Over the past few years, elections for public education officials have shifted from being overlooked and low-profile to becoming heated and politicized affairs, largely due to conservatives increasingly targeting schools as places where they can exert significant influence and push a specific agenda.
Moms for Liberty, a far-right group that emerged in Florida during the COVID pandemic and has since expanded its campaign nationwide for various conservative causes, has played a significant role in this shift. The so-called “parental rights” organization has thrown its support behind school board candidates across the country who have gone on to ban books, implement policies that harm LGBTQ+ kids, and restrict what teachers can do and say in their classrooms.
In 2022, more than half of the candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty won their races, with those in Florida experiencing particular success. However, the group’s efforts in Pennsylvania the following year were largely unsuccessful.
This year, the group has identified 77 candidates for endorsements but has not publicly released the list.
“We continue to strive to have all voters across the country engage in their local school board elections and get to know the candidates because we know that change happens at the local level,” Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich said in an emailed statement to HuffPost. “We have seen an incredible win rate the past two years that shows the power of our grassroots organization and we are excited to see that same kind of win rate this year.”
Despite keeping a lower public profile than in previous elections, the group’s impact is evident. Far-right extremists across the country are seeking to join school boards and reshape public education.
The blueprint for a right-wing, Moms for Liberty-style candidate has been established, and conservatives are following suit. These candidates typically oppose “critical race theory,” a college-level academic framework for understanding structural racism that has been misappropriated by conservatives to mean discussing race at all and making white individuals uncomfortable. They falsely assert that books addressing gender or sexual identity are inherently pornographic. They may smear teachers as groomers, target and ostracize transgender children at school.
Parental rights and the fight to prevent trans kids from participating in sports are now Republican talking points at all levels of government.
“The work of Moms for Liberty may not be as visible. But the rhetoric they employ and their candidates are very much visible,” Tamika Walker Kelly, the president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, told HuffPost.
In blue, red, and purple states alike, this election is shaping up to have dozens of fiercely contested school board races featuring right-wing candidates pitted against their more liberal counterparts, all hoping to shape the next generation of public school students.
North Carolina
There is perhaps no state where the stakes are higher for public education than in North Carolina. Some of the largest school districts in the state could end up with an ultraconservative majority, and the Republican candidate for the top statewide educational role attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the U.S. Capitol and lacks experience in education.
The Wake County school board, the state’s largest school system, is at the center of the battle for North Carolina’s schools. Five of the board’s nine seats are up for grabs.
This is not the first time that right-wingers have attempted to influence Wake County schools. In 2009, following a Tea Party takeover of the school board that led to the weakening of long-standing integration policies, Democrats took action and have managed to maintain a liberal school board for the past fifteen years.
However, Republicans in Wake County are once again trying to make inroads in the schools. Conservative activists have sought to ban books in the county and recently stirred up a moral panic about sexually explicit content in schools after a high school student claimed that a book she read in class was inappropriate. (The book in question was “Tomorrow Is Too Far” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which portrays a relationship between cousins and contains the line “he tried to fit what you both called his banana into what you both called your tomato.”)
To Democrats, the GOP agenda is clear. “Their goal is to eliminate public schools,” Kevyn Creech, the chair of the Wake County Democrats, told HuffPost. “They want to abolish the Department of Education, make everything religious, and privatize it all.”
Democratic leaders are particularly concerned because a Republican victory for state superintendent, coupled with GOP wins at the county level, could create a perfect storm.
The state superintendent for public instruction oversees over 2,500 schools in North Carolina and an $11 billion budget. The race is between Democrat Mo Green, the former superintendent of Guilford County schools, and Republican Michele Morrow, who homeschooled her own children.
After defeating the Republican incumbent in March, Morrow made headlines when CNN revealed that she had attended the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection with her children. (There is no evidence that she entered the Capitol building or committed any crimes.) She has also called for the execution of prominent Democrats and created a video suggesting that former President Donald Trump should use the U.S. military to retain power after losing the 2020 election.
Morrow ran for school board in Wake County in 2022 and lost by 20 points. As a candidate for superintendent, she has launched homophobic and transphobic attacks against Green and vowed to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from the state’s schools and censor what teachers can say in the classroom.
Educators believe that a Morrow victory would lead the state’s schools down a dark path.
“Morrow and her extremist agenda will push our public schools further behind,” Walker Kelly said. “We will continue to see the further underfunding and disrespect of our public school system.”
The state superintendent would work closely with the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly — meaning Morrow could wield influence over the schools and promote her extremist agenda, which focuses on white conservative Christian ideology.
“As a department of the state, there’s still enough power to do damage to public schools,” Walker Kelly said.
South Carolina
In South Carolina, the school board race in Berkeley County, a Charleston suburb, is shaping up to feature right-wing candidates seeking to solidify a Moms for Liberty-style agenda against a group of candidates who have branded themselves as the “education over politics” group. Five of the board’s nine seats are up for grabs.
Moms for Liberty has already left its mark in the county. In 2022, six of the new board members were endorsed by the group. One of their initial actions was to dismiss the superintendent and ban critical race theory.
Last year, Angelina Davenport, a parent in the school district and a Moms for Liberty member, challenged 93 books in the Berkeley County school district, leading to a costly and time-consuming review of each book. Now, she is running for school board on a parental rights platform.
During a school board meeting, she argued that the books she challenged were “unconstitutional and ungodly.”
“Why is it acceptable to make choices for my child, choices I’m not involved in, choices I do not agree with?” she questioned. Board members informed Davenport that she was free to opt her child out of any material she found objectionable.
Maryland
Further north in Maryland, there is another school board race with at least one extreme candidate.
In Anne Arundel County, home to the state’s capital of Annapolis, all seven seats on the board are up for election. One candidate, Chuck Yocum, is running on parental rights and advocating for barring transgender students from participating in sports teams that align with their gender identity. His campaign website includes a lengthy diatribe about how public schools were once good but have been ruined by teachers unions and the establishment of the Department of Education.
“Unions, once seen as champions of fairness, are now trying to take away parents’ rights and place biological males in female locker rooms and sports,” he wrote. “Something that until recently would have resulted in a young man being arrested. Now, it’s encouraged.”
Yocum, a former high school teacher, was dismissed from his position in 1993 after being charged with child sexual abuse. He was acquitted at trial the following year and worked in administrative roles until his retirement this year.