BY HANK REICHMAN

Yesterday’s election results in Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and elsewhere have boosted the spirits of Democrats and progressives.  One of the less widely publicized results, however, has been the stunning rebuke suffered by book-banners and transphobes like Moms for Liberty in school board elections in Iowa and elsewhere.  In the past, Iowa school board elections had been held in September, but because Republicans thought the low turnout in those elections favored candidates supported by the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA), the state’s largest teachers’ union, in 2019, after the GOP won total control of state government, they changed the law so that school board and city elections would occur on the same day in November.

Yesterday’s results suggest that move might have been too clever by half.  Moms for Liberty, the Florida-based group that has supported private school vouchers, anti-LGBTQ legislation, and book bans, formally endorsed 13 candidates in this year’s Iowa school board races, although many other candidates had support from local chapter members.  Only one of those candidates actually won a race, however, gaining a seat on the rural Interstate 35 School Board, a district with fewer than a thousand students where Gov. Kim Reynolds attended high school.

“Results of yesterday’s elections demonstrate that voters spoke loudly and clearly about who they want to make crucial decisions affecting all students and educators in their local communities,” said ISEA President Mike Beranek.

“We were really elated at the performance of our candidates and the almost universal rebuke of Moms for Liberty members,” said Keenan Crow of One Iowa Action, an LGBTQ advocacy organization.  “It really is a referendum on the anti-LGBTQ and book-banning policies of the Reynolds administration and the politicians that supported her.

“It’s extremely encouraging to see that this book ban thing that we’ve been fighting against for several years or so is just not popular.  They thought it was, but not only is it not popular, it’s toxic,” Crow told Iowa Starting Line.

Here’s what Bleeding Heartland, an Iowa community politics blog, reports:

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. . . .

One city election also underscored how unpopular book banning is with Iowans.  In the notoriously conservative town of Pella, voters rejected by 2,041 votes to 1,954 (51.1 percent to 48.9 percent) a ballot measure that would have empowered the city council to overrule the public library board.

In Des Mones, the state’s largest school district, three candidates, who faced largely token opposition, were elected.  None supported the Republican/conservative anti-education book-banning agenda.  “Republicans or conservative groups fielded candidates in all of central Iowa’s suburban school districts.  Most were shut out.”  In a repeat from 2021, conservative candidates failed to win school board seats in the Waukee Community School District, the next largest in th area after Des Moines.  In the Ankeny Community School District, Republican-backed candidates won all the school board races two years ago, but just one of five this time.  In the West Des Moines Community School District, the winners were all endorsed by ISEA.  Moms for Liberty backed one of the losing candidates.  In the Southeast Polk Community School District, all four winning candidates were endorsed by the ISEA.

The Johnston Community School board election was “a huge loss for conservatives, who had swept the Johnston school board races in 2021.”  All the conservative candidates this year fell well short of the vote going to union-endorsed candidates.

Of the Urbandale Community School District, Bleeding Heartland reports,

Political winds have shifted dramatically in this suburb on the northwest side of Des Moines.  Only four years ago, Republican men held all five Urbandale city council seats; yet the GOP didn’t contest any of this year’s city council races.  Conservatives did field two of the six candidates running for Urbandale school board.  But area Democrats backed all four winners . . .

There were similar results outside the Des Moines area.

“For more than a year, outrage over a policy to protect transgender and nonbinary students hung a black cloud over the Linn-Mar School District,” but yesterday’s school board elections served as a victorious referendum for supporters of the policy, which was later gutted by state lawmakers.  The policy “codified then-existing practices that respect transgender and nonbinary students’ identities at school.  It allowed students to create Gender Support Plans and go by their preferred name and pronouns and potentially use the school facilities that match their identity.  For students in seventh grade and up, a teen’s decision on their gender identity did not have to be forcibly shared with their family, who in some cases may not approve.”

“Republican politicians have demonized” the Linn-Mar district’s inclusive policies for years and board members were regularly challenged and chastised by antl-trans activists.

Reynolds and U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson (whose own children attend Linn-Mar schools) have led the charge, scoring political points by punching down on vulnerable kids.  Former Vice President Mike Pence regularly bashed Linn-Mar in his campaign appearances and misrepresented the district’s former policy in a televised debate.

Moms for Liberty made a big play here, endorsing three of the eight candidates for four at-large seats.  But again, the union-backed contenders were victorious . . .

No one on the Moms for Liberty slate received more than 11 percent of the vote.

In Cedar Rapids, the state’s second-largest district, five candidates sought two at-large positions and the winners were union-backed candidates.  Moms for Liberty supported two candidates “who had previously spread conspiracy theories about school district policies.  They each received a little more than 14 percent.”

Check out Bleeding Heartland for further details about districts across the Hawkeye State.  But it’s hard to dispute their conclusion:  “What’s clear is that in school districts that serve hundreds of thousands of K-12 students, voters rejected candidates aligned with the Republican vision for public education in Iowa.”

And it’s not just Iowa.  Moms for Liberty candidates for school board lost big in Pennsylvania, Virginia and elsewhere too.  “In 2021, Moms for Liberty claimed credit for 33 seats in Bucks County [PA], claiming that eight out of 13 districts “now have a majority of school board members that value parental rights.”  According to The Daily Beast,

A “voter guide” from the group earlier this year recommended candidates in five districts but stressed that the messaging was “not an official endorsement.”  All five of the Republican candidates in Central Bucks—which has been roiled for years by culture war rows—were included in the guide.  But after Tuesday’s vote, the district’s school board was swept by Democrats who won five seats.

Pennridge, another school district in Bucks County, was also closely watched.  The GOP-led school board made headlines in July after a curriculum consultant it hired likened his work to a fox in a henhouse during a Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia, reportedly telling attendees he wanted to remake schooling for “our side.”

On Tuesday, all five of the school board’s open seats went to Democrats.

In Virginia, “three of four candidates endorsed by [Moms for Liberty-MfL] were trailing in their races in Loudoun County, where Democrats were projected to hold the board.  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.  In North Carolina, the MfL-endorsed Theresa Knight failed to secure one of the three seats up for grabs on the Mooresville Graded School District Board of Education.

Banning books, attacking educators, and blustering about “parents’ rights” may get some press, but it apparently also repels voters.

UPDATE: And now for the icing on the cake: “The mother of an LGBTQ+ student beat the daughter of the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in a contentious Virginia school board race.  With 62 percent of Tuesday’s vote, Allison Spillman, a mother of five, beat Scalia’s daughter, Meg Bryce, in the race for an at-large seat on the Albemarle County School Board following a campaign in which Spillman and local Democrats linked Bryce to an extremist conservative agenda.”  The county includes Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia.

Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and chair of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019.  His Understanding Academic Freedom was published in October, 2021.