Heidi Drauschak is the progressive candidate for a blue Fairfax County district held my a conservative Democrat. Last night she told me that "Youngkin and Virginia Republicans have spent the last two years making outrageous claims about our public schools to fire up their base, at the expense of our students and the schools themselves. Instead of properly funding our schools and ensuring they have the resources needed to empower our students and teachers alike, Republicans have instead focused on ridiculous issues in the hopes of scaring their base into supporting extremist candidates who are only interested in tearing down the very institutions they would be elected to govern. This is all part of a larger, nation-wide push to politicize schools, so that dark money and its providers can profit off of our children. Fortunately, Virginians are beginning to see the true machinations behind these efforts and will have the opportunity to support many wonderful school board candidates in my district and across the Commonwealth, who will fight to make our schools stronger!"
Conservatives and far right extremists had a lot of bad news in the Midwest lately, the two most important being that their neo-fascist GOP candidate lost the pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court seat and their racist, pretend-Democrat in Chicago lost the mayoralty. But way down at the bottom of the ballots were a slew of other races that are giving Democrats reasons to be cheerful, school board elections that the far right has turned into highly partisan contests. This time they were mostly hoist on their own petards. The heavily-financed right-wing culture warriors mostly went down to defeat while the candidates backed by the teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party swept the field— especially in contests where the Republicans used divisive tactics pushing critical race theory, transgender hysteria, book banning and fake parental rights to control classrooms.
Many of the crackpot candidates in Illinois and Wisconsin who were financed by Nazi billionaire Richard Uihlein and his 1776 Project were obliterated. The Illinois Education Association won around 90% of the races where it endorsed candidates. In Wisconsin, the neo-fascist front group Moms For Liberty, endorsed 28 candidates and 20 of them went down to defeat. In some rural areas and in Oklahoma and Missouri, where many voters don't prioritize education, extreme right candidates did better.
On Friday, writing for The Guardian, Adam Gabbatt reported that scores of rightwing U.S. extremists were defeated in school-board elections this month, in a victory for the left and what Democrats hope could be effective for running against Republicans next year. “In Illinois, Democrats said more than 70% of school-board candidates it had endorsed won their races, often defeating the kinds of anti-LGBTQ+ culture-warrior candidates who have taken control of school boards across the country.”
The day after the elections, Governor Pritzker said “the extremists got trounced… Fortunately, the voters saw through the hidden extremists who were running for school board— across the [Chicago] suburbs especially. I’m glad that those folks were shown up and, frankly, tossed out.” Of the 117 candidates endorsed by the Democratic Party in Illinois, 84 were victorious. Illinois Education Association president Kathi Griffin said “I would hope that the tide is turning, to make sure that people who want to have those [school board] positions because they want to do good for our kids, continue [to get elected]. I think that oftentimes these fringe candidates are funded with dark money. That dark money comes from outside our state.”