By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One introduced the possibility of right-wing outside groups playing in our school board races. Part Two listed the characteristics of those races. Some characteristics create challenges for outsiders but some create opportunities. So how would a potential national outside play occur here? Let’s start with the two most important requirements for such an insurgency: money and candidates.
Money
No campaign to take over the school board can succeed without a lot of money. Consider that any campaign would have to climb uphill against all three factors that historically decide school board elections: the Post endorsement, the Apple Ballot and incumbency. Insurgents and any group(s) supporting them would have to massively outraise their opponents to have a shot.
So where would it come from?
Here is something that is not widely appreciated: Montgomery County has a large and wealthy base of Republican donors, most of whom are retirees. They do not contribute to local races because MoCo GOP candidates have almost no shot to win, but they do send large amounts of money all over the country.
Here is a quick and dirty exercise to measure their donor potential. I pulled federal political contributions from eight large MoCo localities – Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Gaithersburg, Germantown, Kensington, Potomac, Rockville and Silver Spring – for the first six months of 2023. Then I added up those contributions for a handful of right wing federal committees. These are the total contribution amounts that I found:
Winred (the right wing’s counterpart to ActBlue): $229,048
NRSC: $135,077
NRCC: $73,792
Ron DeSantis for President: $61,808
Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee: $59,628
Donald J. Trump for President 2024: $47,761
Kevin McCarthy for Congress: $41,567
Republican National Committee: $26,469
So there you are, folks: hundreds of thousands of dollars from MoCo residents for a few right-wing federal committees in just six months at the start of an election cycle. The financial base for a possible MCPS takeover is already here.
But fundraising is hard and takes a long time. A more likely fundraising source is a handful of huge contributions from wealthy GOP ideologues – perhaps even one of them – to create a Super PAC. This may not be as hard as it seems. After all, if MoCo YIMBYs could get a half million dollars from a Facebook billionaire to go after Marc Elrich on housing, there just might be a right winger or two eager to go after a progressive school system on the far more prominent issue of education. And who knows? That person or people may live here.
Candidates
Any outside group must have a smart recruitment effort. This is MoCo, so besides being residents of the county and of the appropriate districts, a candidate group must be diverse in race, gender and geography. A slate of White men will fail.
Additionally, an outside group must establish ground rules for its candidates – especially for their interactions with the public. If they come across as open Trump disciples, the left will exploit it. A sample of instructions to candidates should include:
Don’t say anything controversial. Stick to academic performance, accountability, crime, efficient spending and anything else that polls well.
Avoid candidate forums, questionnaires, media interviews and any other venues in which you can make mistakes.
Make sure your campaign materials include diverse people. It can’t just be White people.
Don’t take national right wing money. Let that money go to the independent committee(s) and/or Super PAC(s) that are leading the effort.
Change your voter registration to unaffiliated or – better yet – Democrat to avoid association with the GOP.
Don’t make any political contributions to Republican or right-wing candidates or groups during the campaign.
The cumulative effect of these rules would be to make the slate look reasonable and home-grown and create some space between them and any outside support. Yes, the left and any dirt diggers (like me) would identify and publish any links. But they must not be obvious to the hundreds of thousands of residents who vote.
So assuming that an outside group could raise money and find candidates, how would it actually proceed? I’ll describe what a sophisticated outside campaign would look like next.