CASTLE ROCK, Colo. – Union endorsement? What union endorsement?

That’s been the reaction of two candidates running for the Douglas County, Colorado school board.

The current school board in recent years has exposed the Douglas County Federation of Teachers’ opposition to school choice and other performance-based reforms, highlighted the union’s detrimental impact on school finances, and voted to end its relationship with the DCFT. The parents and taxpayers in the right-leaning district have largely supported that decision.

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Many in education view the Douglas County school board contest as a bellwether race for education reform. The unions would love nothing more than to put a dent in the reformers’ current 7-0 majority on the board, and they’ve endorsed four candidates to carry their torch.

But two of those candidates  – Barbara Chase Burke and Julie Keim, don’t want any part of it.

Chase Burke “took to the Facebook page of the pro-union group Speak for DCSD to respond to the ‘mischaracterization’ that ‘I am a UNION candidate. I am NOT,” according to the Colorado Observer.

“I am not too liberal and I have nothing to do with the union,” she wrote.

Keim also denied any involvement with the union.

“I have not had any direct contact from the union about an endorsement, nor have I received any written documentation to support an endorsement,” she told the Observer. “I do not reference this endorsement when asked, because as far as I’m concerned, it does not exist.”

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It’s interesting to see school board candidates step back from the teachers union, when in the vast majority of school districts across the country they typically clamor for the union label.

The thanks-but-no-thanks response from the union’s chosen candidates is a clear sign that public opinion in Douglas County is strongly against the union’s agenda.

Regardless, local Republican Party chairman Craig Steiner thinks the whole debacle is making both the union and its endorsed candidates look foolish in more ways than one.

“It seems strange that each and every candidate the union endorsed claimed to be ‘surprised’ to be endorsed,” Steiner told the Observer. “If they were all surprised to be endorsed, does that mean the union made endorsements without talking to a single candidate?

“You’d think the union would want to get to know the people they’re endorsing before doing so. For them to endorse candidates without knowing them and without reaching out to other candidates in the race seems pretty reckless.”