If you're lying to win a school board election, you shouldn't be educating kids.
Texas districts are being flooded with dishonest texts, flyers
Writer, bookstore owner, and defender of public education Katy Lemieux published an excellent short essay this week on the weariness that comes from fighting against school board extremists like the ones that have taken over her home district, Grapevine-Colleyville ISD.
The whole essay is worth reading, but one of her lines really resonated with me. “We’re all out here voting for Republicans and being told a leftist takeover is happening in our schools,” she said.
When I started writing this cycle’s Book-Loving Texan’s Voting Guide, I anticipated that “you’re going to hear the green-highlighted candidates in this guide called ‘leftists,’ ‘Marxists’ or ‘communists.’” To pre-empt that attack, I looked into the primary voting history of every candidate I mentioned in the guide. What I found won’t be surprising, but it is remarkable: the vast majority of the candidates I covered have Republican voting histories; almost all of them identify as conservatives, and many have long histories of donating to Republican candidates and causes. The simple fact is that outside of the big cities, there are very, very few Democrats running for school board positions in Texas.
In other words, I gave green highlights to lots of Republicans, because as I said then, “this isn’t a question of partisanship; it’s about principles. Some people–Democrat and Republican–stand up for the value of education. Some oppose it.”
Nonetheless, the book banners have tried to portray anyone not sufficiently on board with their extremism as secret Democrats or RINOs at best, leftists and radicals at worst. The strategy makes sense: in Republican-leaning areas, you want to try to activate voters’ partisan instincts, even if it means injecting partisanship into races that are supposed to non-partisan.1
Some of this is predictable—if ugly—political posturing. But some of it veers into misleading, even intentionally deceptive practices.
In Katy ISD, the pro-censorship, pro-voucher group Texans for Educational Freedom sent slick mailers to Republican voters calling candidates Bruce Bradford, Cicely Taylor, and Shana Peterson “the far-left choices for Katy ISD School Board” and sandwiching their photos between images of Beto O’Rourke and Joe Biden. That’s misleading: Bradford and Peterson both have long histories of voting in Republican primaries.
Taylor’s opponent, Morgan Calhoun, called the mailer “unfortunate,” but pointed out that her campaign didn’t send it, and said, “I have nothing to do with what a PAC or separate entity sends out in the mail.” But, as Anne Russey pointed out on Twitter, Calhoun and her slate-mates Amy Thieme and Mary Ellen Cuzela all paid CAZ Consulting and C3 Management with campaign funds for “consulting,” and “advertising.” Both companies are registered to Christopher Zook, Jr.—the president of Texans for Educational Freedom, which sent out those mailers.
Taylor’s opponent, Morgan Calhoun, called the mailer “unfortunate,” but pointed out that her campaign didn’t send it, and said, “I have nothing to do with what a PAC or separate entity sends out in the mail.” But, as Anne Russey pointed out on Twitter, Calhoun and her slate-mates Amy Thieme and Mary Ellen Cuzela all paid CAZ Consulting and/or C3 Management with campaign funds for things like “consulting,” and “advertising.” Both companies are registered to Christopher Zook, Jr.—the president of Texans for Educational Freedom, which sent out those mailers.
Meanwhile, in North Texas, someone is sending out texts to Republican voters purporting to be from “progressive” or “Democrat” groups endorsing anti-censorship school board candidates who—again—are mostly Republican.
In McKinney—where all three incumbent candidates are conservative Republicans (one donated more than $1000 to Trump’s re-election campaign)—Republican voters received text messages featuring the Democratic Party logo and the message, “Congratulations to Democrat-endorsed candidates Stephanie Odell, Lynn Sperry and Amy Dankle [sic]. They will fight for PROGRESS in our schools and continue to teach children that education based on equity is important, and that books are meant to expose students to different ideas so they can live their own truth.”
A similar message went out regarding Bill Parker, the Place 7 candidate in nearby Allen ISD.
In Keller, Republican primary voters received a “voter guide” from a group called “Keller ISD Progressives” endorsing Haley Taylor Schlitz and Republican Bev Dixon. “These progressive candidates will fight for our values and stand up for equity,” the messages said. Keller ISD Progressives appears to be fake. The group has no social media presence and isn’t a registered PAC; no one I know in Keller has ever heard of it.
Again, the point is that these messages are going to Republican voters, deceptively using Democratic party imagery and buzzwords (“progress,” “equity,” “live their own truth”) likely to activate strong negative reactions in those voters.
McKinney candidate Stephanie O’Dell called the message sent about her “a scam and a lie,” and asked, “Is this the kind of moral character that you want leading our children?”
Maybe I’m naïve, but I’m gobsmacked to see this kind of shadiness in a school board election. It seems pretty obvious to me that if you’re willing to lie to win an election—or let people lie for you—you shouldn’t have anything to do with educating our kids.
Ironically, adherents to this strategy are often also simultaneously running on a promise to take politics out of our schools.