The outside groups inside school board politics

State of play: Moms for Liberty has loudly emerged. Its members are pushing for taking controversial books off library shelves. Others, like Success 4 CMS, were quiet until they weren’t, breaking out a billboard recently over one of Charlotte’s busiest roadways. But who are they actually, and how much influence do they have?

Context: Historically low-key elections, school board races have drawn more interest in recent years.

• Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon ignited a conservative movement last year to “save the nation” by flipping Democratic school board seats.
• “The mama bears are out right now. And they’re tired of what their kids have had shoved on them in the last several years,” Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ted Budd told a crowd of supporters while campaigning in Charlotte this week.

Why it matters: There’s power in numbers. These groups are persistent about certain issues. They make a point to show up— even meeting with a superintendent in one local instance.

• These groups are also endorsing candidates.
• They may have more impact on school board races if their messages reach average voters, who may not know as much about the candidates in lower-profile races.

[Go deeper: Axios voter guide for the November 2022 elections in Mecklenburg County]

What they’re saying: “Particularly conservative groups are putting a lot of effort into taking advantage of people’s uncertainty over or frustrations with how schooling was handled during COVID and targeting critical race theory and gender issues,” says Eric Heberlig, a political science professor at UNC Charlotte.

• Liberal groups are cropping up as well.

What’s happening: The Mecklenburg County chapter of Moms for Liberty is putting almost all its weight behind the race in District 4, home to a number of low-performing east Charlotte schools. It wants to oust school board member Carol Sawyer and replace her with second-time opponent Stephanie Sneed, a candidate they’ve apparently never spoken to but they see as a necessary change for improving academic performance.

• “She did not fill out our candidate questionnaire,” chapter chair Brooke Weiss says. “To be honest, I would like for there to be a more conservative candidate in the race, but there’s not. So, just like, there are anti-Trumpers. I’m an anti-Sawyer.”

• Of note: Clara Kennedy Witherspoon, a recently retired CMS counselor, is a third candidate in the race who has flown under groups’ radar.

The Success 4 CMS-paid-for billboard on Independence Boulevard targets the same contentious race. It declares, “Sawyer voted for empty classrooms.”

• Larry Shaheen, a Republican strategist in Charlotte, registered the entity with the secretary of state in May as a 501(c)4, or a social welfare organization. He says the group is nonpartisan and started “running material” last week.

Between the lines: Social welfare organizations are controversial and are not supposed to exist solely for political reasons. But because they engage in advocacy work, the entities are allowed to spend up to half of their money on political purposes. (The National Rifle Association is an example of a 501(c)4.)

• They’ve earned the term “dark money organizations.” Donors are not required to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission or the IRS, Heberlig says. “The concern is … we don’t know who’s donating to them, what their agenda is.”
• And a lot of times, these organizations break the rules. A watchdog group filed a complaint with the IRS against Carolina Rising after it spent nearly all of its fundraising on Sen. Thom Tillis ads.

Shaheen told Axios he did not have to detail the size of his group or its board members, but he says it’s made up of parents concerned about the direction of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

• The Success 4 CMS board endorses candidates it believes will return CMS to the place it was a decade ago when it won the Broad Prize for Urban Education, he says. The prestigious award came with half a million dollars for scholarships that year. John Legend was at the ceremony.
• In September, CMS released data showing that only 8% of high schoolers were “college or career ready” in math. “We have to make sure that the public is educated about the failures of the current board,” Shaheen says.

District 4 incumbent Carol Sawyer believes the real issue her opponents take with her is not data-related. It’s her commitment to equity and support for LGBTQ students and staff, she says.

• In 2019, Sawyer worked on the highly debated equity policy and led the formation of the district’s Community Equity Advisory Committee.
• “I have been an effective board member in my policy work, in my advocacy,” she told Axios. “And therefore, I am a threat to their agenda.”

Flashback: Moms for Liberty launched the first North Carolina chapter in Mecklenburg County in March 2021. Weiss says she connected with the organization after her daughter, a junior at the time, was given a class assignment comparing the Holocaust to slavery.

• “I didn’t see any advantage to that, comparing two atrocities to each other,” she tells me. “The only thing that I saw would happen was two groups of people being pitted against each other. It’s not a competition, like who’s suffered the most.”

Moms for Liberty advocated for in-person learning and mask-optional policies during the pandemic. Now it’s asking for restricted access to material it deems inappropriate.

• Most recently, Moms for Liberty came out against “This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson. The book was found in Collinswood and has a chapter called “The Ins and Outs of Gay Sex.”
• In a letter to parents, the school principal said the book was removed from a teacher’s “off limits” personal library and unintentionally circulated. “The book is not part of the approved curriculum nor is it being used for classroom instruction.” Internal emails confirm it was on a reading list that required a parent signature in 2020.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, Moms for Liberty is also fighting against “This Book is Gay.” Republicans there have formed a partnership with the Arab-American Muslim community, Axios reports, which is unexpected considering President Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the country.

The intrigue: In Charlotte, Moms for Liberty and African American Faith Alliance, another group that incorporated in 2021, have met to discuss academic achievement. It also met with the local NAACP education chair recently at a pizza restaurant, an event that turned confrontational when critics of Moms for Liberty showed up.

• Weiss says her group recognized the faith alliance was voicing similar concerns about CMS “failures” during school board meetings.
• “It took a long time for us to very gently build that relationship,” Weiss says. “I find that when people are willing to give me a chance, they’re able to discover that I am, our chapter and our organization, is not what it’s been painted to be. It’s just really easy to find common ground.”

(The African American Faith Alliance did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.)

Yes, but: Justin Perry, co-founder of education coalition OneMECK, says the Moms for Liberty group has attempted to “rebrand” since causing an uproar over critical race theory at its inception. He said the attack on the teachings of systemic racism didn’t gain traction the way it has in Union County.

• He questions if a group that is rooted in race-centric issues — and is offended by the historical connection between Jews in Europe and Black Americans — should be leading a book policy rewrite.
• “Nazis actually utilized the practices here in the States, including all the way to Jim Crow, as a framework,” he says.

The other side: Red Wine and Blue is another 501(c)4, formed to fight against “extremism,” program director Janice Robinson tells me.

• It was started by suburban women meeting over wine in a red Ohio county after the 2016 election, who realized they were being attributed for Trump’s win. The organization expanded to North Carolina as a purple state before the midterms and hired Robinson to take the lead.
• Robinson started driving down to Union County Board of Education meetings, which had turned into a battleground over COVID protocols and critical race theory. She met moms who were “counter-protesting against these extremists.”
• “Oftentimes it seemed like the media would just put the screamers on TV,” Robinson said. She says Red Wine and Blue trains women to speak at board meetings, volunteer on campaigns and connect to the media to amplify their voices. They hold voting parties at their homes, too.

Robinson says voters are gravitating toward grassroots organizations because more North Carolinians are registered unaffiliated than as Democrats or Republican.

• “I think that there’s more of a concern with issues,” Robinson says. Red Wine and Blue’s priorities range from teaching “accurate history” in schools to abortion rights.

The big picture: It remains to be seen how influential these groups are. Weiss and her family are often some of the few people from Moms for Liberty to speak out at school board meetings, but the chairwoman acknowledges that some members drift away when they get burnt out or fear being publicly associated with the group.

• But both Moms for Liberty and Red Wine and Blue are national organizations. Their North Carolina Facebook groups have reached membership totals in the thousands.
• At a meeting Wednesday night in a Matthews restaurant, a little over 20 people were in attendance, including four candidates: incumbent school board Republican Sean Strain, Republican school board candidate Lisa Cline, Republican commissioner candidate Matthew Ridenhour and Democrat school board candidate Juanrique Hall.

What’s next: Weiss says the local Moms for Liberty chapter is committed to education issues. But she says she’d like to see enough chapters pop up across the state to effectively lobby the state legislature like Moms for Liberty has in Florida with the passage of the Parental Rights in Education Bill.

• Dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by opponents, the legislation prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten to third grade. Republicans in several states proposed legislation mirroring the bill.

Editor’s note: This article mistakenly stated that African American Faith Alliance was recently at a Moms for Liberty meeting. While the two groups have met before, it was not at the pizza restaurant meeting in September.