After many months of campaign strategizing, community engagement, and fending off backlash, five parents turned local Republican candida...
After many months of campaign strategizing, community engagement, and fending off backlash, five parents turned local Republican candidates from Guilford, Conn. lost their long fought battle to reclaim the school board from progressive control.
Calling themselves “Five Reasons Why,” the coalition pulled off impressive victories in the preliminary stages of the race this summer, defeating three Republican incumbents sympathetic to critical race theory and its inclusion in school curricula in two consecutive elections.
However, the political rookies were under no illusions of the uphill battle they faced ahead of the November election. Winning the hearts and minds of the town’s majority unaffiliated constituents into voting against equity and inclusion initiatives in the school system as well as for education transparency proved to be no easy task. Throughout their campaign, the parents were labeled racists and extremists, with the vitriol spilling over into business boycotts and petitions calling for some candidates’ cancellation.
The five’s opponents was an alliance fusion slate of three Democrats and two Independents formed in response to the meteoric rise of the GOP candidates, who they perceived as a politically radical threat to Guilford schooling. With record voter turnout for the state with 50.62 percent of the electorate showing up to the polls, according to Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, the slate secured all five vacant seats on the board, preserving the effectively progressive, pro CRT majority. While the Independents and Democrats received vote totals in the six thousands, the GOP parents, including Danielle Scarpellino, Nick Cusano, Aly Passarelli, Tim Chamberlain, and Bill Maisano, received vote totals in the three thousands.
Just after 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, the GOP parents’ campaign conceded the race, writing: “Our five republican candidates lost the BOE election. But the biggest losers are the children in Guilford.”
Over the past year, the band of five have worked to expose the district’s schemes to nest derivations of critical race theory into classroom material, teacher trainings, and overall campus discourse.
While the parents came home with bad news last night, the Guilford school board fight was only a microcosm of the national debate that has catalyzed an unprecedented surge of parent involvement in public education. It was this same grassroots momentum that roiled sleepy towns like Loudoun, Virginia and Southlake, Texas and that resulted in a Republican sweep across multiple states and localities Tuesday.
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