Des Moines Election Proves Once Again You Can’t Fix Stupid

As the old man used to say, you can’t fix stupid. He had a cupboard full of old man aphorisms, but that one remains one of my favorites. 

The expression definitely fits the blue states and blue cities that just elected — or reelected — far-left politicians to lead them deeper into the promised land of failure. Apparently, these voters said, “We don’t have enough crime, homelessness, poverty, misery. Let’s throw some gas on this dumpster fire and see what happens.”

If anything, Tuesday’s elections underscored the left’s disinterest in accountability, at least when it comes to their candidates. Case in point, the Democrats of Des Moines. 

‘Radical Empathy’

Voters in Iowa’s capital city rewarded the people who hired an illegal immigrant with a long rap sheet to serve as the school district’s superintendent. Incumbents Maria Alonzo and Skylar Mayberry-Mayes were reelected to four-year terms in Tuesday’s school board election. Mayberry-Mayes ran uncontested. 

The incumbents were part of the seven-member board that unanimously voted in 2023 to hire DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) candidate Ian Roberts as superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools. In late September, the board members apparently were surprised to learn that the walking fraud they once gushed over was not only an illegal immigrant from Guyana, but that he had been in possession of a loaded handgun and $3,000 cash when he was apprehended in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement enforcement operation. 

The coming days would be difficult for a district led by School Board Chairwoman Jackie Norris, Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff and a Democrat with higher political aspirations. Even as evidence of Roberts’ not-so-secret past came to light, Norris called on Des Moines residents to “take a page out of Dr. Roberts’ book and ask the community to engage in radical empathy as we work through the situation together.”

Norris and the nation would soon learn that Roberts was no doctor. He had lied about receiving his doctoral degree from Morgan State University years before, among other suspect accomplishments on his resume. The Des Moines School Board knew that when they hired him to lead Iowa’s largest public school district, yet district officials frequently referred to him as Dr. Roberts, Iowa Public Radio reported. 

DEI Champion

Roberts certainly wasn’t forthcoming about his lengthy criminal record, which should have precluded him from remaining in the United States years ago. His rap sheet includes charges of criminal possession of narcotics with intent to sell dating back to 1996. Roberts has been convicted of reckless driving, multiple criminal weapons charges, and, in September, the accompanying charge of possession of firearms by an illegal immigrant. 

To be fair, Roberts had long slipped through the cracks, it seems. School systems that hired him, including Des Moines Public Schools, are now suing the consultant that recommended Roberts.

But district officials were more interested in what Roberts represented than the potential skeletons in his closet. In introducing the black educrat as Des Moines’ new superintendent in 2023, Teree Caldwell-Johnson, Des Moines Public Schools Board chairwoman at the time, emphasized Roberts’ DEI bona fides. 

“There is no question that our search yielded a strong and diverse pool of candidates — Cultural, racial, ethnic, gender and orientation diversity were represented in the candidates that we considered. The bottom line: this board delivered on all fronts,” Caldwell-Johnson said. The former school board president, who died last year following a battle with cancer, celebrated the fact that the board was looking for candidates with “diverse urban experience,” someone who “would champion DEI at all levels of the organization.” 

Checking to see whether that DEI champion might be an illegal alien with a troubling criminal record was less a priority. 

The Old Man Was Right

Norris saw the writing on the wall. Before the Roberts embarrassment, the current school board chairwoman said she would not seek another term. She instead announced her campaign for U.S Senate. After the scandal broke, Norris ended her Senate campaign. 

There had been talk of angry Des Moines residents turning out the bums behind the Roberts hire. That clearly didn’t happen. Alonzo easily won reelection. At a candidates forum put on by Des Moines Democrats, Alonzo conceded that the district’s hiring processes could be enhanced. She said transparency might help, too. 

The whole illegal immigrant bugaboo came at a really bad time for a district that was trying to sell voters on a $265 million referendum to fund its “Reimagining Education, Reinvigorating Schools” plan. Some residents wondered how they could trust the same school board that hired Roberts to be good stewards of their tax dollars. District officials spent the closing weeks of the campaign barnstorming for voter support. Think of the children, they said

They needn’t have worried. The bond issue passed with nearly three-quarters support. 

Accountability is hard to come by in Democrat-run governments. So is common sense in the the liberals who vote for failure over and over again. 

The old man was right. You can’t fix stupid.  

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.