Since the off year elections last week, I’ve posted a few stories about school board elections that don’t fit the narrative of a culture war rout across America.
Here’s a piece by Adam Harris in the Atlantic on this subject. He recapitulates the Youngkin campaign’s use of the “education issue” but believes that it may not be the big winner for the GOP elsewhere that everyone thinks it will be:
[I]n several other well-financed lower-ballot races across the country, an emphasis on similar grievances did not deliver victories to anti-CRT, anti-mask candidates.
For example, four of the seven members of the Mequon-Thiensville School Board in Mequon, Wisconsin, stood to be recalled. Backers of the recall effort had raised nearly $50,000 in their campaign to rid the district of equity consultants and what they described as critical race theory. But as the ballots were tallied late into the evening, it became clear that the push was for naught. Each board member slated for recall retained his or her seat with roughly 60 percent of the vote. Likewise, in Guilford, Connecticut, a group of five insurgent candidates seeking to “keep the evil tenets of CRT” out of their children’s education, as one candidate put it, lost their races. And in Ellsworth, Maine, a candidate who campaigned, in part, on eliminating mask mandates from schools was defeated in an open race. These unsuccessful bids—even if, in some cases, narrowly so—suggest that though the anti-CRT rhetoric is divisive, and could likely push candidates over the top in certain instances, it may not be a winning issue on the local level, at least not yet.
This election was the first time Americans were able to see whether the loudest voices in the room would also be the loudest voices at the ballot box—they were not—and a chance to see whether the enhanced partisanship of the past several years signals a shift in local politics going forward—which it definitely does.
CNN did a poll (before the infrastructure bill was passed) that shows education at the very bottom of people’s concerns:
With the latest wave of Covid-19 infections subsiding and prices on the rise, the economy (36%) outranks the coronavirus pandemic (20%) as the most important issue facing the country. Immigration (14%) and climate change (11%) follow and are the only other issues to land in double-digits, followed by national security (8%), racial injustice (5%) and education (3%).
The nation’s top concerns — like its views on many things — are sharply divided by party. Among Republicans, roughly half (51%) choose the economy as their top concern, with immigration (23%) and national security (13%) far behind. Just 4% of Republicans call coronavirus the nation’s most important problem.
Independents likewise rate the economy tops (38%), followed by coronavirus (18%), immigration (13%) and climate (11%).
Among Democrats, though, 34% name coronavirus as the top problem, followed by the economy at 20%, about even with the climate at 18%. Another 8% say immigration is their top issue.
Just 3% of Democrats cite national security as their top issue, with Republicans similarly unlikely to be focused on climate change, racial injustice or education.
I certainly believe education was a voting issue in Virginia. But this need to extrapolate the mood of the entire country based upon what happened there is a function of political reporters myopically assuming that DC and their own state is representative of the nation as a whole. This isn’t the first time they’ve established such a bogus narrative but it’s wrong.