Moms for Liberty’s focus on school races across the country leads to political clashes with teachers’ unions

Global Courant

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” group that has been trying to take over school boards in multiple states, wants to expand these efforts across the country and to other education posts in 2024 and beyond. The effort is preparing for a clash with teachers’ unions and others on the left who view the group as a toxic presence in public schools.

So said the group’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, at the annual summit over the weekend in Philadelphia Mothers for freedom will use its political action committee next year to compete in school board races nationwide. It will also “begin to approve at the state council level and elected superintendents.”

Her comments confirm that Moms for Liberty has passed its first two years raging school board meetings with aggressive complaints about instruction about systemic racism and gender identity in the classroom, is developing a larger strategy to overhaul education infrastructure across the country.

As the group has garnered broad Conservative support and donor fundingdoes the focus on education ensure that even as voters turn their attention to the 2024 presidential race, school board elections will remain one of the most controversial political battles next year.

Moms for Liberty started with three Florida moms upset by COVID-19 restrictions in 2021, but has quickly risen as a national player in Republican politics. Her support for school choice and the “fundamental rights of parents” to direct their children’s education has attracted allies such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a leading GOP presidential candidate, and the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The group has been labeled an “extremist” organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center for allegedly harassing community members, encroaching anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation and fight for scrub diverse and inclusive material from lesson plans.

Justice said in an interview that she and her co-founder, Tina Descovich, were two moms who “had faith in American parents to take back the public education system in America” ​​and that they “fully intend to reclaim that system and to reform”.

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So far, the group has had mixed success in getting its preferred candidates elected. By 2022, just over half of the 500 school board candidates it supported across the country won. In the spring of 2023, less than a third of the nearly 30 candidates it supported in Wisconsin were elected.

By focusing on state-level candidates, Moms for Liberty would have an opportunity to leverage some of the positions that have more control over curriculum setting, said Jon Valant, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who education policy has been studied.

A close partnership with the conservative training organization, the Leadership Institute, and additional funding from a growing number of donors could also help the Moms for Liberty find more eligible candidates and help them win in 2024.

Monty Floyd, vice president of the Moms for Liberty chapter in Hernando County, Florida, knows what it’s like to have the group’s support in a political campaign. He ran for the school board in 2022 and received the group’s endorsement, as well as $250 from the Florida-based PAC.

Floyd lost that race but plans to run again in 2026, he told The Associated Press at the summit. He looks forward to seeing the group’s political clout grow, saying the Moms for Liberty national network provides a candidate with a “great resource” even more than the money.

“The wealth of knowledge they have and the network of support and just the advocacy tips that we’re learning from the speakers today,” he said. “They have good advice to give. So you learn a lot about what you can improve in your reporting.”

However, Moms for Liberty can face obstacles rising national presence has sparked a backlash from activists who oppose it, Valant said.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said she thinks groups like Moms for Liberty have “created more action and more energy” among teacher unions.

“We have 41 new units that we organized as AFT this year. We’ve never had that before,’ she said. She said the union would “do what we have to do” during the election to show the contrast between its endorsed candidates and Moms for Liberty candidates.

In addition to unions, Moms for Liberty will likely face opposition from grassroots groups and voters who “just don’t agree with their vision of what public education should be,” Valant said.

Martha Cooney, a Pennsylvania schoolteacher who was one of about 100 protesters dancing and holding signs outside the summit on Saturday afternoon, agreed. She said that while Moms for Liberty tries to gain more political power, she and others will continue to stand in her way.

“They’re a very small minority trying to pretend to represent this entire nation, and they don’t,” Cooney said.

Moms for Liberty didn’t answer questions about which races it would focus on in 2024, other than making it clear it wouldn’t endorse legislative races or the presidential election.

But even as the group says they won’t get involved in the White House race, Republican candidates have tried to leverage Moms for Liberty’s clout and broad network of more than 120,000 members in 45 states to pursue its voting bloc and boost their primary campaigns.

Five GOP candidates gave speeches at the Philadelphia rally, which ended Sunday. Among them were DeSantis and former President Donald Trump. The rivals tried to outdo each other with claims that “awakened ideology” had overtaken education and that pronouns and “critical race theory” should be removed from classrooms.

“I think mothers are the most important political force for this 2024 cycle,” DeSantis said Friday in his address to attendees.

Other Republican presidential candidates appearing at the summit included former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who brought his wife and two children to the podium on Saturday. He vowed to prioritize parental rights and shut down the U.S. Department of Education if elected.

“Membership in this organization is just the tip of the iceberg of a broader pro-parent movement, pro-child movement in our country,” Ramaswamy told reporters at the summit. “And how important is that? You better believe it’s pretty important.

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Moms for Liberty’s focus on school races across the country leads to political clashes with teachers’ unions

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