Credit: (Hannah Gross/NJ Spotlight News)

The so-called culture wars and issues around parental rights and LGBTQ+ students may have dominated school board and legislative races across the state last week, but now players on all sides are rethinking how effective they were in winning votes.

Dozens of more conservative school board candidates who ran on the issues indeed won their races, in some cases handily.

Yet the strategy did not prove as successful in all districts and especially not in legislative races. Advocates on both sides are already refining their thinking for the next election cycle.

“It’s a lot easier to win a school board race than it is a state legislative race,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “It’s probably a more manageable task for a small group of ideologues to win a school board race than it is for that same small group of voters to try and win a state legislative race.”

The two main camps

Ahead of the election, the advocates broke into two distinct camps, each well organized. Groups such as Moms for Liberty, New Jersey Parental Rights and New Jersey Project endorsed candidates who favor parental rights, a catchphrase for conservatives interested in forwarding controversial school policies, such as notification of parents if a child’s gender identity at school is different than at home or restricting access to library books that include content about sex and gender identity.

Those pushing back were groups like Districts for Democracy and the New Jersey Public Education Coalition, which said the parental rights groups are contributing to the deterioration of local schools.

For those groups, the election overall was considered mostly a victory.

Mike Gottesman, founder of the New Jersey Public Education Coalition, said 60% of candidates supported by the group won in contested races based on unofficial results. Similarly, Darcy Draeger of Districts for Democracy put the winning rate at about 65% of its endorsed candidates.

Who had a good election night?

“I think we had a good night primarily because I don’t think you could have had a bigger more coordinated push towards parental rights than we saw [from Republican legislative candidates],” Draeger said.

Yet parental rights groups were hardly conceding. New Jersey Parental Rights director Victoria Jakelsky said more than half of the candidates her group endorsed won their races, although these included candidates running unopposed.

New Jersey Project, another group in favor of parental rights said it won 67% of the races where it endorsed candidates, including uncontested races.

Parental rights candidates performed well in Monmouth County, an area where Jakelsky said her group spent the most time along with Bergen County. Three Monmouth County school districts are facing lawsuits from state Attorney General Matt Platkin for changing their policies on transgender students, with the state contending the new policies open the door to potential discrimination.

According to unofficial results in the three districts, parental rights candidates won in Middletown, lost in Marlboro and saw mixed results in Manalapan. Parental rights candidates also saw victories in Colts Neck, Millstone, Howell and Holmdel, where school boards recently voted to remove certain protections for transgender students.

Last-ditch efforts

Still, other parts of the states saw a rebuke of school boards that focused on parental rights. In Sparta, which Gottesman called “one of the most dangerous school boards in the state,” parental rights candidates, including two incumbents, lost the election to a slate of candidates that pressed financial accountability.

As some of these parental rights school-board members prepare to give up their seats, Gottesman warned of last-ditch efforts to pass controversial policies before their terms are up. Districts currently considering such measures include Kinnelon, Old Bridge and Freehold, he said.

Draeger said it is too soon to take a victory lap.

‘I think the biggest lesson for everyone is to educate yourself as much as you possibly can about your school board, the actions, the policies that they’re considering, what they’re doing and what they’re not doing.’ — Micah Rasmussen, Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics

“This is certainly not the end. I don’t think that Moms for Liberty or New Jersey Project or parents’ rights or anti-LGBTQ proponents are just going to fade away,” Draeger said.

But Jakelsky of New Jersey Parental Rights conceded that for parental rights candidates to win more races, they must be respectful and avoid name-calling and aggression toward opponents. She said board members and candidates need to be less polarizing with the terms they use and focus on topics people in the middle can agree with.

“If they’re just going full force with what we see is right, it just never works. We do not agree with name-calling or dehumanizing. We don’t think that calling people names or being hostile ever helps our cause,” Jakelsky said.

Calling on seniors

Gottesman said his group is going to focus on getting more seniors and empty nesters involved in school board elections. Taxes and the economy are historically big election issues, and he said they certainly pertain to school board races, too, where the bulk of property taxes are borne.

“We have to work against what effectively is decades of empty nesters and seniors being told you’re not a stakeholder in board of ed elections, because you don’t have kids in school,” Gottesman said.

Rasmussen, of the Rebovich Institute, said there is still confusion about what calls for parental rights mean, especially when it comes to changing school policy. Still, he doesn’t believe the movement is going away when it comes to school boards.

And he said he hopes the attention will encourage voters to be better informed about their school boards and their candidates.

“I think the biggest lesson for everyone is to educate yourself as much as you possibly can about your school board, the actions, the policies that they’re considering, what they’re doing and what they’re not doing,” he said.