Fed-up parents in one Northern Virginia county turned their battle with local schools over critical race theory, transgender policies, and mask mandates into a defining national issue — and the linchpin of Tuesday’s tight gubernatorial race.
Though its population is less than half of neighboring Fairfax County, parental groups’ revolts against the school board have made Loudoun County ground zero for cultural battles that have given Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin an 11th-hour boost over Democratic challenger Terry McAuliffe.
The GOP is hoping Youngkin can break Virginia’s blue streak by tapping into parents’ visceral frustration with the education system.
“The race to be governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia is a fight for the soul of America and the result will shape our politics for years to come,” said Ian Prior, the executive director of Fight for Schools, a political action committee that has backed Youngkin’s election efforts. “At its core, this race is about which of the two candidates is listening to his political constituency and giving them hope for their children. [Youngkin] spent his campaign listening to concerns of parents who watched schools remain closed during COVID, push sexualized and racially divisive material in classrooms and libraries, and fail to keep students safe from sexual assaults.”
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McAuliffe, who has painted his opponent as “Donald Trump in khakis,” lost a 5 percentage-point lead to Youngkin after declaring in a Sept. 29 gubernatorial debate: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
McAuliffe was also forced to defend his veto of a bill that would require parents to be informed about sexually explicit content in their children’s assigned readings, a stance that Republicans have hammered as limiting parents’ role in their children’s education.
Political analysts have called the comments on education the turning point in a race that was supposed to be a slam dunk for Democrats. Instead, Republicans are hoping anger over schools will galvanize voters and help them claw back lost electoral ground.
Almost all of that hope came courtesy of Loudoun County, one of the wealthiest counties in the country and one that President Joe Biden and 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton easily won.
The county has undergone a massive transformation over the past decade, demographically and politically. Loudoun had once been a largely rural and Caucasian enclave but is now home to a diverse immigrant community with an increasing number of nonwhite residents.
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In the past, Loudoun’s public education system, which was one of the last in the country to desegregate, had been knocked for its antiquated ways.
A 2019 audit found that the public school system was a “hostile learning environment” and that school staff had routinely covered up or failed to address racist incidents, prompting calls from Virginia’s attorney general, the NAACP, and multiple students to correct the issue.
In 2021, Loudoun released a 22-page plan that called for implicit bias training, new protocols for dealing with student and teacher behavior, and a revamped reporting system. The audit also led to community fears that critical race theory would be taught in schools. CRT holds that U.S. institutions are inherently racist and that even young children are either oppressors or victims based on their skin color.
Loudoun parents, as well as some special interest groups, accused school board members of greenlighting plans that would teach children to hate their own skin color, though the school board has repeatedly denied that its schools teach CRT.
In June, a handful of parents sued the school system over its new equity plan. Parents started showing up in large groups to board meetings, demanding that schools drop CRT and challenging other school policies, including a proposal to bolster protections for transgender students.
Furor over the school board’s decision to allow transgender students to use restrooms based on gender identity rather than biological sex reached a boiling point after a transgender student raped a girl. The attack occurred in a restroom, and the student was recently convicted of the assault.
After the attack, the victim’s father attended a June 22 school board meeting and confronted the board over the proposed bathroom policy. The father wound up being arrested, dragged out of the meeting, and made the face of parental anger.
Subsequent school board meetings, which had largely been unattended by parents, were suddenly the hottest ticket in town. Video clips of parents lambasting board members went viral as outrage grew over fears that a woke agenda was being forced on students.
The movement that started in Loudoun County eventually spread to other districts across the country with similar outcomes.
In Virginia’s gubernatorial race, education has turned into a leading topic with voters.
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How things shake out Tuesday night is likely to shape how Democrats and Republicans move forward with their midterm election strategies.
“There have been four times when the party that’s been on the outs has won the House from the incumbents, four times in the last 50 years,” GOP pollster Frank Luntz told CNBC Tuesday. “Every one of those four times, 100%, Virginia has predicted the outcome, which is why everybody’s watching it so closely.”
In the last few weeks of the race, Virginia Democrats have brought in heavy hitters like Biden, former President Barack Obama, Sen. Tim Kaine, and current Gov. Ralph Northam to energize a largely lethargic base ahead of the race.
