The Right Has Expanded Its Dark Money Strategy for Dominating School Boards

Following the November elections, staffers from a number of darkish cash anti-public college teams — Mothers for Liberty (M4L), Impartial Ladies’s Discussion board (IWF) and Dad and mom Defending Schooling (PDE) — took to the media to tout the supposed success of far proper college board candidates.

One IWF staffer described the outcomes of native and state public training races as a brilliant spot for Republicans in an total disappointing midterm, representing a “crimson undercurrent” the place a “crimson wave” failed to look.

In actuality, right-wing college board candidates backed by such teams didn’t sweep their races, removed from it. Specifically, M4L, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that retains its funders secret from the general public, and its state PACs, which endorsed greater than 500 college board candidates this 12 months, misplaced the vast majority of the races the group endorsed in.

However the infrastructure that M4L and different darkish cash anti-public training teams have constructed up will seemingly solely proceed to develop in sophistication and sources, attempting new and better-funded avenues, like utilizing federal tremendous PACs, to dominate college boards in future elections and wield management over the general public faculties they seemingly search to destroy by way of privatization.

Tried College Board Takeover A part of Longstanding College Privatization Scheme

The concentrating on of native college boards is a part of a broader decades-long effort by right-wing elites — together with right-wing oil inheritor Charles Koch, former Trump Schooling Secretary Betsy DeVos and her husband and Amway inheritor Dick DeVos, the Walton family (heirs to the Walmart fortune) and Trump insurrectionist candidate devotees Liz and Richard Uihlein — to denationalise our instructional system. These ultra-wealthy enemies of public training have directed elements of their huge fortunes to advancing right-wing political candidates who will enact radically reactionary insurance policies that swimsuit their world view.

Beginning in 2020, present darkish cash teams such because the Impartial Ladies’s Discussion board, which has acquired funding from the Koch community and the DeVoses together with secret donors, took benefit of fogeys’ real concern over their youngsters’s academic challenges in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. They used the pandemic to assault public faculties for his or her security rules (like masking and short-term digital studying measures), to scapegoat teachers’ unions, and to hawk the diversion of public tax dollars to privately managed alternate options.

New teams, similar to M4L and Dad and mom Defending Schooling (PDE), popped up in 2021 to affix IWF and others on the anti-Essential Race Concept (CRT) bandwagon. This line of assault, popularized by Christopher Rufo on the Koch-funded Manhattan Institute, has egregiously misrepresented the educational concept taught in college settings and accused Ok-12 faculties of educating it. Such teams, together with Fox and different GOP-aligned shops, have distorted CRT and used it intentionally as a catch-all for right-wing grievances.

These new teams introduced new sources and ways to the darkish cash assault on public faculties. PDE, a gaggle registered in 2021 by lengthy standing Koch-network operative Nicole “Nicki” Neily, has primarily targeted on suing schools and school districts. Neily has touted “free speech,” however assaults by PDE and different right-wing anti-CRT teams have prompted “a broad chilling effect” in faculties, making it tougher for lecturers and directors to handle misinformation, educate about race and racism, and shield LGBTQ college students from harassment and bullying.

M4L, in the meantime, has targeted on creating chapters throughout the nation chaired by native right-wing operatives. The far proper group and its chapters, which have offered themselves as nonpartisan, have been within the information for organizing book bans concentrating on Black and LGBTQIA+ literature, pushing right-wing propaganda, advocating for extremist anti-LGBTQIA+ policies that will harm a number of the most weak college students in public faculties, and threatening college board members and candidates.

In August, M4L did have success in serving to far proper college board candidates dominate in Florida’s main elections. Eleven out of the 13 candidates M4L aided gained, however additionally they had the assistance of Gov. Ron DeSantis and different state GOP officers who funneled money from their PACs to campaigns of right-wing candidates, together with these endorsed by M4L. M4L additionally aided candidates by way of its personal state PAC, which was funded virtually fully by a $50,000 contribution from January 6 rebel funder Julie Fancelli, a Publix inheritor.

The Midterm Flop

The Koch-spawned FreedomWorks, which initiated a program in early 2021 known as “Constructing Schooling for College students Collectively” that trains far proper college board candidates throughout the nation, announced that 34 of their “aligned” candidates gained their college board races in November, for a complete of 86 in 2022.

The group didn’t disclose what number of of their aligned candidates misplaced, though in August 2021 it claimed to have already educated 250 activists on the right way to run for college board, together with training thousands of right-wing parents on the right way to “take again their college board one seat at a time.” FreedomWorks devoted greater than $430,000 to its coaching program in 2021 alone, in accordance with a 2021 audit of FreedomWorks obtained by True North Analysis. Provided that stage of engagement and sources invested, 34 profitable races within the November elections appears unexceptional at finest.

M4L barely gained greater than half their races, with a number of races nonetheless excellent. M4L-endorsed candidates, which numbered 270 within the November election, had solely a 52 p.c win charge in a supposedly crimson wave 12 months.

M4L had restricted success in “flipping” college boards, predominantly in Florida and South Carolina. College board races are usually not very partisan, deeply contentious or well-funded. Although there may be some historic precedent for M4L-style extremist college boards that don’t act within the curiosity of scholars or the group however for partisan ends, that has not been the norm lately.

At first look, 1776 Challenge PAC (1776PP) — the right-wing political motion committee that has collected greater than $3 million in contributions because it was first registered in 2021, together with $900,000 from the Restoration PAC whose primary funder is GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein — appears to have had barely extra success, although lower than in 2021.

1776PP claims to have spent over $135,000 in 2021 “supporting [their] candidates with mailers, textual content messages, and digital advertisements to present them a aggressive edge in opposition to their liberal opponents,” and achieved a 72 p.c success charge within the 41 college board races it concerned itself in.

In 2022, 1776PP appears to have ramped up its spending. Ryan Girdusky, the PAC’s chief, instructed the media it spent $400,000 supporting right-wing college board candidates in Florida’s August elections. But, it seemingly has had much less success in 2022, announcing after the November election that the PAC’s common win charge had dropped to 60 p.c total, down from 72 percent in 2021. After the November elections, 1776PP additionally claimed to have “flipped” 100 college boards, out of the hundreds within the U.S., since November 2021.

Within the Bentonville, Arkansas college district, the place 1776PP endorsed 5 candidates within the November elections, the PAC engaged in exterior spending by sending out local mailers promising their ticket would take away racial fairness coaching for lecturers and ban books, amongst different “values.”

Federal tremendous PACs, like 1776PP, will not be usually thought of “darkish cash,” as a result of they’re legally required to reveal their funders to the general public. Nonetheless, it’s troublesome for the general public to determine how 1776PP and different related PACs are influencing native elections with their spending, as a result of the Federal Exchange Commission solely requires PACs to reveal their exterior spending in federal races. Moreover, many states solely require state and native (not federal) PACs to report their spending in native elections, however such reporting is commonly not available in actual time and on-line.

Constructing Fundraising Infrastructure for Future Elections

1776PP’s Girdusky explained additionally it is simpler to make use of focused mailers in smaller geographic areas, like college districts, than in giant congressional districts. In different phrases, you get extra bang on your buck spending to attempt to dominate college board elections.

M4L made its intentions clear by emphasizing the essential function its state PAC performed within the college board race successes in Florida, the place 80 p.c of M4L endorsed candidates gained their races. “We had ZERO funding in PAC[s] for college board candidates nationwide,” the group lamented, evaluating it to their successes in Florida, emphasizing it was the “solely state with funded M4L PAC.”

M4L fashioned three national PACs in 2021 which are ready to just accept contributions and dole out disbursements in future elections. These PACs might additionally doubtlessly have interaction, as 1776PP has executed, in exterior spending on advertisements, mailers, textual content messages, and different promotion of right-wing candidates and demonization of their opponents, the sources of which might be extraordinarily troublesome and time-intensive to uncover.

M4L’s native and state leaders have begun establishing county PACs all through the nation, together with in Indian River, Florida, and Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. As Paige Williams exposed within the New Yorker, the Williamson County, Tennessee, M4L chapter was an early adopter of the native PAC mannequin, utilizing it to again far proper native and county candidates and to oppose inclusive curricula.

There may be a lot at stake within the battle over native college board elections.

The implications are stark and visual in a number of the college districts “flipped” by M4L and 1776PP candidates. The 1776PP has bragged in regards to the regressive insurance policies handed by college boards the place they helped elect far proper members. In Texas, for example, one such board applied a “bathroom ban” that forestalls trans college students from utilizing the toilet that matches their gender id and one other banned the boogeyman of CRT in faculties.

In Berkeley County, South Carolina, a suburb of the extra progressive metropolis of Charleston, the brand new M4L-dominated board wasted no time firing the district’s first Black superintendent.

One other M4L-dominated college board in Indian River, Florida — the place the group’s co-creator previously sat on the board of training — is working with the county’s far proper sheriff to implement new horrific “self-discipline” insurance policies. In his speech saying the brand new coverage, Sheriff Wayne Ivey said it could be “disruptive college students’ worst nightmare” and reminisced about “the previous days” the place college students feared having “the cheeks of their ass torn off.”

Most mother and father don’t want their youngsters taught beneath such excessive and repressive circumstances or educated in faculties dominated by far proper spin masquerading as training. But, the right-wing darkish cash effort to take over college boards claims it exists to again “parental rights” although the teams assist no insurance policies that will truly make mother and father’ and children’ lives higher, like paid sick depart, backed baby care, expanded Head Begin or college lunch packages. In actuality, this well-funded and coordinated effort by the ultrawealthy is designed to not defend mother and father, however to assault our public faculties and undermine public training as an entire.

Nonetheless, total, teams like M4L had been removed from dominant in November, regardless of the phantasm of a crimson wave the precise wing sought to conjure. And the place they gained, the general public is getting its first have a look at how they act once they have the levers of energy, an experiment that didn’t fare nicely for Koch’s People for Prosperity of their short-lived takeover of some school boards in Colorado just a few years in the past. However the battle for faculties and for the following era of voters is on, and the willpower — and sources — of right-wing extremists shouldn’t be underestimated.

Word: True North Analysis Government Director Lisa Graves, Senior Fellow Evan Vorpahl and Fellow Caitlin Mahoney contributed to this report.