Voters are now apparently woke to the bullying tactics of Moms for Liberty, delivering a smack in the face to the far-right culture war group in school board races.across the country.
In the past, school board races generated little media attention, except in the local press. But Tuesday’s election results have generated national coverage.
The New Republic wrote that Moms For Liberty fell flat on its face:
Iowa chapters of the far-right group Moms for Liberty endorsed 13 candidates in school board races across the state. Only one was elected.
The Tuesday loss is a stinging rebuke of Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated as an extremist group. What happened in Iowa mimics similar defeats suffered by the group and by Republicans in general throughout the United States …
Moms for Liberty was founded in 2021 to push back against Covid-19 restrictions in schools. It has since expanded to opposing classes on diversity, curbing the rights of LGBTQ students, and banning books.
But on Tuesday, voters across the country pushed back on the Moms for Liberty agenda. The organization endorsed dozens of candidates in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and North Carolina, in addition to Iowa. Almost all of those candidates lost, with some failing to get more than single-digit support.
And The Daily Beast declared that Moms for Liberty had taken a beating in school board races:.
Moms for Liberty, the right-wing “parental rights” group advocating a hardline anti-woke agenda in America’s schools, had a rough night in Tuesday’s elections for school board seats around the country.
The organization ..., endorsed scores of candidates in school districts in several states from Alaska to North Carolina. But the group’s record backing book bans, opposing racially inclusive lessons in classrooms, and pushing anti-LGBTQ messages seemingly failed to connect with voters in multiple ballots.
The election results were cause for celebration by librarians who have been harassed, fired and even threatened with imprisonment by Moms for Liberty zealots.
The school board victories prompted this post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by Daily Kos Deputy Managing Editor Jennifer Hayden.
Some responses to her post were more serious.
So let’s look at the results from some states:
PENNSYLVANIA:
From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Democrats claimed a sweep of the Central Bucks school board races Tuesday, wresting control from the GOP after a hotly contested campaign marked by deep partisan divisions, intense personal attacks and a surge in spending.
The floor of the Inn at Barley Sheaf Farm in Buckingham Township, the Bucks County Democratic headquarters Tuesday night, began to shake around 10:15 p.m. when State Sen. Steve Santarsiero made the announcement.
”We stood for change,” said Susan Gibson, an attorney who won election and was barraged with hugs after the wins were announced. “We did this with the community, for the community.”
VIRGINIA;
From Huffpost:
Liberal candidates in the Loudoun County, Virginia, school board race have secured a victory in the battleground county that has become a culture war hot spot. Liberals now have a 6-seat majority on the nine-seat board.
The liberal candidates focused on Loudoun County’s reputation as a nationally recognized school system, championing its diversity and equity plans and shying away from weighing into the conservative culture wars that appear to be sweeping school boards nationwide.
IOWA:
From Bleeding Heartland, a community blog about Iowa politics:
Voters in Iowa’s large school districts overwhelmingly picked progressive candidates over conservatives on November 7. In many urban and suburban districts, candidates backed by local Democrats, the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA), and/or the LGBTQ advocacy group One Iowa Action ran the table, while candidates backed by activists on the religious right fell short.
The results are a rebuke to Governor Kim Reynolds and Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature, which enacted new laws in 2023 that undermined public schools and LGBTQ students, and restricted school library books and inclusive curriculum materials.
The Des Moines Register reported that among the losing conservative candidates for the West Des Moines school board was
Teri Patrick, who is listed as the Education Chair of the Moms for Liberty chapter in Polk County. The newspaper reported that In 2021, Patrick “signed a letter asking for criminal charges to be brought against the school district for allegedly `disseminating pornography to our children’ over the availability of two LGBTQ books in school libraries.”
OHIO:
School board candidates endorsed by conservative groups aimed at centering "parental rights" platforms — such as book bans and restricting instruction on topics like race and gender — largely lost their races in Greater Columbus districts Tuesday.
Nearly three dozen contested school board races were on the ballot across central Ohio in this off-year election, many of which were dominated by culture-war issues. ...
Of the 10 central Ohio candidates endorsed by or who pledged to Moms for Liberty or The 1776 Project, two won seats on their local school boards.
MINNESOTA:
In Minnesota, all four candidates put forward by MfL were wiped out in the race for the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School District. None of them managed to attract double-digit support, with voters predominantly favoring three incumbents and one newcomer to the school board.
The Advocate, a gay news outlet, credited the sweeping rejection of Moms for Liberty school board candidates in part to Agenda PAC, a political action committee dedicated to holding anti-LGBTQ+ politicians accountable.
Ted Bordelon, the executive director of Agenda PAC, in a press release, said: “Yesterday's election results reaffirm the clear message that parents reject hate and want equitable, inclusive schools for all kids," The Advocate reported.
On Monday, Laura Clawson wrote about two Florida members of Moms for Liberty who were reporting school librarians to law enforcement for allowing minors to check out widely recommended books that they considered to contain pornography. The book they cited was Jennifer L. Armentrout’s ”Storm and Fury” — a young adult fantasy novel in which a heroine with supernatural gifts and the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa fights demons.
But librarians are now fighting back against such harassment.
On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that three librarians who were fired over opposing censorship have filed workplace discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
One of the librarians, Suzette Baker, who headed the Kingsland, Texas, library system displayed several books that have been targeted in recent book bans and a sign that read: “We put the ‘lit’ in literature” — a reference to a Tennessee pastor’s recent burning of books.
Baker was fired after refusing to take down the display and signs — the last straw after she resisted book banning in her own library, AP reported.
And now as Jennifer Hayden posted it’s time to show some appreciation to the librarians near you.