The conservative effort to take over school boards reaches fever pitch in one Colorado district – By Allan Smith (NBC News) / Oct 31 2021
In the first election since former President Donald Trump’s defeat, local races like this one have energized the conservative movement.
School board elections, once mundane and nonpartisan, have grown increasingly contentious across the country as partisan divides in Congress trickle down to even the smallest communities. Few places showcase this better than in Douglas County, Colorado, where recent national debates over race and Covid-19 have turned a hyperlocal race into the war for one school district’s soul.
The race, which has attracted cash from deep-pocketed donors, turned once sleepy school board meetings into heated debates where parents, students and other attendees spend hours fighting over masking policies and the district’s equity initiatives.
Just south of Denver, the Douglas County School District, is home to 64,000 students. Its school board election, which wraps on Tuesday, features a slate of four candidates — Mike Peterson, Becky Myers, Kaylee Winegar and Christy Williams — who’ve branded themselves as the conservative choice in what is a nonpartisan election. On the other side is a similarly structured ticket of four candidates — Krista Holtzmann, Kevin Leung, Juli Watkins and Ruby Martinez — who’ve banded together in opposition. None of the right-leaning challengers currently sit on the board, while Holtzmann and Leung are incumbents.
“I think I voted once for a school board candidate because I liked the way their name sounded,” Holly Osborne Horn, campaign manager for the conservative candidates, told NBC News. “Because I hadn’t paid attention. I’m fully awake now.”
