Conservative candidates campaigning to flip dozens of school board seats across the country are hoping a trend that began last year continues through the November elections.
In the midst of an off-year election cycle last year that saw Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) defeat his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, on a campaign platform that heavily emphasized parental rights, Ryan Girdusky’s 1776 Project PAC helped several dozen conservative school board candidates defeat liberal incumbents in multiple states.
Now, as the calendar nears the 2022 midterm elections, candidates backed by Girdusky’s unique political action committee have continued to rack up victories all over the country, and the political activist sees more on the horizon.
DESANTIS-BACKED ‘PRO-PARENT’ SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES RACK UP VICTORIES ALL OVER FLORIDA
“A lot of Republican voters are parents and grandparents, and they are concerned with the state of public education and where it’s going,” Girdusky told the Washington Examiner, noting that the politicization of education is serving as a motivator to voters.
“These people have to get up, and they have to go vote,” he said. “In a lot of these areas, we struck record-breaking turnout for conservative candidates for school board because they wanted to make sure their children are not being force-fed liberal indoctrination.”
The group announced a new slate of endorsements on Tuesday, with the PAC supporting candidates in races in Michigan, Virginia, Maryland, Texas, Arkansas, and elsewhere.
The group’s efforts garnered significant attention in August after a number of candidates in Florida supported by the PAC won school board elections all across the state. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) took the unusual step of endorsing a cohort of candidates himself, many of whom were also supported by the committee. In the aftermath of those victories, Girdusky said his PAC was inundated with requests from over 300 school board candidates seeking an endorsement.
The wave of endorsement applications was far more than the PAC could handle, Girdusky said, noting there’s “a lot of time and attention and energy that goes into these races, and we just don’t have the bandwidth.”
With the successes in Florida, Girdusky and others want to see more high-profile politicians follow DeSantis’s lead and weigh in on school board races.
“I’d like to see them get involved. I’d like to see them have a long-term vision on public education,” Girdusky said, noting that Youngkin has reportedly mused endorsing school board candidates.
Laura Zorc, a former member of the Florida-based Indian River County School Board and the director of education reform at Building Education for Students Together, which trains school board candidates, said high-profile endorsements give candidates an added layer of legitimacy in races that are often overlooked by voters.
“It would really be great if Arizona Gov. [Doug] Ducey and Gov. Youngkin recognize that we have some good candidates that are running and give them an endorsement,” Zorc said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “It would give them credibility and a boost if these governors recognize them as quality candidates.”
Zorc is particularly interested in a series of races in Arizona, which she said could mark the next state to see a significant change in school board politics after the August successes in Florida.
“We really have a heavy emphasis going out in Arizona right now,” Zorc said. “There are about 22 seats that we have our eyes on, and we feel that we have an opportunity to really change the landscape just like in Florida.”
One of those candidates on Zorc’s radar is Amy Carney, a mother of six who is running for a seat on the board of the Scottsdale Unified School District and also serves as the deputy director of Zorc’s organization. (The 1776 Project PAC has not endorsed a candidate in the race.)
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Carney said she used to never pay any attention to her local school board before realizing during the COVID-19 pandemic that “we had allowed people to walk unopposed onto our school board that weren’t representing our family and they weren’t representing our family’s values.”
“I learned a lot during that season with my kids being educated from home, and I started diving into who we had elected into those seats,” Carney said. “I had no idea how powerful a school board was. And I realized that I wanted to run because I’m an invested parent who’s been in the district since 2008, and I think these are the type of people who we should have on our school boards, making decisions for the families and for the taxpayers in the district.”
Carney noted that a lot changed during the pandemic in how parents related to their school officials. In her district specifically, she said, the board unanimously voted to declare that the school board “represents the district, not the people.”
“What a school board is supposed to do is represent the people,” she said. “What the board is supposed to do is to listen to the community and be their voice. But somehow, we’ve gotten this all wrong. We need to get back to the basics.”
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“We need proven parent leaders right now on our school boards who have lived through the COVID years with kids in the schools,” she added. “We can no longer afford to elect people on our school boards that have never had children in our schools and all of a sudden decided that this is now important to them. We have done that for too long, and I think our communities are ready for different representation and leadership.”
