern California on an athletic scholarship but dropped out to organize workers for the Communist Party. Corona remained a loyal CPUSA activist through the Stalin-Hitler Pact, the Khrushchev revelations of 1956, and the Gorbachev reforms. He defended East Germany, a leaden Stalinist dictatorship that gunned down those workers who dared to flee. On the home front, he was also active on immigration.

Bert Corona was a leading voice to substitute “undocumented” for “illegal” immigrants.

His Hermandad Mexicana registered non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections, a serious violation of federal law. Hermandad registered hundreds of illegals in 1996 and that contributed to the loss of Orange County Republican Bob Dornan, the outcome Corona sought. Democrat Loretta Sanchez was the beneficiary of the illegal votes.

Hermandad also misspent federal HHS grants and improperly spent employees’ withholding taxes. Deep in debt, Hermandad targeted the CDE and on Delaine Eastin’s watched Corona bagged some $7 million in grants. CDE investigators Robert Cervantes and James Lindberg discovered that this money was not being used for citizenship classes and English language instruction. Corona bought a house in Washington DC and other CBO bosses used the money for Mercedes-Benz automobiles, jewelry and such.

Corona caught wind of the investigation and told Cervantes “we are going to get you, pinche carbon.” Corona’s thugs began hanging around his residence and torching adjacent houses. This recalled Corona’s violence against Robert Cantu, a scholar at Cal State LA, where the unqualified Corona also taught. Five days after Cantu got tenure his car exploded into flames. Even so, Robert Cervantes did not back down from Corona’s threats.

Cervantes also fought back against Eastin, winning a monetary settlement and reinstatement in his job. Likewise, in 2002 a jury awarded Lindberg $4.5 million and held Delaine Eastin personally liable for nearly $1.4 million in non-economic damages and $150,000 in punitive damages because she had “acted with malice,” toward the whistleblower. The CDE appealed, but a Sacramento jury boosted Lindberg’s award to $7.6 million, an increase of more than $3 million.

Eastin told reporters that Lindberg no more deserved this award than “the man in the moon.” The courts thought otherwise, and the CDE appealed yet again, spending $1.2 million in legal fees to defend the department and Eastin, who no longer worked there, raiding educational programs to pay the legal bills.

Bert Corona died in 2001 but a charter school in Pacoima is named after him. The state’s establishment media ignore Corona’s Communist record and hail him as a champion of social justice and civil rights. Meanwhile, Hermandad Mexicana lives on and organizes demonstrations against federal efforts to deport violent criminal illegals.

One news report noted that Hermandad organized the anti-ICE, anti-Trump demonstration last month in Sacramento. On the other hand, no reporter checked whether the pro-illegal organization is still getting money from the California Department of Education. Hermandad and other pro-illegal groups might get millions more if Eastin becomes governor.

As state education superintendent, Delaine Eastin approved the diversion of public funds to a hatemongering Stalinist and punished those who exposed the corruption. That report card on her values and leadership has failed to emerge in the old-line establishment media since she announced for governor.

Billed as an “authentic feminist,” she explains, “I believe very strongly that we’re overdue to have a woman as the governor of the state of California.” It’s her turn, as the narrative has it, and for the establishment media her record doesn’t matter.

Like the powerful California Teachers Association, Eastin also opposes another Trump initiative, parental choice in education. In the candidate’s scale of values, African American and Hispanic students from low-income families should remain confined in dysfunctional and dangerous government schools.

With the reactionary CTA behind her, the “authentic feminist” has more than a fighting chance to make the sanctuary state of California even worse than it has become under recurring governor Jerry Brown.