Conservative PACs Inject Millions of Dollars Into Local School Races
Their aim is to gain control of more school systems and push back against what they see as a liberal tide in public education classrooms and elsewhere.
As Republicans and Democrats fight for control of Congress this fall, a growing collection of conservative political action groups is targeting its efforts closer to home: at local school boards.
Their aim is to gain control of more school systems and push back against what they see as a liberal tide in public education classrooms, libraries, sports fields, even building plans.
Once seen as sleepy affairs with little interest outside their communities, school board elections started to heat up last year as parents aired frustrations with pandemic policies. As those issues fade, right-leaning groups are spending millions of dollars on candidates who promise to scale back teachings on race and sexuality, remove offending books from libraries, and nix plans for gender-neutral bathrooms or transgender-inclusive sports teams.
Democrats have countered with their own campaigns portraying Republicans as extremists who want to ban books and rewrite history.
At the center of the conservative effort is the 1776 Project PAC, which formed last year to push back against the New York Timesâs 1619 Project, which provides free lesson plans that center U.S. history around slavery and its lasting effects. Last fall and this spring, the 1776 group succeeded in elevating conservative majorities to office in dozens of school districts across the U.S., propelling candidates who have gone on to fire superintendents and enact sweeping âbills of rightsâ for parents.
In the wake of recent victories in Texas and Pennsylvania â and having spent $2 million between April 2021 and this August, according to campaign finance filings â the group is campaigning for dozens of candidates this fall. Itâs supporting candidates in Marylandâs Frederick and Carroll counties, in Bentonville, Arkansas, and 20 candidates across southern Michigan.
Its candidates have won not only in deeply red locales but also in districts near liberal strongholds, including Philadelphia and Minneapolis. After this November, the group hopes to expand further.
âPlaces weâre not supposed to typically win, weâve won in,â the founder of the group, Ryan Girdusky, said. âI think we can do it again.â
In Florida, recent school board races saw an influx of attention â and money â from conservative groups, including some that had never gotten involved in school races.
The American Principles Project, a Washington think tank, put a combined $25,000 behind four candidates for the Polk County board. The group made its first foray into school boards at the behest of local activists, its leader said, and itâs weighing whether to continue elsewhere. The groupâs fundraising average has surged to about $2 million from less than $50,000 the year before the pandemic.
âWe lean heavily into retaking federal power,â the think tankâs president, Terry Schilling, said. âBut if you donât also take over the local school boards, youâre not going to have local allies there to actually reverse the policies that these guys have been implementing.â
In a move never before seen in Florida, Governor DeSantis, a Republican, endorsed a slate of school board candidates, putting his weight behind conservatives who share his opposition to lessons on sexuality and what he deems critical race theory. Most of the DeSantis-backed candidates won in their August races, in some cases replacing conservative members who had more moderate views than the firebrand governor.
The movement claims to be an opposing force to left-leaning teachers unions. They see the unions as a well-funded enemy that promotes radical classroom lessons on race and sexuality â a favorite smear is to call the unions âgroomers.â The unions, which also support candidates, have called it a fiction meant to stoke distrust in public schools.
In Marylandâs Frederick County, the 1776 group is backing three school board candidates against four endorsed by education unions. The conservatives are running as the âEducation Not Indoctrinationâ slate, with a digital ad saying children are being âheld captiveâ by schools. The ad shows a picture of stacked books bearing the words âequity,â âgrooming,â âindoctrination,â and âcritical race theory.â
A board member running for re-election, Karen Yoho, said outside figures have stoked fears about critical race theory and other lessons that arenât taught in Frederick County.
The discourse has mostly stayed civil in her area, but Ms. Yoho takes exception to the accusation that teachers are âgroomingâ children.
âI find it disgusting,â Ms. Yoho, a retired teacher whose children went through the district, said. âIt makes my heart hurt. And then I kind of get mad and I get defensive.â
In Texas, Patriot Mobile â a wireless company that promotes conservative causes â has emerged as a political force in school board races. Earlier this year, its political arm spent more than $400,000 out of $800,000 raised to boost candidates in a handful of races in the northern Texas county where the company is based. All of its favored candidates won, putting conservatives in control of four districts.
The group did not respond to requests for comment, but a statement released after the spring victories said Texas was âjust the beginning.â
Some GOP strategists have cautioned against the focus on education, saying it could backfire with more moderate voters. Results so far have been mixed â the 1776 Project claims a 70 percent win rate, but conservative candidates in some areas have fallen flat in recent elections.
Still, the number of groups that have banded together under the umbrella of parental rights seems only to be growing. It includes national organizations such as Moms for Liberty, along with smaller grassroots groups.
âThere is a very stiff resistance to the concerted and intentional effort to make radical ideas about race and gender part of the school day. Parents donât like it,â an education fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Jonathan Butcher, said.
The foundation and its political wing have been hosting training sessions encouraging parents to run for school boards, teaching them the basics about budgeting but also about the perceived dangers of what the group deems critical race theory.
For decades, education was seen as its âown little gameâ that was buffered from national politics, a political science and education professor at Columbia Universityâs Teachers College who has written about outside funding in school board elections, Jeffrey Henig, said. Now, he said, local races are becoming battlegrounds for broader debates.
He said education is unlikely to be a decisive issue in the November election â itâs overshadowed by abortion and the economy â but it can still be wielded to âamplify local discontentâ and push more voters to the polls.
Republicans are using the tactic this fall as they look to unseat Democrats at all levels of government.
In Michigan, the American Principles Project is paying for TV ads against the Democratic governor where a narrator reads sexually explicit passages from the graphic novel âGender Queer.â It claims that âthis is the kind of literature that Gretchen Whitmer wants your kids exposed to,â while giant red letters appear saying âstop grooming our kids.â
Similar TV ads are being aired in Arizona to attack Senator Kelly, and in Maine against Governor Mills, both Democrats.
By Collin Binkley and Julie Carr Smyth