In school board elections across America, voters offer stunning rebuke of culture war politics

 

First came the classroom culture wars. Now, the backlash.

Conservative activists pushing for parents to have more of a say in what their children are taught in school suffered a series of high-profile losses in Tuesday’s election, dealing a major blow to a movement that has advocated for book bans and restrictions on classroom discussion about issues of gender and race.

Voters in multiple states rejected local school board candidates backed by groups such as Moms for Liberty, choosing moderate or liberal candidates instead.

Just over a third of the candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty won their races on Tuesday. The Florida-based nonprofit, which has been at the center of many of the battlers over school curricula, said 50 of the 139 school board candidates it endorsed were elected. The group’s track record for the entire year is only slightly better. Overall, the group said 44% of the candidates it has backed this year won their races.

Tiffany Justice, one of the Moms for Liberty founders, said she feels good about the election results even though the candidates backed by the group lost far more races than they won.

Pointing to the candidates who did win, Justice said, “That means you have 50 liberty-minded individuals that are going to go serve on school boards, that are going to put the focus back on the basics in school, and they’re going to make sure that parental rights are respected.”

Another group, the 1776 Project, said 58% of the candidates it endorsed – many of them in conservative areas – won. “Considering the national environment, we view that as a strong result,” said Ryan Girdusky, the group’s founder.

Since the runup to last year's midterm elections, the GOP has sought to strengthen its grip on local elections by targeting school board races across the country. New right-leaning political action committees began pouring money into school board races in the last cycle – a trend that continued into 2023 and is expected in 2024 – aiming to not only flip control of who governs schools but change education on a national scale.

But teachers’ unions, education activists and others portrayed the less-than-stellar showing by Moms for Liberty and other like-minded groups on Tuesday as a repudiation of their far-right agenda.

“These results underline what families have been telling us for the last two years: They don’t want culture wars. They want safe and welcoming public schools where their kids can recover and thrive,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Jon Valant, an expert on education policy, predicted the outcome of this year’s races could influence future elections as well.

“It’s going to cause school board candidates down the road to seriously question whether affiliating themselves with some of these far-right groups is good for their chances of getting elected,” said Valant, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

“I think a lot of them are going to come to the conclusion that it is not and that there’s too much risk that comes with associating with these groups,” Valant said.

Have voters had enough of the culture wars?

Local school boards in Ohio have become a battleground for the culture wars raging in schools. But voters signaled on Tuesday they’ve had enough.

In Stark County, which is in eastern Ohio, just one of nine candidates backed by Moms for Liberty was elected. The single successful candidate was an incumbent.

In the Cincinnati area, two of eight candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty won. Two others backed by a group called Ohio Value Voters also were elected. Ohio Value Voters controls a coalition that collects evidence from mostly anonymous tipsters that Ohio schools are indoctrinating children on critical race theory, comprehensive sex education and social and emotional learning.

In the Columbus area, several conservatives ran on culture war promises, including keeping transgender girls off girls’ sports teams, protecting parents’ rights, limiting diversity and inclusion efforts and curtailing sex education. Eight out of 10 of them lost.

Most of the candidates who campaigned on hot-button issues lost because “by and large voters aren’t looking for extremist candidates,” said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association.

Iowa voters delivered a near clean sweep for progressive school board candidates in the suburbs of Des Moines and in other high-profile races around the state. Advocacy groups across the political spectrum and local elected officials from both parties weighed in this year on Des Moines' suburban school board elections, which are nonpartisan but have taken a heated political turn in recent years.

Only one of the Iowa candidates formally endorsed by Moms for Liberty won a school board seat. Voters also rejected a slate of four candidates endorsed by The Family Leader, an influential Christian conservative group led by Bob Vander Plaats. Nearly all candidates promoted by local Republican elected officials also came up short in the Des Moines suburbs.

Jenn Turner, chair of the Moms For Liberty Polk County Chapter, said recent Iowa laws impacting education made parents more comfortable with what is happening inside schools. Some of them stayed on this sidelines this election, she said.

"Students use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their biological sex. Boys cannot play in girls sports," Turner said. “And sexually explicit books were removed from classrooms and school libraries across the state, and gender identity cannot be taught in K-6 classrooms."

"Our opponents did a good job in misinformation campaigns, telling the public that ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and other classics were being removed, when in fact, only books that had graphic depictions of sex acts or books suggesting porn sites were removed," she said.

Elsewhere, Democrats won five seats and seized control of the school board from Republicans in the Central Bucks School District in Pennsylvania by defeating candidates recommended by Moms for Liberty.

In Loudoun County, Virginia, which has faced the ire of conservative activists over its policies on transgender students, critical race theory and other issues, Democratic-endorsed candidates won or were leading in six of the nine school board races. Three of the four candidates backed by Moms for Liberty were defeated.

School boards and the emergence of dark money groups

David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political scientist, said Tuesday’s elections mark the end of “the stealth school board candidate.”

The emergence of “dark money” groups, which don’t disclose their donors, and the involvement of political action committees and advocacy groups helping culture warriors win in school board races has changed how the races are run, Niven said.

“What we’ve seen in the past in Ohio is folks with pretty far-out-there views could run without that much scrutiny and, sort of a victim of their own success, they have these formal and organized efforts and adjacent efforts helping to know just who is who,” he said.

Before, “it was a lot easier to present yourself as a concerned parent or concerned taxpayer or civic minded and not ever be confronted with ‘Do you want to ban books?’ Or, ‘You want to alter the curriculum or inject police into the schools?’” Niven said. “And now the effort is so much more brazen that it’s kind of a double-edged sword. They’re working harder to do this, but they’re almost at cross purposes with themselves.”

Justice, of Moms for Liberty, said her group is looking to expand its influence by getting involved in state Board of Education elections. Eighty-three percent of the candidates the group backed in November’s elections were first-time candidates, she said. With 50 winning, that means the group has helped 365 people get elected over the past two years.

“The bottom line is this: We are helping a whole new group of people get involved in the civic process and to come and try to reclaim or reform public education,” she said. “Teachers unions have had a lock on school board elections for years. We’re the new kid on the block.”

Valant, however, said the election results could be a sign that voters are losing the appetite for turning school issues into extreme partisan battles.

“These cultural war battles have been a real distraction for last couple of years and, I think, have caused some real harm in schools,” he said. “My hope is that a definite consequence of this is that we’re going to see school board members thinking harder about the trade-offs that come from affiliating with some of these groups.”

Valant said he also hopes the election signals the country is on track to “turning down the temperature a bit” on the culture wars.

by Michael Collins and Laura A. Bischoff, USA TODAY Contributing: Zachary Schermele, Chris Higgins, Samantha Hernandez and The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: School board election results offer rebuke of local culture warriors

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