Unions have always played a role in financing local Board of Education elections, with hefty contributions from the construction trades, teachers, and service workers unions.

But one race in particular on November’s ballot is a clear indication of unions flexing their political muscle and turning their back on a candidate they formerly supported to boost the prospects of one of their own.

Nasreen Michelle Johnson is seeking to retain her Area 2 seat on the State Center Community College District Board of Trustees. Her opponent is Pablo Villagrana, president of the Iron Workers Local 155. Johnson is director of community relations for Caglia Environmental.

Villagrana is scooping up the union backing and financial support that Johnson had enjoyed in her runs for the Fresno Unified School Board, Fresno County Board of Supervisors, and her 2020 campaign for the State Center board.

He’s also attracting support from three members of the Fresno City Council — Tyler Maxwell, Annalisa Perea, and Nelson Esparza — who have donated nearly $15,000 from their respective campaign treasuries. That’s close to half of what Villagrana’s campaign has reported raising as of Monday.

The remainder of his $31,790 campaign treasury comes from a handful of labor organizations, including the Iron Workers Local from San Francisco. The largest reported contribution was $5,000 from the State Center Federation of Teachers. But a union official said Tuesday that SCFT had voted Monday night to donate an additional $5,000 to Villagrana’s campaign.

Related Story: Where Nearly $2 Billion in School Bonds Go, Union and Construction Money Flow

Union Dollars Evaporate for Johnson

Johnson’s campaign is reporting no contributions from labor so far this year. By contrast, in 2018 when she was running for the Fresno Unified School Board, Johnson’s campaign reported $9,750 in contributions from unions. In 2019, when she was running for Fresno County Board of Supervisors, her campaign collected $109,509 from union sources, and the next year when she ran for State Center, her campaign logged $38,020 from unions.

Her last reported union donation was $2,500 from the Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 246 in 2023.

Dillon Savory, executive director of the Fresno-Madera-Tulare-Kings Central Labor Council, said the council in the past has tried to educate elected officials on topics such as project labor agreements in hopes of a positive outcome, but that hasn’t always been the case.

“So we are going into an era now of we’re going to have multiple labor-friendly candidates in each race,” he said. “… What we have elected in the past couple of years are folks that are more open to labor and that are willing to at least hold the line for labor. What we need going forward are people that are going to fight for labor when the administrative bodies at these municipalities and school districts tell the trustees that this is one of those toss-up issues.

“So we often get elected officials that feel all the labor says one thing, but the administration says the other, I’m going to stay in the middle. And back in the day, they would just go with the administration. Now we got people in the middle, and now we need to turn them firmly to us. We want elected officials that will fight the administration when we prove to them that the administration is being anti-labor.”

And Villagrana is “stepping up to be a fighter for labor,” Savory said.

Villagrana did not return phone calls and email seeking comment.

Focus on Trades Programs

Jason Carns, a veteran political strategist working on Villagrana’s campaign, says that his “major concern” for State Center is the trades training programs.

“As you know, the community college districts are basically where most people in the community go to get a trade certificate. Whether it be iron work or sheet metal or carpentry, it’s a six-month program. And the community college districts are the base for those programs,” Carns said. “And so that is why Pablo is particularly interested in that. He wants to ensure those programs are supported and expanded. Pablo himself came out of poverty, near Lowell Elementary School, and the trade works have allowed him to have a middle-class lifestyle. And he hopes that other poor children in this community could have the same advantages he did.”

Not only has Johnson lost the union support she had in 2020, she’s also lost the assistance of Carns, who advised her campaign four years ago.

In June, Johnson filed a suit in small claims court against Carns for $12,500, claiming that he had “significantly” breached his contract with her for political consulting services when he notified her in February that he was dropping her and working for Villagrana.

The suit says Carns had been working with her since 2023 on her reelection campaign and alleges that the amount owed “was calculated by assessing the financial, reputational, and consequential damages to the Plaintiff’s campaign as a result of the breach of contract and subsequent actions of the Defendant by representing her opponent.”

Hustling Harder for Campaign Support

Johnson said the loss of union donations has reduced the number of her campaign’s big donors. But she’s continuing to hold fundraisers, enlist volunteers, and order signs and literature.

As of Monday, Johnson’s campaign reported raising $10,220, the majority from contributions of $100 or less.

“Campaigns either have a handful of large donors and then they don’t have a need to kind of hustle and get the smaller donors. And then, some campaigns like this one of mine, you might not have some of the large donors,” she said. “So you do have to connect with the community in a different way and ask for their individual support. And, you know, $20, $50, whatever they can donate, or their time. The thing that hasn’t gone away for me is that I still have broad community support.”

Johnson said she’s mystified as to why labor unions thought she was not enough of an advocate, especially after she pushed for better pay and benefits for State Center’s part-time faculty. But she said she always makes her decisions after weighing their impact on all stakeholders and all members of the community while keeping in mind the district’s goal of educating students.

Conflict of Interest?

Awarding construction projects are only a small portion of trustees’ workload, and it might not be something that Villagrana can even weigh in on if he’s elected since he’s an employee of the construction industry, Johnson said.

State Center’s conflict of interest bylaws bar board members from participating in debates or votes on contracts in which they may have a financial interest.

“Because my opponent is directly associated with, being the president of his labor union, I’m not really clear on if he would even be allowed to vote on a PLA, because if his sole job is to go and get contracts and work for his union, wouldn’t that make it a direct benefit from a PLA for the district?” she said.

Tom Holyoke, a political science professor at Fresno State, said he believes the law is clear that any public official whose profession creates a conflict of interest has to abstain, and that should apply whether there is a direct benefit or even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

This is the same problem that people now have with Supreme Court justices who are not abstaining when they appear to have conflicts of interest, he said.

A Political Outsider?

Johnson said she thinks there’s another reason why she’s the only State Center incumbent facing an opponent. Trustees Danielle Parra and Deborah Ikeda are running unopposed, and newcomer Austin B. Ewell III was the only candidate to file for the seat held by longtime Trustee Richard Caglia, who isn’t seeking reelection.

She says she thinks she rocked the boat by supporting a community-drawn redistricting map, which wound up leaving her very little of her original area but which she believes was the right map for the entire community.

Area 2 now includes most of northeast Fresno and a portion of central Clovis.

She says she’s viewed as a “political outsider” who is not a member of a multi-generational local political family, nor part of a coalition.

“There isn’t a Middle Eastern coalition for politics that I’m aware of. And I’m one of the few openly LGBTQ members elected in our community. And so I think all of those things kind of made me a target,” she said. “And it’s unfortunate because it’s about doing the work, in my opinion. I’m a public servant and I take in all the information and I make decisions, on behalf of the people.”