In January 2021, amid a brewing movement of parent activism, Brandon Michon, a resident of Loudoun County, Virginia, took to the podium at his local school board meeting wearing a gray sweatshirt and a black beanie hat.
Michon, a father of four children who was raised in the county and had recently moved back to the area from New York City, was frustrated and angered at the Loudoun County School District’s failure to open schools amid the coronavirus pandemic, which had prevented his children from meeting their new classmates and adapting to life in a new state.
“The garbage workers who pick up my freaking trash risk their lives every day more than anyone in this school system,” Michon angrily told the board at the time. “Figure it out or get off the podium because there are people like me and a lot of other people out there who would gladly take your seat and figure it out.”
Video of Michon’s short speech went viral, becoming one of the first noteworthy moments of a grassroots movement of parents speaking out at school board meetings across the country, upset at many districts’ failure to open classrooms for in-person instruction and at the inclusion of controversial curricula, such as critical race theory, in their classes.
Now, more than a year after he angrily vented his frustrations at the school board — which created a swath of support for parental rights that helped Republican Glenn Youngkin win the Virginia governor’s race — Michon’s viral moment has catapulted him to a place he never envisioned: running for Congress in the 10th Congressional District of Virginia.
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“I never aspired to be in politics,” Michon told the Washington Examiner. “I’m a businessman, but what I realized … is our message of we, us, and together is so different than every other candidate.”
Michon is one of several candidates seeking the Republican nomination in the northern Virginia district. The seat is currently held by Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton, who has been in office since 2018.
The Loudoun County resident told the Washington Examiner he is building his campaign message on “education, safety, the economy,” calling them the “core principles of our country.”
“What I aspire to do is help our country get back on track,” he said. “And if that means I can do that for two, four, six years, or whatever amount of time that people say, ‘You’re doing a good job trying to get this country in a better position,’ then that’s what I’ll do. And then after that, I’ll go back and continue to be a dad and a person within the community and continue to just be a private citizen.”
Just south of Michon’s home in Virginia, Brian Echevarria, a North Carolina father and business owner, had his own viral moment last month at the Cabarrus County School Board meeting, more than a year after Michon’s angry viral moment.
Echevarria, who identifies himself as biracial and had already launched a campaign for a seat in the North Carolina General Assembly at the time of his viral moment, disagreed not only with coronavirus mandates that were already waning nationwide but also the prominence of critical race theory in schools.
“The fact is, in America, I can do anything I want, and I teach that to my children, and the person who tells my pecan-color kids that they’re oppressed based on the color of their skin would be absolutely wrong and absolutely at war with me,” Echevarria told the school board.
Critical race theory, which teaches that U.S. institutions are systemically racist and oppressive to racial minorities, has garnered national controversy over its presence in public schools. Liberal activists and Democratic politicians claim the theory is not taught in K-12 schools despite contrary evidence.
Echevarria made no mention during his viral school board speech he was a candidate for office and said he was motivated to run for the state Legislature because he saw “too much of a disconnect from the [home] to the statehouse.”
“We need that everyday person to get involved,” Echeverria said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “Because that everyday person will not vote against their own home and community. Once a person is disconnected from the community, it’s hard for them to have their interest at hand.”
Despite the different scopes of a Congressional campaign and a campaign for the state Legislature, both viral moments have ensured the role of parents in education has become a major component of both candidates’ bids for elected office.
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“We need to fix the core principles of the country, which is our children’s education, our safety, and our economy,” Michon said. “Right now, we need our children educated. We need them to focus back on literacy, on math and science, on history and less on divisive topics that are being pushed into the curriculums.”
“The idea that we’re going to have a generation [torn] down because of color, it’s like putting a nation in reverse,” Echeverria said, again criticizing critical race theory. “Every policy is a parenting issue. Every policy is a family issue. And that’s why it takes parents to take back the wheel.”
“Our children … are going to be governing us, they’re going to be managers, they’re going to be CEOs,” he added. “The last thing we need in this awesome social experiment called America is an entire generation of people who have been told that the color of your skin determines your character. And I haven’t met a parent, black, white, or any other, who approves of that kind of rhetoric, in any form, being told to their children.”
