Why Conservatives Keep Losing School Boards
Editor's Note
Public debate about school board elections increasingly treats partisan outcomes as reflections of cultural mood rather than products of institutional design. This tendency obscures a central reality: political conflict is mediated first through rules, procedures, and administrative arrangements long before it appears as ideology.
Within the context of the cold civil war now shaping American public life, control of these local governing mechanisms has taken on heightened significance. This essay from Jordan Adams argues that conservative underperformance in school board races is best understood as the predictable result of electoral systems constructed to favor one side. Any serious effort to reclaim educational institutions must therefore begin with reforming the machinery that governs how they are controlled.
“In culture war backlash, Democrats sweep school boards” Politico proclaimed after 2025’s low-visibility elections. The storyline was already written. The education Right had been rejected; the fight, readers were meant to assume, was finished.
But there is a simple rule about media: The louder and more triumphant the coverage, the more likely it is pointing toward a real vulnerability conservatives ought to examine. In reality, the path to better, more patriotic schools still runs straight through local school boards. The deeper problem is that these elections are systematically engineered, and the Left is counting on most people never noticing.
Like a ship deliberately rigged to run a crooked course, school board elections were structured decades ago to steer the vessel of public education first toward the interests of teacher unions; today they advance the radical Left’s ideological agenda, often at the expense of children’s learning, safety, and well-being.
This, readers, is how it’s done.
Off-cycle elections. In many states, school board elections—and school bond elections—are scheduled at intentionally random times of the year: often in the spring or summer, and sometimes in odd-numbered years. The result of these maneuvers is, of course, that only the hyper-engaged, hyper-ideological, hyper-status-quo-keeping voters organize, turn out, and cast ballots. And who dominates these groups? The very people who have driven America’s public schools into the ground. The relatively “new-to-the-party” education Right stands almost no chance in these circumstances. Though, in a few small pockets that managed to anticipate this dynamic last year, conservatives fared well, successfully fending off left-leaning candidates.
The camouflage of nonpartisanship. These races are, technically, “nonpartisan.” In practice, however, they are about as nonpartisan as “nonprofits” are purely altruistic, barely-getting-by charities with no financial incentive. The nonpartisan label is a joke, a convenient advantage for the Left, which has long dominated education and has substantial personal stakes in the outcomes: consulting gigs, union-facilitated contracts, and other entitlements. Meanwhile, the Right, which increasingly relies on low-propensity voters, struggles when party affiliation is obscured. Even in deep-red areas, most conservative-leaning voters will not turn out if they cannot quickly and clearly identify which candidate is Republican and which is Democrat.
Control of the election machinery. Beyond timing and labeling, many structural problems skew the playing field further: candidates themselves — or their aligned networks — often control critical elements of the election. As we have seen in many Blue States, a partisan Secretary of State has immense power to shape election rules and procedures in ways that favor their own party (or even their own candidacies) without meaningful oversight (see Katie Hobbs in Arizona). The same dynamic applies to school board and bond elections. Leftist school board candidates are often closely aligned with teachers unions, which operate far more effectively as a lockstep get-out-the-vote machine, with increasingly ideological priorities. Conservative candidates, by contrast, represent a more diverse and fragmented coalition of parents and taxpayers, without the benefit of an employer- and state-facilitated campaign apparatus.
Home-field advantage. Elections are often held in the very schools being governed. For school board elections, this gives the ruling class literal home-field advantage. For bond elections, it is even worse: voters cast ballots inside the buildings that will benefit from the bond, creating a psychological appeal to guilt or civic pride. Meanwhile, the districts themselves — the government, mind you — run campaign advertisements for the bond on school signage, newsletters, and banners, often under the slogan “Support Your Local Schools!” In some districts, millions of taxpayer dollars are spent on “bond campaign managers” whose sole job is to run these campaigns.
It’s overt and sinister manipulation. And yet, somehow, conservatives still manage to win some school board elections.
But these overall poor outcomes have almost nothing to do with “pendulum swings in the culture wars” and everything to do with conservative leaders — and what they have allowed the Left to accomplish. Structural advantages give the Left a nearly insurmountable edge, and until conservatives confront these realities, victories will remain the exception, not the rule.
What Red State Leaders Can Do
A major reason conservatives continue to lose school board races is simple: One side has the full weight of its political party supporting it, and the other has none. And by “none,” I mean zero support, infrastructure, or coordinated strategy. A Republican school board member from Ohio described the post-election reality last month:
“Across Ohio we had our butts kicked. We were all way outspent, they have an activist ground game, paid outsiders, full funding for TV and mailers, strong Democratic Party support, and they will lie and slander to win. We have none of these. Zero…. They declared full-out battle in 2025 and clearly won. If GOP leadership and nonprofits do not put up serious money for infrastructure, ground troops, and organization, we will not win this war.”
To put this in further context, another school board member in Michigan told me she had to turn to Andrew Yang’s mostly Democratic nonprofit, GoodParty, to obtain a Republican voter list for roughly $25 — while her own local GOP wanted to charge her, a fellow Republican, $500. For the record, she won her election, and she credits GoodParty’s resources and organization as the decisive factor.
This, plainly, is madness. Red State legislators and governors have to do more.
They should begin by fixing the calendar, moving all school board elections to regular, on-cycle years — ideally November, aligned with general elections. Consolidating these elections would increase voter participation, reduce the outsized influence of narrow special-interest factions, and make the process more transparent and accountable to the electorate.
Candidates should also be allowed to clearly indicate whether they are Republican, Democrat, or Independent. Most of America’s school districts are in solidly red communities, and making party affiliation visible allows conservative voters to identify candidates who align with their values. This simple step eliminates confusion and levels the informational playing field.
Finally, the broader electoral framework must be addressed. School-related elections should be moved out of the buildings being governed, ensuring that the institutions themselves cannot serve as campaign vehicles. Public resources should never be used to promote bond measures or other initiatives. Taken together, these commonsense reforms would restore fairness, strengthen accountability, and rebuild trust in the electoral process.
The explanation for Republican losses is neither mysterious nor complex. And the good news is that the problems are entirely solvable; the legislative fixes, procedural reforms, and party infrastructure investments required are straightforward, commonsense, and well within the capacity of conservative leadership to implement.
The remaining question is whether our leaders will act with urgency and commitment, or whether they will continue to permit these failures to persist. The future of local governance — and with it the broader fight for control of educational institutions — depends on that choice.