Voters across the Chicago suburbs and around the state turned back attempts to pull local school boards to the right in Tuesday’s elections, though conservative candidates had pockets of success, winning enough seats to take control in some districts.
Typically low-cost, low-interest school board races have become national political proxy fights following the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Chicago suburbs have become a key battleground.
Efforts by conservative groups pushing national Republican talking points about “parental rights,” “gender ideology” and “critical race theory” were met in Illinois with an unprecedented pushback from the state Democratic Party, which pledged nearly $300,000 to oppose candidates it labeled “extremists.” Teachers unions also took a more active role in campaigning this spring.
While mail-in ballots are still arriving and being counted, Democrats and teachers unions this week were declaring victory, with the state party boasting a 72% success rate and the Illinois Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, touting that nearly 90% of its recommended candidates won.
From Oswego to Barrington to Downers Grove to Lyons Township and beyond, organized slates of conservative candidates backed by right-wing groups such as Awake Illinois, Moms for Liberty and the national 1776 Project Political Action Committee saw defeat, according to unofficial election results.
At the same time, conservatives appeared poised to take control of school boards in places such as northwest suburban Huntley and in tiny Fairview School District 72 in Skokie.
“Fortunately, the voters saw through the hidden extremists who were running for school board across the suburbs,” Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday during an unrelated news conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “I mean, really, the extremists got trounced yesterday.”
One of the most heated campaigns was in far west suburban Oswego, where all four members of a right-wing slate of board candidates lost, unofficial results showed. Instead, voters selected a slate called For the Kids that included two incumbents and two newcomers.
The conservative We the Parents slate was backed by Awake Illinois and the New York-based 1776 Project PAC, both of which have financial ties to ultraconservative megadonor Richard Uihlein of the Uline office supplies company.
[ Out-of-state PAC backing conservative school board candidates belatedly files spending report ]
The We the Parents slate vowed to rid schools of what it deemed “pornographic” materials and sought to inject religious values into their decision making over the seventh-largest school district in Illinois.
“We are so grateful for all of you and we are energized and committed to serve the students, parents and community members,” the For the Kids slate said in an election night Facebook post, thanking supporters. “This is your victory as much as it is ours.”
Results were similar in northwest suburban Barrington, where a three-person slate backed by Awake Illinois, the 1776 Project and Florida-based Moms for Liberty, as well as a local political action committee funded by former GOP governor candidate Gary Rabine and others, was routed. Voters instead returned two incumbents who previously voted against removing books on LGBTQ subjects from school libraries to the board, along with one newcomer.
In west suburban Downers Grove — one of the first places in Illinois to see a controversy over the presence on school library shelves of the graphic novel and memoir “Gender Queer,” whose removal has become a rallying point for the political right — a slate of conservative candidates was defeated by a group that included Kara Casten, an insurance executive and wife of Democratic U.S. Rep. Sean Casten, according to unofficial results.
Awake Illinois also last year criticized a drag-queen bingo program at the Downers Grove Public Library, ultimately leading to anonymous threats and the show’s cancellation.
“We know how engaged this community is and some of the things going on did not represent the broader community,” Kara Casten said in an interview Thursday. “The election showed that those things don’t represent our community — they want inclusion, they want diversity, they want teachers respected and supported.”
Casten, who ran with former board member Don Renner and newcomer Ken Dawson, noted her decision to run was inspired in part by the legacy of her daughter Gwen, who died last June from what the DuPage County coroner called a sudden cardiac arrhythmia, just two weeks after graduating from Downers Grove North High School.
“Part of it too for me was my daughter was a real advocate in high school for marginalized groups and people that struggled with speaking up for themselves,” Casten said.
The losing slate — Christopher Todd Erickson, Barbara Allen and Dana Cox — was backed by Awake and conservative talk radio station WIND-AM 560, home to right-wing host and political consultant Dan Proft of Naples, Florida.
Proft’s Uihlein-funded political action committee, People Who Play By the Rules, which supported failed GOP governor candidate Darren Bailey in November, suffered a defeat in the one school board election where it got directly involved.
The PAC last month reported spending more than $3,700 on mailers supporting three candidates for the board of Lyons Township High School District 204, which serves nearly 4,000 students from La Grange, Western Springs and surrounding towns in suburban Cook County.
Those candidates — David Herndon, Timothy Vlcek and Frank Evans — lost to Timothy Albores, Jill Beda Daniels and Kari Dillon, according to unofficial results. The latter group was backed by a newly formed political action committee called Support Our Schools, which has ties to Democratic lawyer and lobbyist Heather Wier Vaught, who in the past has represented indicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Not all results were so decisive, with a mix of candidates winning in some districts and conservatives winning out in others.
In west suburban Wheaton, unofficial results showed voters largely rejected three of four members of a slate backed by Awake Illinois and Jeanne Ives, a conservative former state representative.
But as of Thursday, slate member Amanda “Amy” Erkenswick, who attended an Awake Illinois candidate training and has been a repeat guest on WIND talk shows, held a narrow three-vote lead over Erik Hjerpe, who was among a group of candidates endorsed by the local teachers union, for the third of three available four-year seats on the board of Community Unit School District 200.
Once all the ballots are counted, “I hope we can focus on the real issues in our district,” said Julie Kulovits, who was also backed by the teachers union.
In the south suburbs, two of three members of the conservative We the Parents Illinois slate, whose goals included “protecting the classroom from woke and political ideology,” appeared poised to claim seats on the board of Lockport Township High School District 205, according to unofficial results.
“I look forward to working with the school board to provide students ample opportunity for their journeys,” Sandra Chimon Rogers, who along with slate mate Martin Boersma and incumbent Veronica Tylka-Shaw appeared to top the eight-person field, told the Daily Southtown on Tuesday.
In McHenry County, conservative candidates Laura Murray, Andrew Bittman, Gina Galliger and Michael Thompson, who were endorsed by Awake Illinois and WIND, will now represent a conservative majority on the board in Huntley Community School District 158, according to unofficial results.
“It’s fair to say that over the years, we’ve seen a slow degradation in the quality of education coming out of District 158,” Thompson said Thursday, citing lower standardized tests scores and a lack of responsiveness from the current board.
While Awake Illinois initially listed the Huntley group among the more than 100 candidates it endorsed late last week, Thompson said he and his fellow candidates asked the polarizing Naperville-based organization to take them off the list because they didn’t want to split the community.
“I think any time a candidates’ platform aligns with another organization, they’re going to get the thumbs-up from them, and Awake Illinois is a group that agrees with a lot of the things that we stood for,” he said.
The group also was backed by a newly formed PAC called McHenry County Citizens for Lower Taxes, which was funded with $15,000 from the campaign fund of unsuccessful GOP congressional candidate Catalina Lauf of Woodstock. But Thompson said it was hard work, not financial backing, that won the race.
“Our success was a result of several years of attending and speaking up at board meetings and meeting with other taxpayers in our district,” he said.
William Geheren, who’s been on the board of the nine-school district for 12 years and lost his reelection bid, said he’s “extremely concerned” about the future of the district.
“I have no idea what their game plan is other than they want to come in and push their political agenda, which this job is not supposed to be about,” Geheren said. “I think any time a candidates’ platform aligns with another organization, they’re going to get the thumbs up from them, and Awake Illinois is a group that agrees with a lot of the things that we stood for,” he said.
Chicago Tribune’s Rick Pearson and Jeremy Gorner contributed.
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