July 19, 2020

By Bill Berkowitz

Back in the day, when conservative candidates wanted to take control over local school boards they ran stealth candidates that didn’t reveal their true politics.  Thirty years ago, at the Christian Coalition’s “Road to Victory” conference, Ralph Reed said: “We don’t have to worry about convincing a majority of Americans to agree with us. Most of them are staying home and watching ‘Falcon Crest.’ They’re not involved, they’re not voting, so who cares?’” Reed colorfully described stealth campaigning: “I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over till you’re in a body bag. You don’t know till election night.”

While conservative school board candidates in some districts may be less than forthcoming about their politics, right-wing activists are bold enough to toss stealth campaigning onto the dust heap of history.

This past weekend, hundreds of conservative activists showed up for Moms For Liberty’s first national summit in Tampa, Florida, oart of the so-called parental rights movement. The goal of the summit was to train conservatives to take over school boards across the country. Betsy DeVos, former president Donald Trump’s U.S. Secretary of Education told the crowd that the department of education should be abolished. At the Tampa event, organized by the rapidly growing Moms for Lierty organization, DeVos said:  “I personally think the Department of Education should not exist.” DeVos, the author of a recent book called “Hostages No More,” was the keynote speaker at the “Moms For Liberty” first national summit. According to Laura Cassels, reporting for the Florida Phoenix, “Members of the audience leapt to their feet, cheering and applauding.”

As Business Insider reported, “During her tenure, DeVos controversially worked to reduce her department's authority over schools, introducing cuts to federal education spending and rolling back federal guidelines in favor of letting states and local districts decide their own policy.”

Moms For Liberty

According to its website, Moms For Liberty, co-founded eighteen months ago by Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, is “dedicated to fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” It is registered as a social welfare nonprofit organization and so does not have to disclose its donors

MSNBC’s Tyler Kingkade reported that Moms For Liberty’s “leaders say it has nearly 100,000 members across 195 chapters in 37 states … [and] its core issues among conservatives, include[e] battling mask mandates in schools, banning library books that address sexuality and gender identity, and curtailing lessons on racial inequity and discrimination, its founders say.”  

“Wearing American flag-inspired accessories, attendees received Moms for Liberty-branded pocket constitutions and bought T-shirts with John Adams quotes,” Kingkade reported. “They browsed booths set up by conservative groups, including Turning Point USA, the Leadership Institute and Heritage Action, and the evangelical Liberty University. They logged in to Wi-Fi hotspots named “We Beat School Boards” and “Don’t Teach Gender ID.” 

The Florida Phoenix’s Cassels reported that DeVos’ remarks came during a “three-day summit in Tampa, which provided training to members from 30 states on how to create conservative majorities on their local school boards, in what they call a parental-rights movement.”

In a series of breakout sessions not open to the press, guest speakers instructed participants on how to recruit, vet, endorse and promote conservatives as school board candidates. Other sessions focused on legal defense of parental rights over school-board authority, strategic research, and ways to fight ‘gender ideology, in our schools’ ‘social and emotional learning’ and ‘restorative justice.’

Cassels pointed out that “Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice, who interviewed DeVos, said, ‘We love teachers here at Moms For Liberty’ but she called teacher unions a ‘K-12 cartel.’ She said Moms For Liberty seeks to separate teachers from unions, which she claimed are imposing liberal politics in classrooms.

“Our laws need to evolve to respond to these new techniques and things that they’re using,” said Jeff Childers, an attorney and conservative commentator who serves on Moms for Liberty’s board, and was also on the panel about Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law. “So I look at the parents’ bill of rights and the amendments that we’ve had since — it’s a really good framework, right? That’s like taking the body of an AK-47, and then we can start mounting new accessories onto it: a flashlight, a laser pointer and things like that.”

Moms For Liberty summit attendees also heard speeches from prominent Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis, widely considered a presidential candidate in waiting, and Sen. Rick Scott, the National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, who praised Moms for Liberty for their activism.

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