Knox, Van Hoek, Rohrs, Thompson and Walden all got elected to East Valley school boards, with some of them coming in first place.
Chandler Unified School District, CUSD80
Kurt Rohrs got elected, coming in first just ahead of ethno-communist Patti Serrano who also got on the board and will presumably govern as a Lindsay Love 2.0 type of board member. Waffling Charlotte Golla, who wasn't recognizable as a conservative in the teachers union and Chandler Chamber debates, came in third. Leftist Lara Bruner failed in her bid for re-election. Marilou Estes came in last, and helped Republicans by splitting the vote of the left. Without Estes in the race, It's likely that both Serrano and Bruner would have gotten elected. Although Rohrs late last year alienated much of his voting base with his aggressive opposition to budget override opponents, he had been moving markedly to the right as the elections got closer, explicitly taking a stance against Critical Race Theory and explicitly saying, in the teachers union debate, that he will also represent tax payers and parents, not just teachers. Golla, who also supported the budget override, albeit less vocally, never really made any attempt during her campaign to represent her voting base by standing up to the radical left. As an example, in the teachers union debate she happily threw her support behind the idea that taxpayers should pay for housing for public school teachers. She never explicitly denounced Critical Race Theory, CRT, either. It appears voters were not impressed and hence denied her a board seat.
Higley Unified School District, HUSD60
Anna Van Hoek came in second place, securing herself a seat on the board. Roy Morales came in fourth and did not win a seat. The results here were very close with Amanda Wade coming in first with 11,682 votes while Morales came in fourth with 10,555.
Queen Creek Unified School District, QUSD95
James Knox came in second and hence won a seat on the board, ousting long standing incumbent Ken Brague by a very considerable 10% vote margin. Knox is an excellent candidate who explicitly stood against the leftist lunacy in public schools. He got attacked for this by the public education establishment harder than any other local school board candidate.
Gilbert Unified School District, GUSD41
Chad Thompson came in first and hence won a board seat. Thompson was very vocal in his opposition to harmful leftist policies in public schools.
Mesa Unified School District, MUSD4
Rachel Walden came in second and won a board seat. Ed Steele came in a distant fourth. We didn't follow this race as closely as some of the others. However, Walden appeared to be stronger in her stance for children and against the leftists. As an example, among all the issues one could run on, Steele, like Golla in CUSD80, elected to make increasing teacher pay one of his campaign pillars. After schools were closed for several months and teachers had just gotten a 20% raise after state-wide strikes, conservatives apparently had little patience with further claims that public school teachers need to be paid yet more.
Conclusion
Overall this school board election has to count as a success for the right as they wrestled away a few seats from the left. In our view, had the local right been running more candidates vocal about unpopular policies like CRT indoctrination, school closures, mask mandates, quarantines, it could have won even more board seats. In CUSD80 for example, with 3 leftists running for 2 seats against 2 apparent conservatives, the right should have taken both seats. Golla had to really try to loose this election, and try she did, with "great" success. In Queen Creek the right only put up one candidate for the two available seats, automatically forfeiting one seat. The same was the case in Gilbert. That's a potential 3 additional school board seats that could have conceivably been picked up.
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