Politico reported that rightwing cultural warriors lost most school board elections, despite their big-money backers. Voters in Illinois and Wisconsin were not swayed by fear-mongering about critical race theory, LGBT issues, and other spurious claims of the extremists. These results should encourage the Democratic Party to challenge the attacks on public schools in the 2024 elections. An aggressive defense of public schools is good politics.
Amid all the attention on this month’s elections in Wisconsin and Illinois, one outcome with major implications for 2024 flew under the national radar: School board candidates who ran culture-war campaigns flamed out.
Democrats and teachers’ unions boasted candidates they backed in Midwestern suburbs trounced their opponents in the once-sleepy races. The winning record, they said, was particularly noticeable in elections where conservative candidates emphasized agendas packed with race, gender identity and parental involvement in classrooms.
While there’s no official overall tally of school board results in states that held an array of elections on April 4, two conservative national education groups did not dispute that their candidates posted a losing record. Liberals are now making the case that their winning bids for school board seats in Illinois and Wisconsin show they can beat back Republican attacks on divisive education issues.
The results could also serve as a renewed warning to Republican presidential hopefuls like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis: General election voters are less interested in crusades against critical race theory and transgender students than they are in funding schools and ensuring they are safe.
“Where culture war issues were being waged by some school board candidates, those issues fell flat with voters,” said Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association labor union. “The takeaway for us is that parents and community members and voters want candidates who are focused on strengthening our public schools, not abandoning them.”
The results from the Milwaukee and Chicago areas are hardly the last word on the matter. Thousands more local school elections are set for later this year in some two dozen states. They are often low turnout, low profile, and officially nonpartisan affairs, and conservatives say they are competing aggressively.
“We lost more than we won” earlier this month, said Ryan Girdusky, founder of the conservative 1776 Project political action committee, which has ties to GOP megadonor and billionaire Richard Uihlein and endorsed an array of school board candidates this spring and during the 2022 midterms.
“But we didn’t lose everything. We didn’t get obliterated,” Girdusky told POLITICO of his group’s performance. “We still pulled our weight through, and we just have to keep on pushing forward on this.”
Labor groups and Democratic operatives are nevertheless flexing over the defeat of candidates they opposed during races that took place near Chicago, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from state Democrats and the attention of Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, and in Wisconsin. Conservative board hopefuls also saw mixed results in Missouri and Oklahoma.
Democrats hope the spring school election season validates their playbook: Coordinate with local party officials, educator unions and allied community members to identify and support candidates who wield an affirming pro-public education message — and depict competitors as hard-right extremists.
Yet despite victories in one reliably blue state and one notorious battleground, liberals are still confronting Republican momentum this year that could resemble November’s stalemated midterm results for schools and keep the state of education divided along partisan lines.
Conservative states are already carrying out sharp restrictions on classroom lessons, LGBTQ students, and library books. And they are beginning to refine their message to appeal to moderates.
Trump, DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and other Republican presidential hopefuls are leaning on school-based wedge issues to court primary voters in a crowded White House campaign.
Open the link. The wedge issues are working against the Republicans. Most people know and like their tearchers and their public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In other top stories today, how much of a lying POS do you have to be in order for even Faux News to fire you?
FAUX News fired Tucker Carlson, CNN fired Don Lemon.
Sorry about Don.
Yeah, me, too. Of course, Carlson the spreader of lies and hate is filthy rich (emphasis on the filthy) from his TV dinner inheritance and from this lucrative gig Racist in Residence at Faux News, so he will be able to take this as a Free to Be Me moment.
The grandson of the POS who shot Ralph Yarl says that POS granddaddy watched Faux News nonstop and constantly made racist remarks. Who was the chief purveyor of racism on Faux New? Well, my money for that contest (a tough one, certainly) would be on whiny white privilege boy.
Rupert got Tuckered out. We know the feeling well. Everyone got _ucked. Vanna White, give me a ‘T’ — wait, I mean an ‘f”. Carlson got Tucked away. Tucker, we hardly knew ye! Dasvidaniya.
Bob: thanks for alerting me to the story surrounding the Yarl shooting. CNN reported the contrast between two of the shooter’s grandchildren commenting on their grandfather. One saw him as “too nice “ and wonderful. The other was horrified by his racism.
Bells went off in my head. I grew up in a small community. I knew people who would give anyone the shirt off their back, including people of other races or traditions. Then they would express their distrust of entire groups of people, most likely Jews and Blacks. The attitude was simple: if I know you and like you, you are OK despite your ethnicity. If I don’t know you, I think that saying harsh things about you is just fine.
Herein we see the genesis of the lynch mob.
This is very good news, indeed, Diane, and thank you for sharing it.
I hope we as a nation are stepping out of the right wing fog that has been blinding our collective judgment. I keep hoping that doubling down on the culture war is a bridge too far for most reasonable voters. The signs are there. I saw an interview with AOC yesterday in which she said that Marjorie Taylor Greene is running the policy in the The House. Such extremism has the potential to crash the economy if they fail to raise the debt ceiling. My son just told me that Tucker Carlson has has been let go by Fox News. While there are signs that the fog is lifting, we still have a lot more to do before 2024.
That first name is spelled with an “F,” I think.
When you are too racist and too much of a liar even for Faux News (previously Trump Maladministration State Media).
Whoo boy.
There are 7 states that declare a Confederate History Month.
“Conservative states are already carrying out sharp restrictions on classroom lessons, LGBTQ students, and library books.”
I think all of this fascist legislation will be challenged all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the media reports the results properly, attempting to fool/appeal to moderate voters may fall flat and backfire.
MAGA RINO voters are acting like children who throw rocks through windows in front of a crowd of millions and then stand there and deny they ever did it while claiming the witnesses are all liar and don’t know what they are talking about. “Who, us. We behave like we are angels and didn’t do anything like that.” Wasn’t it Lincoln who said something like, you can only fool most of the people some of the time?
At least, the voters can, think for themselves, in, voting for the officials, who have a say, in what children are, learning in, school. All hope is still, not lost, not yet in your area, at least…