‘Pendulum Swing’ in Texas Races Points to Value of Local Organizing
Hard-line conservatives who promoted book and bathroom bans suffered big losses in school board races.
by Denny
Anti-trans school board incumbents lost at least 11 seats across several Texas school districts this month in what a grass-roots organizer called an early marker of a “pendulum swing” in the state.
Andrea Segovia, the senior field and policy director for the Transgender Education Network of Texas, said the successes underlined the importance of local involvement in school board elections. “The most important people are at the bottom,” she told Assigned Media, pointing to the small-scale organizing around school board elections.
School board seats are both more obtainable, their campaigns costing far less than statewide or even city council races, and offer the opportunity to have a direct impact on the community, she noted.
Even in the midst of President Trump’s broad discriminatory tactics—be it the deportation of constituents or the attacks on access to gender-affirming care for trans youth—school board members challenging anti-LGBTQ and anti-DEI efforts “are people that you vote for.”
Though officially nonpartisan, school board elections have drawn attention from right-wing groups that have promoted everything from book bans to bathroom bans. Republican candidates have overwhelmingly gotten the support of these well-financed groups.
But on Election Day, the Republicans took a “shellacking,” the analyst Jennifer Berkshire wrote on X.
“Given how popular school vouchers are supposed to be in Texas you'd think that voters would have rewarded the GOP yesterday but instead the opposite seems to have happened,” she wrote. “An absolute shellacking in key school board races.”
Some of the highlights:
In the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, voters ousted an incumbent who had supported policies requiring individuals use bathrooms that match gender assigned at birth, and rejecting students’ chosen pronouns even with parental support.
In the Keller Independent School District, where a policy requiring use of pronouns and names that match a student’s birth certificate, was put in place just last year, three new candidates filled seats previously held by conservative-backed members.
In the Clear Creek Independent School District, which had been pressured by hard-line conservative groups to implement a similar pronoun policy, voters ousted a conservative incumbent and rejected a bid by a newcomer who had been endorsed by an outside conservative group.
In the Mansfield Independent School District, three conservative incumbents lost their seats.
In the Fort Bend Independent School District, conservatives lost two board seats, resulting in a flip from a 5-2 conservative majority to a 4-3 left-leaning majority.
In the Katy Independent School District election, voters displaced the board’s conservative president who had championed anti-trans policies.
The heavy impact of right-wing influence on school board elections was seen in 2022, throughout the Fort Worth suburbs, which includes Keller, Mansfield, and Grapevine Independent School Districts.
The far-right Christian cellphone company Patriot Mobile formed a political action committee, Patriot Mobile Action, which injected over half a million dollars in endorsements of conservative candidates—11 of whom were victorious..
“Whether it’s school boards or the Texas Legislature, there's so much money involved,” Segovia said. “We've seen that happen in different ISD’s in San Antonio, too. They inject themselves to try and take over a specific place.”
June marks the end of Texas’ legislative session, which has seen an onslaught of anti-trans legislation – including a slew of last-minute bills that Segovia describes as “conniving.” Just last week, she testified against House Bill 229, which seeks to define gender in accordance with what it calls “biological sex.” This bill is one of hundreds seen nationwide seeking to legislate over the agency of trans and gender-expansive people.
This year marks a new record of anti-trans bills introduced on legislative floor nationwide, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker. Out of 905 total, Texas leads at 129, almost double that of Missouri, the second highest at 67 anti-trans bills.
“As an organization that is deeply entrenched in this legislative fight, go and share information with your community,” Segovia urged.
“Texas,” she hopes, “is going to swing back to prioritizing equality for all Texans and not just a specific group.”