Winning elections is easy if you do what your voters want. It requires taking calculated risks and some bravery. Cucking on major issues is an avenue to defeat. Video in article.
It's the Republican's to take
The good news? Republicans run 2 people, Charlotte Golla and Kurt Rohrs, for 2 available spots on the board of the Chandler Unified School District, CUSD80, which encompasses most of Chandler and part of Gilbert and Queen Creek. Grade A for getting this basic math right. Even better, Democrats appear to run 3 candidates, setting up a vote split that favors the Republicans. Democrats are running:
Incumbent Lara Bruner, a teacher, with strong ties to the Tempe School District
Marilou Thalke Estes, a retired CUSD80 teacher
Martha "Patti" Serrano who is endorsed by abortion activists Arizona List.
While radical incumbent Lindsay Love is not running for re-election, it is important to defeat Bruner as well as she is almost as radical as Love. Bruner abstained from a vote to stop funding the National School Boards Association, NSBA. In the now infamous letter, the NSBA demanded from the Biden DoJ to treat parents opposed to mask mandates and Critical Race Theory, CRT, as domestic terrorists. A draft version of the letter demanded from the Biden-Harris administration to send the military into school board meetings. Yes, they, implicitly, wanted US soldiers to shoot at US parents that "step out of line". Love had voted to continue funding the NSBA, while the 3 slightly more rational board members, Mozdzen, Wirth and Olive voted to stop sending money to the NSBA. Many other, though by far not all, school districts temporarily stopped sending money to the NSBA as well.
Will Republicans snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Messaging malpractice in action!
The bad news? There are four main issues in K-12 education that are on parents' minds, all favoring Republicans, which Rohrs and Golla and Chandler Republicans in general inexplicably ignore:
Critical race theory, CRT, related to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion - DEI
Child grooming, related to social emotional learning - SEL
Mask & Vax mandates, School closures
Chandler Republicans seem to believe that while some on the left call white children racist and want to make them feel uncomfortable and possibly harm them physically - see video below (let's not close our eyes to what they really want), the right should run purely on budgetary issues and politically correct wishy washy waffling (www).
Video of ethno-socialist calling for discomfort (harm?) for white children
Rohrs posters currently on display on street corners in the district say "support parent's rights, respect the teachers, work together for the kids", completely ignoring the hot button issues of critical race theory - CRT, child grooming, masks and school choice. His poster also contains a grammatical error as it is parents' rights, not parent's rights. This smells of the Romney-McCain-Bush-Cheney rinocon - I do what you want just don't call me racist - style of politics that has done so much damage to the Republican Party, our country and the world.
Lindsay Love has attacked "white parents" on her twitter feed and sometimes in board meetings. Yet, neither Golla nor Rohrs have chosen to counter-attack this easy and very large political target for political gain and to show parents in the community who are being attacked that they have their back. Love also, by the way, attacked black parents that spoke up against her divisive politics.
Rohrs only has a low resolution portrait on his website, and his fundraising is not tied in with WinRed, a Republican platform. The copyright says 2021. Under issues, child sexualization is mentioned, but CRT is not. If Rohrs is reading, contact us, we'll get you better pictures.
Golla doesn't have any posters out yet but it's a safe bet that she is advised by the same kind of moderates that just lost the Chandler city council to the radical left. Golla is giving away free advertising and PR by refusing to speak at CUSD80 board meetings. To bolster her chances she should, like Rohrs, address the board at every meeting. Golla's website has a video that sounds like an advert for the teachers union, calling teachers heroes. Which teachers? The unionized ones that shut down the schools and forced our kids to wear masks? The Chandler teachers who stepped in front of the school board and implied that families that don't want their kids groomed are homo and trans phobic, or the ones that imply that our children belong to the state? No mention of critical race theory, child grooming, mask mandates and school choice on Golla's website.
Teachers are already very well represented in the education system. In fact, they run it! They have unions. Government/public school administrations are mostly staffed by former teachers. School boards, including CUSD80's, are dominated by current/former teachers and current/former district staff. The two largest US teachers unions have ~3.5 Million members. They are the largest donors to the Democrat Party and directly influenced the CDC into getting every single US public school closed during the Government-Covid lockdowns, with full pay for teachers of course. For a sense of proportion, the facebook group "Conservative Teachers of America" has 8,000 members. With very few exceptions, public school teachers are a leftist voting block. Why do Republicans running for school board want to represent them? They are not your voters! Parents and taxpayers are! Our children need representation!
The Valley Telegraph contacted Rohrs and Golla in April with questions about the upcoming school board elections. We have not received a response from either. We recently contacted both again with a request for an interview. Rohrs responded by saying he is not interested. Golla did not respond.
How to win elections? Do what your voters want, not what the opposition wants.
Other Republicans show how it should be done. Tom Horne just won the Republican primary for Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, against strong opposition from Shiry Sapir, by putting this on his election posters:
Stop Critical Race Theory
Republican
Shiry Sapir, who has good optics and is well spoken, had a good, but somewhat weaker slogan on her posters:
Education not Indoctrination
while neglecting to mention her party, Republicans
Both, Horne and Sapir, crushed neocon Michelle Udall who came in a distant third.
Also, although Rohrs and Golla appear to know each other well, they do not, at least not yet, seem to coordinate their campaigns and pool resources. To inspire them about how to actually reach their voters, we have designed a few simple posters with clear messages. Click on the images to magnify.
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