It was a career-ending gaffe, or at least has come to be seen that way. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” said Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe during a 2021 Virginia gubernatorial debate with his Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin.
The line was replayed endlessly in attack ads, and handed Youngkin a gift for the central plank of his election campaign: “Parents matter.” He prevailed in a state that Joe Biden had won a year earlier. Now Youngkin is seeking to repeat the trick on 7 November on behalf of Republicans in elections for Virginia’s state assembly.
The modern-day “parents’ rights” movement has roots in grievance over schools’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic, including long closures and mask mandates. Republican messaging subsequently pivoted to cultural divides that have sparked clashes around instruction of topics related to race, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Conservative political action committees also funnelled millions of dollars to school board races, backing candidates who oppose what they see as ultra-leftist ideology in public schools. The once obscure boards have become acrimonious battlegrounds debating everything from book bans and critical race theory to “patriotic” history lessons and transgender students’ use of school bathrooms.
But the electoral potency of such issues among suburban voters is increasingly being questioned. On a national level Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who built his candidacy around “anti-wokeness”, has failed to catch fire in the Republican presidential primary election. Now the limitations of the message will be put to the test in Virginia.
Danica Roem, a member of the Virginia house of delegates bidding to become the first transgender member of the state senate, said in an interview: “The closing message of the Republican running against me [Bill Wool] is transphobia, transphobia, transphobia. Between him and the supporting organisations, my face ended up in black and white negative mailers 20 times this campaign and they’ve done weeks of negative TV. We expect them to go hard negative at the end of this campaign.
“Everything they’re doing right now is just based on, ‘Oh my God, you support trans kids wanting to play with their friends. Oh my God, you support not forcibly outing trans kids against their will when it’s not safe at home. Oh my God, you’re soft on crime because you’re trying to protect trans people or whatever.’ They just come up with the stuff over and over and over again. They’re putting a lot more money into the same message that lost the last three campaigns against me, and I expect the same result is going to play out this November 7.”
Virginia is a political laboratory that will be watched closely by both major parties ahead of next year’s elections for the White House and US Congress. It was home to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, founding fathers who owned enslaved people on sprawling estates, and the Confederate generals Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who sought to preserve slavery at the cost of the Union.
The south lost the civil war but Virginia remained a haven of Jim Crow laws that maintained racial segregation. By the 1990s, however, the state had elected the first African American governor in the US. The expansion of Washington DC spilled into northern Virginia, where voters are more likely to be immigrants, college-educated and liberal.
The state’s tilt towards Democrats looked assured with the 2013 election of McAuliffe as governor followed by Ralph Northam in 2017. The state government passed some of the strictest gun laws, loosest abortion restrictions and strongest protections for LGBTQ+ people in the south. It also legalised marijuana for adult recreational use and abolished the death penalty.
But Youngkin, along with the lieutenant governor, Winsome Sears, and attorney general, Jason Miyares, and their parents’ rights offensive disrupted that narrative. Youngkin said after their victory that they had shown a winning path for Republicans to talk about education, an issue for which he said they have “historically been a bit on our heels”.
As governor, Youngkin has issued an executive order to ban “inherently divisive” topics from school curriculums, signed a law allowing parents to opt out of mask mandates and enacted a set of model policies for the treatment of transgender students that reversed protections put into place by Democrats. He set up a “tip line” for parents to report supposedly divisive practices in schools only for it to be quietly abandoned a few months later.
Next month’s election could indicate whether parents’ rights is a flash in the pan or something more permanent. Rich Anderson, chair of the Republican party of Virginia, insisted: “Those issues that were on the table that played a role in the election of Youngkin, Sears and Miyares are still at play today.
“I’ve met not only Republican parents, but Democratic parents and independent parents who are concerned about biological male access to their daughters’ bathrooms and locker rooms. It’s a very complex issue. It is still playing mightily in the state and so I think that it is going to play a very prominent role in the election.”
The parents’ rights movement has called for schools to remove certain books dealing with race or sexuality. Anderson added: “The narrative that comes from the Democrats is about banning books. There’s no attempt to ban books. It’s simply to have age-appropriate reading materials in the libraries in our public school system.
“The parents have, in fact, a significant say about the materials that are maintained there and accessible by other students. It’s not about book banning. It’s about making sure that age-appropriate materials are present in the libraries and age-appropriate subjects are taught to their children.”
On the campaign trail, many Republicans are styling themselves as defenders of Virginia schoolchildren against a leftwing ideology that promotes social justice activism, negative racial history and gender fluidity over academic achievement.
Paul Lott, a Republican candidate for the house of delegates from Ashburn, said: “There should be no reason why my child at eight, nine, 19 should be able to go into a school library and check out material without my consent that can’t be broadcast on television, can’t be broadcast on the radio, and they can’t even get into a movie to see.”
Lott continued: “What’s happened these days is they’re starting to use public education as a way to try to sidestep due process and that’s not OK. All the various things that we know in popular law – a kid can’t get a tattoo before age 18 without parental consent. How can they consent to a puberty blocker when they can’t get a tattoo?
Among the flashpoints in Virginia has been Thomas Jefferson high school for science and technology, frequently cited as among the best public schools in the nation. Activists argued that the Fairfax county school board introduced an admissions policy that unfairly discriminates against highly qualified Asian Americans, a claim upheld by a federal judge but overturned on appeal. For decades Black and Latino students have been underrepresented at the school while Asian Americans made up more than 70% of the student body.
The battle for school boards has also turned nasty with screaming matches and even arrests. Juli Briskman, a supervisor seeking re-election in Loudon county, northern Virginia, said several school board members there have received racially motivated death threats, while the head of an LGBTQ+ equality group had to move out of the county. “It’s just been heinous,” she commented.
“The number of of transgender athletes we have in the county is very small. Why don’t we pick on the minority population? Just to make themselves feel bigger? These kids are going through enough. Some of these kids don’t have supportive parents and then they’re made to feel like they can’t be themselves in school? That’s horrible.”
Briskman cited recent surveys showing that parents’ rights are “fading a little bit” as an issue. “Folks in Loudoun county didn’t believe this messaging in the first place. Biden crushed it here. Youngkin lost by 11 points. I’m just hoping that this year will finally just put this all to bed and prove that the values of Loudoun county are values of inclusiveness and non-discrimination. And just stop with the culture wars.”
Indeed, there are warning signs for the utility of parents’ rights at the ballot box. Hundreds of activists elected to local school boards largely fell short when running for Congress in last year’s midterm elections. Despite big-money backing from conservative groups such as the 1776 Project Pac and Moms for Liberty, the candidates’ message failed to resonate with moderate voters.
Teachers’ unions and liberal grassroots groups have been fighting back with money and messaging of their own, casting conservative activists as fearmongers intent on turning parents against public schools, marginalising LGBTQ+ students and distracting voters from unpopular policies.
They also believe that such tactics will be outstripped by Democratic energy around abortion rights. They are quick to point out that, should Republicans maintain control of the house and flip control of the senate, Youngkin will be able to enact an extreme rightwing agenda that includes a 15-week ban on abortion.
Abhi Rahman, communications director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said: “The biggest issues that matter to people, Democrats are pretty much aligned on the way that people want these issues to go. Republicans demonise books and schools and trans people, gay people. It shows you that Virginians are better than this and that’s why Democrats are going to win in November.”
Roem, the house delegate running for the 30th district of the Virginia state senate, suggests that the most effective antidote is pointing to a tangible legislative record. Her campaign slogan is “Fixing roads, feeding kids” whereas, she notes, her predecessor Bob Marshall often pushed culture war talking points during 26 years in office.
“If they think that the voters are going to become more favourable to that messaging just because they have more money behind it, it’s going to end up being a very nice contrast for us to say, hey, look, we are focused on improving your day-to-day quality of life. They’re focused on trying to either take your rights away or to make the lives of trans kids more miserable.”
