In many places, school boards are non-partisan. A political organization dedicated entirely to electing candidates to school boards might or might not even have a name, and might well not have a party organization as seen elsewhere. America has now acquired such a group. Moms for Liberty has a web page and in the recent elections had candidates across parts of the country. Their major issue, so far as I can determine, is the level of sexual content in books in middle-school libraries.
Coverage of their candidates in the national press has been somewhat limited. Post-election, in sources I have seen reporting focused on anecdotal coverage of defeats. However, we see on Daily Kos that a group ‘Progress Report” (no URL given) found a spread sheet of their candidates, wins, and losses.
The count made by Progress Report reports 134 Moms for Liberty candidates, of whom 40 won election. That’s a 30% success rate, a rate that many third parties would find inspiring. A more detailed analysis would need to ask how many of those candidates ran serious campaigns, how many opponents had advocated for unfortunate educational policies, and how many were in the challenging position of running against incumbents.
I am not sure why that list doesn’t include South Carolina, and specifically the Charleston area. They have been here since at least the 2022 election and are really screwing with the local school board and now city council and mayoral elections. They allegedly control the puppet strings of a majority of the school board.
It has reached the point where candidates are being accused in television ads of being supported by this organization, and, conversely, denying it in some races.
They’re actually close to getting a few school board members charged with crimes – of course, these are the school board members that they support that may have committed crimes violating state ethics and “sunshine” laws. 🙂