Anaheim schools trustees appointed to their board Thursday a polarizing figure whom voters tossed off the school board in 2002 after, among other things, he proposed billing Mexico for educating illegal immigrants.
Harald Martin, a retired police officer who served on the school board for eight years, was appointed by a 3-1 vote to an Anaheim Union High School District board spot created by the death of Trustee Denise Mansfield-Reinking.
Martin is also known for a failed proposal to turn new students over to federal authorities if they could not prove they were in the country legally. He ran for the school board in November and came in seventh out of eight candidates.
The appointment immediately sparked rancor and talk of forcing a special election that would allow residents to vote on the replacement.
Alexandria Coronado, a conservative Republican who served with Martin on the Anaheim board for four years before being elected to the county Board of Education in 2002, called Martin "evil."
"He is the biggest racist I have ever met in my life," she said.
Members of the Latino community were appalled.
"It's like nominating [segregationist] George Wallace," said Art Montes, past president of Orange County's League of United Latin American Citizens.
Martin, 52, said he wanted to be on the board again because he felt he had unfinished business in raising district standards. He said he had no intention of revisiting the proposal to bill Mexico.
"Conceptually, it has proven to be a bad idea because it's divisive," he said, adding that he had proposed billing Mexico as a symbolic measure and never expected to get any money. But "what everyone missed in the whole jumping up and down, in the hysteria, all I was trying to do was get money for those kids in the school system."
The 37,000-student district serves seventh- through 12th-graders in Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, La Palma and Stanton. After Mansfield-Reinking died in May, 12 candidates applied to fill the post.
Trustee Thomas "Hoagy" Holguin supported Martin's appointment, based on his school board and police experience, as well as his roots in the community. He said Martin brought up the proposal to bill Mexico during the interview process and apologized for the controversy it brought to the district.
