[ “Don’t assume that a blanket message on critical race theory
or transgender issues is going to claim every district,” one GOP
activist said.]
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WHY GOP CULTURE WARRIORS LOST BIG IN SCHOOL BOARD RACES THIS MONTH  
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Juan Perez Jr.
April 17, 2023
Politico
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_ “Don’t assume that a blanket message on critical race theory or
transgender issues is going to claim every district,” one GOP
activist said. _

"Fortunately, the voters saw through the hidden extremists who were
running for school board — across the [Chicago] suburbs especially,"
Gov. JB Pritzker told reporters after last week’s election. , Susan
Walsh/AP Photo

 

Amid all the attention on this month’s elections in Wisconsin and
Illinois, one outcome with major implications for 2024 flew under the
national radar: School board candidates who ran culture-war campaigns
flamed out.

Democrats and teachers’ unions boasted candidates they backed in
Midwestern suburbs trounced their opponents in the once-sleepy races.
The winning record, they said, was particularly noticeable in
elections where conservative candidates emphasized agendas packed with
race, gender identity and parental involvement in classrooms.

While there’s no official overall tally of school board results in
states that held an array of elections on April 4, two conservative
national education groups did not dispute that their candidates posted
a losing record. Liberals are now making the case that their winning
bids for school board seats in Illinois and Wisconsin show they can
beat back Republican attacks on divisive education issues.

The results could also serve as a renewed warning to Republican
presidential hopefuls like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis: General
election voters are less interested in crusades against critical race
theory and transgender students than they are in funding schools and
ensuring they are safe.

“Where culture war issues were being waged by some school board
candidates, those issues fell flat with voters,” said Kim Anderson,
executive director of the National Education Association labor union.
“The takeaway for us is that parents and community members and
voters want candidates who are focused on strengthening our public
schools, not abandoning them.”

[A sign is displayed at the entrance of the headquarters for Chicago
Public Schools.]

Labor groups and Democratic operatives are flexing over the defeat of
candidates they opposed during races that took place near Chicago. |
Scott Olson/Getty Images

The results from the Milwaukee and Chicago areas are hardly the last
word on the matter. Thousands more local school elections are set
for later this year in some two dozen states. They are often low
turnout, low profile, and officially nonpartisan affairs, and
conservatives say they are competing aggressively.

“We lost more than we won” earlier this month, said Ryan Girdusky,
founder of the conservative 1776 Project political action committee,
which has ties to GOP megadonor and billionaire Richard Uihlein and
endorsed an array of school board candidates this spring and during
the 2022 midterms.

“But we didn’t lose everything. We didn’t get obliterated,”
Girdusky told POLITICO of his group’s performance. “We still
pulled our weight through, and we just have to keep on pushing forward
on this.”

Labor groups and Democratic operatives are nevertheless flexing over
the defeat of candidates they opposed during races that took place
near Chicago, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in
support from state Democrats and the attention of Democratic Gov. JB
Pritzker, and in Wisconsin. Conservative board hopefuls also saw mixed
results in Missouri and Oklahoma.

Democrats hope the spring school election season validates their
playbook: Coordinate with local party officials, educator unions and
allied community members to identify and support candidates who wield
an affirming pro-public education message — and depict competitors
as hard-right extremists.

Yet despite victories in one reliably blue state and one notorious
battleground, liberals are still confronting Republican momentum this
year that could resemble November’s stalemated midterm results for
schools
[[link removed]] and
keep the state of education divided along partisan lines.

Conservative states are already carrying out sharp restrictions on
classroom lessons, LGBTQ students, and library books. And they are
beginning to refine their message to appeal to moderates.

Trump, DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former South
Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and other Republican presidential
hopefuls are leaning
[[link removed]] on
school-based wedge issues
[[link removed]] to
court primary voters in a crowded White House campaign.

That rhetoric, combined with Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn
Youngkin’s ability to harness voter frustration with education as
part of his upset victory in 2021, has inspired a wave of conservative
challengers to run for school board seats.

[Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks to members of the press.]

Education was central to Glenn Youngkin’s win, though his political
advisers have stressed the campaign’s success was based on building
custom messaging models. | John C. Clark/AP Photo

Once the domain for everyday academic concerns, mild-mannered
bureaucracy, and the occasional controversy, school boards became a
lightning rod for the right during pandemic lockdowns plus a national
reckoning with gender identity and race.

Critical race theory was an obscure academic legal framework used to
examine racism in American institutions. But it has been reframed by
conservative activists to encompass broad complaints about issues
related to diversity.

Conservatives have also seized on transgender students to rejuvenate a
social agenda that includes a push to restrict transgender athletes in
sports, gender-affirming medical care and access to LGBTQ-affirming
library materials.

“What I was most surprised by was just the sheer prevalence of these
Republican candidates,” said Ben Hardin, executive director of the
Democratic Party of Illinois, after his party made an unprecedented
decision to endorse dozens of local school and library board
candidates and funnel nearly $300,000 into those elections.

“Obviously this is not a new phenomenon,” Hardin said in an
interview. “But to see it so widespread here in Illinois, across the
state in regions that are across the partisanship spectrum, was what
was most interesting to me.”

In Oswego, Ill., a small community in Chicago’s far southwestern
suburbs, the 1776 Project supported four candidates
[[link removed]] running
as part of a “We The Parents
[[link removed]]” slate on a platform
aligned with the conservative parental rights movement. Each of those
candidates lost [[link removed]], including to one
candidate endorsed by a local Illinois Federation of Teachers
affiliate.

The race, like many others across the region, featured core concerns
that are often splitting school communities today.

The Chicago Tribune reported
[[link removed]] Oswego’s
We The Parents slate received support
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the local Stamp Act political action committee
[[link removed]], which proclaims it will “fight to
preserve our cultural and religious heritage” and “resist attempts
by the Left to transform and reshape American society.”

The conservative Awake Illinois [[link removed]] group,
which has opposed critical race theory and gender-affirming medical
care for children, weighed in too.

A group of conservative candidates in the wealthy Chicago suburb of
Barrington who were backed by the 1776 PAC, Moms For America Action
[[link removed]] and
Awake Illinois also lost their school board bids.

“Fortunately, the voters saw through the hidden extremists who were
running for school board — across the [Chicago] suburbs
especially,” Pritzker told reporters after last week’s election
[[link removed]].
“I’m glad that those folks were shown up and, frankly, tossed
out.”

Overall, the 1776 Project PAC endorsed 14 candidates but won six
races
[[link removed]] in
Illinois. Other conservatives also notched wins in Illinois, including
two candidates who claimed seats in a suburban high school district
[[link removed]] in
Lockport Township, Ill. over two union-endorsed aspirants.

The Democratic Party of Illinois said 84 of 117 candidates the party
recommended won their April 4 races. The Illinois Education
Association, the state affiliate of the National Education
Association, said it won nearly 90 percent of the races where it
endorsed candidates.

“Part of the reason we did so well is because of how we are
organized,” said Kathi Griffin, president of the Illinois Education
Association. “The state organization does not tell the local
affiliates who to support. It is the local affiliates that do the
interviewing of candidates, have relationships with the community and
with the parents. They are the ones that make the decision, then they
reach out to us” to ask for support.

Teacher unions are also celebrating a school board victory in a
bellwether community in suburban Milwaukee.

Brian Schimming, chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, described
the Wauwatosa School Board election last month as “an important race
for the whole state
[[link removed]].”

Schimming promoted candidates known as the “Three Tosa Dads
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who emphasized a platform centered on school safety and academic
performance after the Republican National Committee last year
encouraged candidates to broaden their message beyond culture wars
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court independent voters with a more nuanced message focused on
parental involvement and student educational development.

Wauwatosa’s GOP-backed aspirants still lost by wide margins
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teacher union-supported candidates. The 1776 Project won slightly
less than half
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the nearly 50 Wisconsin races
[[link removed]] it
endorsed candidates in.

Other efforts led by Wisconsin Republicans were more successful.

In Waukesha County, where voters heavily favored
[[link removed]] Trump in
the 2020 election, the local party successfully endorsed dozens
of area school board candidates
[[link removed]] as
part of a “WisRed Initiative” to dominate local government races.

But Moms For Liberty, a newly prominent conservative group that helps
train and endorse school board candidates, said just eight of its
candidates won races in Wisconsin last week. The group had endorsed
candidates in another 20 elections, its founders said.

“We are hopeful that as more people learn about Moms For Liberty and
contribute to our PAC, we will be able to win more races,”
organization co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich said in a
statement. “The majority of those [endorsements] were first time
candidates who did not win, and that just gives us a great bench of
folks to have trained and ready to run again to fight for parental
rights in future elections.”

The results offer lessons to both parties as they eye even more board
elections this year.

Education was central to Youngkin’s win, though his political
advisers have stressed the campaign’s success was based on building
custom messaging models targeted at different groups of voters instead
of relying on a single message.

Conservative school campaigns should heed similar advice, Girdusky
argued.

“Don’t assume that a blanket message on critical race theory or
transgender issues is going to claim every district — it’s very
personalized,” he said. “If it’s happening in that district,
speak to it in volumes. But don’t tell parents something is
happening if it’s not happening, because then it doesn’t look like
you’re running a serious operation.”

_Juan Perez Jr. is an education reporter for POLITICO Pro._

 

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