And Then We Have Moms For Liberty!

They have made all these claims of support from moms around the country, how they are banning books, and censoring LGBTQ+ material in classrooms, but now the true comes out… nobody wants them!

Moms for Liberty Falls Flat on Its Face in School Board Races
In Iowa, Moms for Liberty endorsed 13 candidates for school board. Guess how many actually won?
The New Republic
By Tori Otten
November 8, 2023

Iowa chapters of the far-right group Moms for Liberty endorsed 13 candidates in school board races across the state. Only one was elected.

The Tuesday loss is a stinging rebuke of Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated as an extremist group. What happened in Iowa mimics similar defeats suffered by the group and by Republicans in general throughout the U.S.

[…]

But on Tuesday, voters across the country pushed back on the Moms for Liberty agenda. The organization endorsed more than 130 candidates across the country, and the vast majority of them lost—with some failing to get more than single-digit support.

All four Moms for Liberty-backed candidates in Minnesota lost, as did all four in Washington state. The group endorsed 19 candidates for school boards in New Jersey, but only four won.

Moms for Liberty backed 25 candidates throughout Ohio, but just five were elected. And of the six candidates the group endorsed in Virginia, only one won her race.

Aw… imagine that, nobody wants them.

Mother Jones reported…

In 2021, the so-called “parents’ rights” conservative movement was ascendant. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin ran on a platform based almost entirely on opposing the teaching of anti-racism and LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum in schools, marshaling the support of a group of self-proclaimed “Mama Bears” to propel him to victory. But last night, Democrat Schuyler VanValkenburg defeated Youngkin’s hopeful successor, Republican state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, who appeared eager to continue Youngkin’s parents’ rights crusade. In campaign ads, VanValkenberg positioned himself squarely against the parents’ rights crowd, decrying book bans and talking up “the difference one book can make for a child.”

Last night, many of Mom’s for Liberty’s favored candidates lost.

Parents rights crusaders lost many other key races last night. The most influential force in the movement has been, without a doubt, Moms for Liberty, a national group founded in 2021 by two conservative Florida moms. In just two years, the group has amassed 115,000 members in 285 chapters across 45 states. Though Moms for Liberty claims to be a grassroots coalition of parents, as I have reported, it has strong ties to conservative powerhouse groups, including the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute.

Moms for Liberty crows about its success in helping its chosen candidates win their elections; of the 500 right-wing candidates the group endorsed for school board last year, three-quarters of whom had never before run, 275 won their races.

But this year, Moms for Liberty’s luck appears to be running out—last night, many of the group’s favored candidates lost. Here is a non-exhaustive list of results, as of Wednesday morning, in a few places where there were candidates endorsed or recommended by Moms for Liberty:

• In Pennsylvania, the group recommended (but didn’t officially endorse) candidates in five districts. In Central Bucks, five parents’ rights candidates lost their seats to Democrats, as did another five in the Pennridge.

[…]

• In Virginia’s Loudoun County, so far, it appeared that three Moms for Liberty-backed candidates had lost their races.
• In North Carolina’s Mooresville Graded School District Board of Education, a Moms for Liberty-backed candidate lost to a Democrat.
• In Minnesota’s Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School District all four of the Moms for Liberty candidates were defeated.

Aw… imagine that, nobody loves them.

The Advocate wrote that,

In a sweeping rejection of the conservative Moms for Liberty group across the United States, voters turned away from candidates endorsed by the group in multiple school board races. This group, known for its stance against LGBTQ+ educational materials and its advocacy for “parental rights,” faced significant losses in states from Pennsylvania to Iowa.

Agenda PAC, a political action committee dedicated to holding anti-LGBTQ+ politicians accountable, proudly celebrated its victories in school board races following Tuesday’s elections.

[…]

Agenda PAC invested $50,000 in digital programming and targeting as part of its campaign strategy. This included a Get Out the Vote digital buy in Pennsylvania, specifically targeting the Central Bucks School District, Pennridge School District, and Bensalem School District. A GOTV digital buy was also executed in Albuquerque School District, New Mexico. The organization also implemented a field program that made hundreds of voter outreach contacts in the Central Bucks School District.

We like them! But we don’t like “Moms for Liberty.”

New York magazine wrote,

Far-right groups like Moms for Liberty say they speak for parents, a proposition that’s always been dubious. As they push for book bans, whitewash American history, and try to drive LGBTQ+ teachers and students back into the closet, they’ve made plenty of enemies. Parents, especially mothers, have gone head to head with Moms for Liberty and the candidates it backs, stunting the far right’s march through local school boards. That trend was particularly apparent on Tuesday evening when anti-diversity candidates lost a number of pivotal school-board races across the nation.

Banning books about LGBTQ+ issues or racism is somewhat popular with Republican voters, but like much of the GOP’s culture-war turn, they alienate other voters. According to polling from YouGov, independent and Democratic voters don’t want to ban books from school libraries and are much less likely to think that certain topics should be banned from classrooms, too. Moms for Liberty and the parental rights cause they celebrate may appeal to the base, but it’s not yet a winning formula. That’s good news for parents, educators, and students alike.

Moms for Liberty are the groomers and nobody loves a groomer.