Republicans Suffer Crushing Defeat in Transgender Battle

Republicans across the country suffered a crushing defeat in the transgender battle that they thrust into the national spotlight just two years ago.

GOP candidates in Virginia, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kansas suffered major losses Tuesday night in several local elections where voters rejected anti-trans policies by voting against Republicans in school board races.

The results of the 2023 election suggest that a tide is turning against the so-called "parents rights" movement, which gained momentum two years ago and has since dominated the national conversation about education and American politics.

Fresh off of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin's 2021 victory, Republicans seized on school culture wars as a winning election strategy. Advocacy group Moms for Liberty gained significant traction as Republican lawmakers, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, pursued education policies that tackled critical race theory, sexual orientation and transgender rights.

This year alone, 586 anti-trans bills—which include bans on gender-affirming care, the inclusion of transgender athletes in women's sports and choice of pronouns—have been introduced in 49 states, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker.

But Tuesday night suggested that the crusade against transgender students may not be as popular among Americans as Republicans believed two years ago. Virginia Democrats triumphed in statehouse elections, effectively shrinking Youngkin's power, and the majority of candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty lost their school board elections.

Moms for Liberty defended its endorsement record on Wednesday, saying it had a 43 percent success rate in this election cycle.

"On November 7th, we helped to get 50 more school board members elected that respect parental rights and who will fight to get back to the basics in America's public schools," Moms for Liberty spokesperson Marleigh Kerr told Newsweek. "Our chapter chairs work tirelessly to identify candidates that are truly focused on parental rights and bring them to the forefront of this fight. Parental rights is and will continue to be a top issue in every election until our children are safe."

While school board elections are nonpartisan, the rebuke of anti-trans candidates in school districts like Linn-Mar Community School District in Iowa and Loudon County Public Schools in Virginia raises questions about whether Republicans should continue to embrace campaigns that focus on transgender rights in schools. Here are the GOP setbacks that are sending warnings for future elections:

Virginia: Loudon County, Albemarle County, Fairfax County

Liberal candidates in the culture war hotspot of Loudon County won a six-seat majority on the nine-seat school board Tuesday night.

The county garnered attention in 2021 after conservative parents accused school board members of failing to protect their children following a pair of sexual assault incidents at the district high school that was falsely claimed to be perpetuated by a transgender student. Since then, the district's local school board meetings and policies have made national headlines.

In Albemarle County, Allison Spillman, the parent of a transgender child and candidate endorsed by the Democratic Party, defeated Meg Bryce, the daughter of the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, winning the school board seat with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Conservative parents in Fairfax County who helped propel Youngkin to victory also suffered a disappointing school board election in Fairfax County, where all the major Democratic-endorsed candidates won for the three at-large seats and nine district seats in Virginia's largest school district. The board has frequently clashed with Youngkin over his education actions.

"Despite years of attacks from Richmond Republicans and well-funded dark money groups, failed recall campaigns, lawsuits to remove a Democratic candidate from the ballot, and the GOP opposition raising 75% more in 2023 than 2019, the School Board will remain entirely Democratic," Karl Frisch, who won his reelection bid for the Providence District, said in a Tuesday statement.

Virginia Democrats celebrated other wins against state Republicans who ran anti-trans campaigns on Tuesday, flipping the state House, holding their majority in the state Senate and electing Virginia's first transgender state Senator, Danica Roem.

Iowa: Linn-Mar School District, Des Moines Suburbs

All the candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty in the Linn-Mar school district lost their races on Tuesday, marking a crushing defeat for conservatives in a district that had been seen as a major battleground for the debate over transgender policies.

Linn-Mar's support for policies that bolstered transgender rights caught significant flack from prominent Republicans, including Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and former Vice President Mike Pence, the latter who called the district's policies "crazy" in a nationally televised town all event.

The district also drew criticisms earlier this year after school board member Rachel Wall faced calls to resign for a social media post in which she said, "The purpose of a public ed is not to teach kids what parents want. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client is not the parent, but the community."

Ahead of the election, Wall wrote to her Facebook page, "Today you can reject the Moms For Liberty agenda and stand firm against bullying, harassment, and bigotry by supporting candidates who steadfastly believe in public education, and are committed to providing a world-class experience for ALL students."

The other Iowa candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty were also defeated on Tuesday. Of the 13 school board candidates that the group endorsed, only one in a rural district won. Candidates in Dallas, Linn, Polk and Warren counties also lost their races.

"I'm so proud of all of the Democrats running for school board seats in the Des Moines suburbs of Ankeny, Johnston, Urbandale, Waukee and West Des Moines. All the Democrats won. All the Moms for Liberty lost!" Iowa State Senator Claire Celsi wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Pennsylvania: Central Bucks School District

Democratic-endorsed school board candidates in Pennsylvania swept the district races across Central Bucks County. Karen Smith, Heather Reynolds, Dana Foley, Rick Haring and Susan Gibson all won their contests against their Republican-endorsed counterparts.

"In 2021, Moms 4 Liberty took over the district and passed brutal anti-trans policies," independent journalist Erin Reed tweeted on Tuesday night. "Anti-trans politics do not win elections, at least not in Bucks County."

The hotly contested school board race was marked by deep partisan divisions in the swing county of a swing state. The previously Republican-led board had passed policies that banned Pride flags from classrooms and "sexualized content" in school books. Over the campaign season, Democrats and Republicans raised more than $6000,000 combined.

"We stood for change," Gibson said from the Bucks County Democratic headquarters, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. "We did this with the community, for the community."

The school district in Central York also flipped from red to blue as voters rejected candidates running on culture war issues. Additionally, the five Republican candidates running for Montgomery County's Perkiomen Valley school board, two of whom were incumbents, all lost their election bids.

Ohio: Hamilton County

Moms for Liberty endorsed eight candidates in the school board races in Hamilton County, but only two of them won Tuesday night. Voters in Forest Hills, Loveland and Madeira—communities that bore the brunt of the culture wars throughout this election cycle—all rejected those candidates.

Kansas: Shawnee Heights School Board

Public education advocates had warned about the right-leaning candidates running for the Shawnee Heights School Board, saying those individuals were pushing "fake issues" in their campaigns.

"These aren't our traditional candidates who come to board elections with experience of civic engagement, participation," Judith Deedy, executive director of Game On for Kansas Schools, told the Kansas Reflector last month. "Lately, we see kind of an angry parent. And sometimes they're not even parents, but they're running on wedge issues, culture war issues. They're using deceptive information."

But efforts to combat those candidates appeared to pay off Tuesday when the community, located just outside of Topeka, voted to re-elect several incumbents in their races and handed a defeat to the conservative challengers who sought to position themselves as parental rights champions.

"If there is one lesson to learn tonight, it's that the relentless focus on attacking transgender people does NOT yield electoral victories," Reed said. "Millions of dollars poured into anti-trans ads this year. Candidates those ads supported are losing in droves."

Update 11/08/23, 5:34 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comments from Kerr.