Which SLO County candidates are endorsed by Moms for Liberty? And what does that mean?

In a test of its political clout, Moms for Liberty — the pro-parental-rights organization that grew out of the COVID pandemic — is campaigning to get like-minded candidates elected to local school boards.

The San Luis Obispo County chapter of the national organization has either endorsed or recommended 13 candidates for school board seats here.

Now, some voters are using that as a litmus test to decide how to vote — including liberals who see any association with Moms for Liberty as a bright red flag.

Jennifer Grinager, chair of the SLO County chapter of Moms for Liberty, says the nonpartisan organization has been wrongly cast as a conservative group.

“Some in our community seem to confuse nonpartisan with nonpolitical,” she wrote in an email. “We do have members from varying political viewpoints, as having a stake in your child’s education should be what every parent wants.”

Yet some members of the organization, as well as certain candidates they support, have made inflammatory, far-right statements — and that undoubtedly affects how the organization is perceived.

Take Paso Robles School District Trustee Frank Triggs, who was appointed to the board and is now running for election. He has earned endorsements from Moms for Liberty and the local Republican Party.

Among other radically conservative views, he claims being transgender is an “imaginary condition.”

“When you’re born a boy it cannot be changed,” he said on KPRL Radio. “At conception (it’s) determined whether you’re male or female. That’s the facts.”

He made similar statements at a school board meeting, and went on to say that students should accept “the reality of who they really are and how they were born, and have the proper self-esteem.”

That’s 100% counter to what schools are supposed to be teaching; the state Department of Education requires that educators “affirmatively recognize different sexual orientations.”

Have you read the Constitution?

At the start of the campaign season, Moms for Liberty sent questionnaires to school board candidates with several yes or no questions, including:

• Do you believe all reasonable accommodations should be made to enable parent participation in school board meetings?
• Do you believe a parent should have the right to determine if they mask their child in school?
• Do you support a parent’s right to opt their child out of sex education?
• Have you read the Constitution of the United States in the past year?
• Do you believe that the legitimate role of government is limited and should be confined to what is clearly defined by the Constitution?
• Do you support the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance each school day?
• Do you support student-led prayer in school?
• Do you support the teaching or training of critical race theory?
• Have you been endorsed by the teachers union?

That was followed up by interviews with candidates who chose to participate. The chapter’s Board of Directors then voted on who to endorse. (Because she is running for school board in Templeton, Grinager did not participate in the vetting process.)

The organization issued nine endorsements: Dan Hathaway, Denise McGrew Kane, Scott Staton and Rebekah Koznek for the Atascadero district; Ashley Smeester and Luke Davis for the Lucia Mar district; Frank Triggs and Laurene McCoy for the Paso Robles district; and Grinager for the Templeton district.

It gave recommendations to four other “liberty-minded, pro-parent candidates”: Eileen Pham and Gary Joralemon for Lucia Mar, Peter Byrne for Paso Robles and Jason Tessa for Templeton.

The recommendation came as a surprise to at least one candidate.

“They haven’t received permission from me to put my name or image on any material,” said Joralemon, a political independent.

He didn’t know much about Moms for Liberty when they approached him, he said, and while he did not fill out the questionnaire, he did agree to an interview.

Since then, he’s learned more about the group and found it “a little too partisan for me.” He declined the endorsement they offered, but Moms for Liberty still gave him a recommendation.

Grinager explained: “When we don’t align on all values, but find the candidate to still be a great candidate and preferred over who they are running against, recommendations is what was chosen to do. A candidate is a public figure and does not need to give permission to use their name and picture.”

Exactly where do Moms for Liberty candidates stand?

Like Triggs, some candidates have been vocal in stating their beliefs, taking conservative positions on controversial issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, mandatory masking and state-mandated sex education.

Byrne, for example, has railed against the LGBTQ+ book section at the Paso High School library, citing it as “an indication of indoctrination.”

Staton wants to “stop the Marxist ideology in schools (and) focus on academics versus social justice.”

Multiple candidates are absolutely opposed to letting transgender students choose which restroom or locker room facilities they use.

Parents should be the ones deciding such issues, Hathaway said on KPRL radio’s Sound-Off program.

“The parents technically own the child,” he said. “The schools ... shouldn’t mandate things that the parent doesn’t want. Do I think boys should go in girls’ restrooms or locker rooms? Absolutely not.”

Staton was even more explicit. “If a young person has a penis, they should use the boys restroom/locker room ...” he wrote on a Tribune questionnaire.

Sound bites and curated websites

But not all the candidates have been so upfront, making it tough for voters to know where they stand.

Candidates typically communicate through sound bites, carefully vetted written statements and campaign websites featuring photos of smiling families and maybe a pet or two. Social media posts can provide more candid glimpses — though candidates often take down controversial posts once they’ve been noticed.

For example, in the last election Tribune reporter Mackenzie Shuman reported on widely discredited, far-right information and videos that Eve Dobler-Drew, a candidate for San Luis Coastal school board, posted on Facebook.

Among other falsehoods, she claimed Melinda Gates is “satanic” due to a pendant she wore in a broadcast interview and shared a YouTube video promoting a movement that encourages people to “overcome” their LGBTQ+ sexual orientation or gender identity through therapy and religious support.

Dobler-Drew — who later removed the posts and was elected to office — told Shuman that her past “has no bearing on where I am now.”

Nothing quite so bizarre has emerged in the current school board campaigns, though there has been an inordinate amount of attention paid to sex education and transgender issues — sometimes obliquely referred to as “the bathroom issue.”

In an interview with KPRL radio, for example, Grinager agreed when the host described state-required sex ed teachings as “perverse.”

“Now we’re kind of interspersing it even as young as kindergarten,” Grinager added. “It’s not an actual subject matter in kindergarten, but there’s sprinklings of it throughout their day”

When asked for an example, she described a lesson in the social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum “where they teach kids to not really trust what you’re seeing in front of you.”

“I don’t know for sure that the particular exercise is happening in our district,” she continued, “but it is part of SEL curriculum.”

Please. Don’t schools already have enough issues to deal with?

Do we really have to go hunting for examples of lessons that some parents may possibly object to — but may not even be taught in local schools?

Parental rights are important, but can we all just agree that schools have a job to do — and that includes complying with state law?

Or do schools have to bend over backward to placate parents who may be offended by a particular book or a poster displayed in a classroom — even though the vast majority of parents see nothing wrong?

We hope that’s not the case, because devoting time and attention to non-issues diverts attention away from the real challenges confronting schools, and there are more than enough to deal with right now, including:

• Learning losses.
• Attracting good teachers to a high-cost area.
• School security.
• The rising cost of transportation and utilities.
• Campuses in need of upgrades.
• Bullying.
• School enrollment.
• Graduation rates.

Judging by its questionnaire, Moms for Liberty seems far more concerned about cracking down on what it refers to as “government overreach.”

Enough.

It’s time to call a truce in the culture war; too much energy has been wasted rehashing what schools did wrong during the COVID pandemic, wringing hands over the “bathroom issue” and policing curriculum to make sure there’s not a single whiff of critical race theory.

It’s time to push forward.

We need school board members who can set personal ideology aside, trust educators to do the right thing and focus on the real issues — and unfortunately, a stamp of approval from Moms for Liberty implies the opposite.

This story was originally published October 30, 2022 at 5:30 AM.