Money Talks

Conservative school board candidates who support restricting how race-related issues can be discussed in classrooms saw victories across Texas on Saturday, emboldening state Republicans who are increasingly getting involved in nonpartisan local elections. https://t.co/1NNMKffKDw

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) May 12, 2022

“Republicans dominated school board races across Texas because parents are fed up with left-wing garbage,” said Texas GOP chair Matt Rinaldi, who declined to be interviewed for this story but provided a statement. “The Republican Party of Texas will continue to support education over indoctrination and plans to expand our efforts in local and nonpartisan races.”

Or it was this:

Conservative school board candidates saw victories across the state, but most notably, they won big in Tarrant County, which has been moving away from its perch as one of America’s reddest urban counties. The county had 10 candidates win their races with the backing of the conservative Patriot Mobile Action PAC, which poured half a million dollars into the races.

There was a lot of PAC money spent on three board candidates in the small ISD I live in.  All three candidates won, probably because of the unprecedented amount of campaign flyers, e-mails, text messages, and even signs, that sprang up and were targeted very carefully to particular areas of the district.  Even then, the votes for the three came mainly from the rich white side of the district, arguably a reaction to an ongoing civil action to require the at large Board to be divided into regional districts, the better to reflect the ethnic diversity of the district.  The "rich" part of the district is mostly white; the "poor" part of the district is as ethnically diverse as the rest of Houston (one of the most ethnically diverse cities in America.  Suck it, NYC.  You are not alone.)  My guess is the "rich white" people voted to keep their district representation just the way it is:  white people from their side.  Ironically, unless the Board settles the case (which they've made no move to do so far, and clearly won't now), there's nothing the Board can do about it.  The decision is in the hands of a judge.  How he will rule is anybody's guess.

So did all those "conservative" candidates win on CRT and fear of a brown planet?  Maybe.  But that's the GOP in Texas anyway.  Nothing has really changed.  Houston has a black mayor, and before that we had a lesbian mayor.  Then again, Ted Cruz lives here, and so does Dan Patrick, and the area is so gerrymandered Dan Crenshaw represented a portion of it until redistricting put him in a new district, which he will probably represent as well.  Houston and the county are still dominated by Democrats, as are all the major urban areas of Texas.  Are these few school board victories, in Tarrant County and in Katy ISD (just outside Houston, but you'd have to look for the signs to know you've left Houston and entered Katy) may be no more than a patch of ice; whether it makes a winter or not remains to be seen.

What is depressingly clear is that money talks, and pouring money into races traditionally non-partisan and funded by the candidates (another reason the trustees in SBISD are all wealthy white people), is a sad sight.  Then again, I think using the school board as a springboard to higher office is pretty damned laughable.

Let me explain:  in Texas, we elect everybody from dog-catcher (well, almost) to Governor.  I doubt most people in a county know who their elected DA is, or their elected County Attorney, or their elected county court-at-law judges, or their elected district judges.  Some of those judges move up the ladder to the Courts of Appeals or the Supreme Court or Court of Criminal Appeals (Texas has two "supreme" courts).  That movement is facilitated almost entirely by lawyers, who pay attention to who the competent judges are.  Most voters no more know a former Justice of the Peace is running for District Court than they know they elect those offices.

Just as most voters don't vote for School board trustees.  Usual turnout in my ISD is 1000 for a Trustee election.  This last one was 15000. Money talks.  But those supporters of the 3 new candidates are going to be very disappointed when the Board can't do anything they promised.  Indeed, my expectation is the Board will step on a rake in short order.  Shorter order if the judge moves the case to trial anytime soon, and doesn't rule as the new majority of the school board promised.

This is a small and very parochial school district.  Recently the first high school ever built here was remodeled for further use by the district.  My high school, indeed my elementary school, have been torn down (not in this district) and replaced; the high school was even renamed.  So far as I know, that was only mildly controversial (I sure don't give a shit. Both campuses were buildings that never should have been built; the buildings I attended, I mean. But that's another story.).  This old high school building had a portion of it named for a highly regarded superintendent who, ironically, worked very hard to preserve and maintain the building by finding district uses for it.  He retired from the district many years ago.  A small but vocal group of students of the first class to go to that building (very old people, in other words) sent angry e-mails to the Board complaining about the name change, because they didn't know who it was being named for, or why; and because it was "their school."  This kind of thing requires sensitive handling by the Board if you don't want to poke a hornet's nest.  But the new Board wants one of their own to be President.  It's the Board President who has to be the chief public face and diplomat for the school district.  Their choice for the President is not up to the task.  His election is going to be a PR disaster, sooner or later.

At that point, all the campaign funding in the world won't make any difference.

I don't like this situation; but I don't think it portends a brave new world of dystopian horrors. I do think what goes around, comes around; and it's going to come around a lot faster and harder than these clowns think it will.  If these incautious and intemperate boobs are the future of the Texas GOP, God help 'em.  Because no one else will.  They think they've taken on great power.  They're going to find out all they've taken on is great responsibility; and the accountability for that is going to come down hard upon them, especially at so local and parochial a level as a public school system.