No MAGA Mandate on Public Education as Voters Reject Vouchers and Culture Wars

I heard this at a gas station the other day. I saw this the day before when I opened my local news app. And the day before it was on my local TV station between the weather and the Cleveland Browns. Everywhere I look, MAGA allies are claiming that the results of the past election give them a mandate to pursue the most radical policies possible.

But across the country, voters have loudly and decisively rejected the policy when it comes to education. As the founder of Red Wine & Blue, a community of over 600,000 diverse suburban women, I constantly hear from women who don’t want right-wing extremist groups coming into their school districts and imposing their vision on so-called parents. rights. The vast majority of moms believe in America’s public schools, want to work with their children’s teachers to improve education, and are tired of a vocal minority wasting time and resources on the chaos of the culture war.

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But I say this for a reason, because this is what I see in my group chats and hear in conversations at the bus stop. Of the common sense candidates—those who resisted attacks on history lessons about race and age-appropriate sex education—that my organization supported in school board elections across the country, 69 percent won. And in some states, the numbers are even higher: 78% of our 45 candidates won in 15 Michigan school districts, and 86% of our 14 candidates won in six Virginia districts—a particularly gratifying result considering Virginia was the epicenter of the unrest. regarding the so-called critical race theory in 2021.

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Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Moe Green, a Democrat and former superintendent of Guilford County Schools, won the statewide race for superintendent of public instruction over homeschooler Michelle Morrow. Morrow was a candidate for the Republican Moms for Freedom Party, which called public schools “indoctrination centers” and urged people not to send their children to them; called for the assassination of national leaders; and demanded military intervention to keep then-President Donald Trump in power on January 6, 2021. Trump may have won the presidential race in North Carolina, but Morrow’s “Make America’s Schools Great Again” slogan clearly didn’t resonate with most voters who want to build their public schools rather than tear them down.

It’s true that different parents and families have different values ​​and concerns – and that’s okay. If there is a book you don’t want your children to read, don’t let them read it. I believe in providing students with accurate, age-appropriate sex education, but I also believe that parents can opt out of their children’s participation if they alone want to have these conversations. But I don’t think one parent should be able to take those opportunities away from everyone else’s children. American public schools, at their core, should be places where all students feel supported and safe. And although extremists have come from other communities to gain power, divide people and control them, most voters want none of this.

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If you zoom out and examine other election results, you’ll see similar trends. Republicans have spent at least $215 million on political ads attacking the trans community, including trans children attending public schools, on issues ranging from sports to health care. However, there is no evidence that the ads influenced voters at the ballot box. In fact, an October poll found that a majority of likely voters (including a majority of independents by a 23-point margin) thought they were “mean and out of control.” Likewise, a post-election survey of voters in eight Senate battleground states found that those who saw the ad found it “highly off-putting” and that it failed to influence support for the candidates.

In four states, including three that voted for Trump, voters rejected Republican education priorities. Campaign measures to expand voucher programs that transfer money from public to private schools failed in Colorado, Kentucky and Nebraska. In Florida (home of Moms for Freedom), voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have made school board elections partisan.

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MAGA politicians will ignore these denials at their peril. Many parents remain concerned about their students and the state of public schools. And when I sit down and talk with them, we almost always realize that we have much more in common than what divides us. We don’t want a vocal minority telling us how to raise our children. We don’t want books about Anne Frank or Martin Luther King to be banned. We certainly don’t want kids to be bullied just because of who they are. It’s time to move past the demands of MAGA mandates and start working with teachers and administrators for the benefit of all students.