Election 2019: The "Trump Effect" Turns Local School Board Races From Staid to Strident.
Fairfax County and Loudoun County Republicans are leaning on national arch-conservative media and national anti-LGBTQ organizations in trying to take control of their counties’ local School Boards.
With a Daily Caller article much touted by Republican School Board candidates, interviews and endorsements of candidates by Sebastian Gorka, and anti-LGBTQ (in particular anti-trans) conferences, campaign efforts and endorsements by the anti-LGBTQ “hate group” Family Research Council personnel, these national figures are getting involved in our local school board politics.
These national figures and groups are focusing on local School Boards, because they know that voter participation in these elections is super low, and they see an opportunity to have a major impact by riling up and turning out their most dedicated followers. Inclusion and protection for LGBTQ students and staff has made much progress in Fairfax and Loudoun over the past few years, and these Republican operatives would desperately like to turn back the clock. They know that Fairfax and Loudoun have set precedents for the rest of the state, and clearly don’t want that precedent to spread further.
In the far-right Daily Caller, which you can link to but which I won’t link to, Luke Rosiak wrote an article about how “George Soros backed activist groups” are bringing “racial equity policies” to counties and school systems across the country. Rosiak focused on the “One Fairfax” policy, which he falsely claims will lead to county-wide busing and pulling children out of their neighborhood schools. In fact, this claim is a red herring which is absurd on the face of it—FCPS has no intention of implementing busing, and no one has suggested it—it’s just a straw man Rosiak can knock down.Thus, Rosiak refers to scary-sounding “radical activist groups” which imposed One Fairfax from outside. The reality is that “One Fairfax” is a home-grown policy that was motivated by the need to make sure that equitable resources are directed to our low-income schools.
https://bluevirginia.us/2019/10/the-trump-effect-turns-local-school-board-races-from-staid-to-strident-with-nasty-anti-lgbtq-views-and-republican-candidates
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