Written by: Elva Mendoza
In a surprising political shift, Texas is making national news, and this time, it’s not for something embarrassing or incredibly harmful.
The May 3, 2025 elections delivered a widespread rejection of far-right school board candidates. The good news made serious waves from local social media accounts to national publications. Voters from numerous counties, including traditionally conservative areas, rejected a notable number of incumbents who supported far-right policies regarding what books children can access in libraries, what degree of privacy and respect they are entitled to regarding their gender, and what bathrooms they can use at school. The policies varied from district to district, but generally stripped decision-making on these issues from administrators, teachers, and librarians and placed it with school board members and/or a small, select group of parents.
It was a clear victory for Texans who believe all children, including LGBTQIA+ children and Black and brown children, deserve to see themselves represented in books and to feel safe, welcomed, and accepted in school.
How Far-Right Groups Initially Captured Texas School Boards
Texas school board races are officially non-partisan, but recent elections have been heavily influenced by endorsements and money from far-right activist groups. These include Moms for Liberty, which formed around anti-mask fervor and expanded to include attacking inclusive books and curricula, and corporate political action committees like the Christian nationalist Patriot Mobile Action. In the 2022 school board elections, Patriot Mobile Action injected over half a million dollars into four school districts in the Fort Worth suburbs (Southlake Carroll, Keller, Mansfield, and Grapevine Independent School Districts). All 11 of their endorsed candidates won their seats.
Following these school board takeovers, far-right members immediately enacted ideologically-driven extremist policies. One of the most stark examples was that of the Keller ISD library materials purchase policy. It gave power to virtually anyone in the community to challenge the purchase of books they believed unsuitable for any reason. One challenged book was a biography of poet Amanda Gorman. A religious private school teacher with no children in the district complained about the book, and one passage in particular: “Amanda realized that all of the books she had read before were written by white men. Discovering a book written by people who look like her helped Amanda find her own voice.” The district cancelled plans to purchase copies of the book.
Other policies passed by the Keller board sought to limit the ability of teachers to use transgender children’s preferred pronouns and force children to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex on their birth certificates.
Texans Vote for Change
After three years of watching the consequences of installing radical-right trustees, Keller ISD voters have apparently had enough. Texas Freedom Network-endorsed candidate Randy Campbell won Place 1, which was being vacated amid scandal by one of the original 11 Patriot Mobile-backed candidates, Micah Young. Campbell ran his campaign as a rejection of the divisive and disrespectful partisan politics that had consumed the board, stating on his website that, “Hate is not a Keller ISD value. Nobody has to justify who they are.”
Jennifer Erickson won Place 2, unseating Joni Shaw Smith, who was also one of the original “Patriot Mobile Eleven.” The only other Patriot Mobile Eleven trustee on the board had resigned in February after inviting an evangelical film crew from the Netherlands into a Keller ISD school for an interview and tour in which students were filmed without consent.
Thirty miles south, voters ousted all three Mansfield ISD trustees who had initially secured their seats back in 2022 as part of the Patriot Mobile Eleven. Under their tenure, Mansfield ISD instituted policies on banning books similar to one currently under consideration in the 89th Texas Legislature and policies requiring teachers to police students’ pronouns and bathroom use and report on them to parents.
In Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, only one of two incumbent Patriot Mobile Eleven candidates, Kathy Florence-Spradley, was reelected, and she ran unopposed. GCISD was in the national spotlight shortly after those two trustees were originally elected in 2022 for passing a sweeping “don’t say trans” policy, among other anti-trans policies. Similarly, in Southlake Carroll ISD, known for suing over the addition of gender identity to Title IX protections, two more Patriot Mobile Eleven candidates retained their seats by running unopposed. One wonders if the backlash to extremist policies would have ousted them as well had voters had any other option. (If you have ever thought of running for school board, please take this as your sign that you should!)
The backlash was not limited to Tarrant County districts. In Fort Bend ISD near Houston, candidates Afshi Charania and Angie Wierzbicki won seats previously held by supporters of controversial policies that banned books and forced teachers to out LGBTQIA+ students to their parents. Both candidates campaigned on their opposition to those policies. The ousted school board vice president, Rick Garcia, rejected the idea that his votes for the book and gender policies cost him his seat, despite similar trends in many other school districts, including Arlington, Brenham, Clear Creek, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, Lake Travis, Liberty Hill, Llano, McKinney, and Richardson ISDs.
A Source of Hope
From Keller to Katy, Texans voted extremists OUT of their school boards this month in favor of candidates that rejected polarizing, hateful, and harmful policies. Voters knew their worth and exercised their power. This electoral drubbing took place amid efforts at the state level to ram through similar schemes; national efforts to defund public education, attack transgender people, and stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion; and on the same day Greg Abbott signed his school voucher scam into law. It is unknown how much of a factor each of those realities played in the results, but it does seem clear that Texans are sick and tired of our children being used as political pawns.
The election results are a source of hope for those of us following the advancement of harmful legislation in the current 2025 Texas Legislative Session, where we’ve seen bills designed to ban books and make life even more difficult and dangerous for transgender Texans. Our fight to protect children’s freedom to read and exist safely just as they are is far from over. But these election results suggest the tide may be turning against the Christian nationalist agenda.
We are committed to staying in this fight. Here’s how you can help:
- Speak out against harmful legislation. Stay updated via our Lege Hub.
- Register to vote and mark your calendar for the upcoming elections in your district. Our Voter Hub has all the details.
- Consider running for school board yourself!
- Join our email list for real-time updates and specific opportunities.
- Support our advocacy work promoting an honest, accurate, public education for all.
Thank you for being in this fight with us.
