Conservative ‘slate’ fails to conquer school board
A coalition of seven right-wing and conservative candidates sought to ban critical race theory in schools and remove books from school libraries. But all seven lost in the general election Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Albany County voters thoroughly crushed an attempt by local conservatives to take control of the school board.
More than 12,700 voters took part in the county’s general election, casting votes for everything from state senator to city councilors. A majority of the school board was also up for grabs and a “conservative slate” of candidates had mobilized to take all seven available seats.
Motivated by anger about the school district’s 2021 mask mandate and animated by fears of inappropriate material in school libraries and classrooms, the “conservative slate” formed a coalition to take back local schools.
The group sponsored a campaign float, hosted group events and collected their various biographies and election materials on a single campaign site. Mailers for the group promised to “STOP Critical Race Theory” and “keep sexually explicit materials out of school” while members of the group spread COVID-19 misinformation at public forums.
The “slate” pitched an alternative vision for Albany County Schools. But the local electorate soundly rejected that vision, refusing to seat any of the seven conservative candidates on offer.
Instead, voters reelected Trustees Beth Bear, Janice Marshall and Nate Martin, electing Mary Alice Bruce, Alex Moon Krassin, Steve Gosar and Carrie Murthy to join them. The seven successful candidates were members of their own loose coalition.
Martin said Albany County voters had a clear choice and sent a “resounding” unambiguous message.
“The folks that ran on the slate I was a part of ran on doing the hard, unsexy work of effectively running a school district, while the other slate ran on these sensational, headline-grabbing issues of banning books and making it hard for transgender kids to go to the bathroom,” he said. “The vast majority of people that we spoke to were like, ‘We have good schools here. We’re not interested in people coming in with their political agendas and trying to make radical changes, especially if they’re people who never cared about public education before Fox News started talking about it.’”
Some of that “unsexy work” will include trying to do more with less, Martin said.
“The board as a body and the district as a whole are confronted with some pretty major challenges in terms of how to absorb and deal with the cuts in our budget that the legislature has handed down to us,” he said. “We managed to give district staff a raise last year understanding that we were going to have to adjust our budgets accordingly. That’s going to be a big project.”
Martin said the district also needs to tackle the learning loss and mental health issues leftover from the darkest days of the pandemic.
“I know those are front of mind for everyone,” he said.
The newly elected and re-elected school board trustees will join Emily Siegel-Stanton and Kim Sorenson to fill out the board’s nine total seats.
“Thank you, Albany County, for giving me the honor and opportunity to serve you on the ACSD1 Board of Trustees,” Murthy writes in a post on her campaign Facebook page. “It will be an honor to represent you, and I look forward to getting to work for our community, our parents, our teachers, and (most) importantly, our kids.”
Below are the full unofficial results for Albany County’s four school board races. Winners are printed in bold.
Area A two-year terms
Elliott Arthur: 2,249
Mary Alice Bruce: 5,274
Dexter Candelaria: 1,767
Alex Moon Krassin: 3,276
Phoebe Newman: 3,160
Jeff Suloff: 2,070
Write-in: 115
Area A four-year terms
Beth Bear: 4,399
Dan Bleak: 2,588
Gwen Clark: 1,493
Teri Jo Gillum: 2,649
Steve Gosar: 5,251
Thomas Martin: 1,090
Carrie Murthy: 3,864
Sandi Rees: 2,520
Mike Shilt: 3,003
Write-in: 115
Area B four-year term
Janice Marshall: 4,166
Stella Rios Nowell: 2,713
Leo Swope: 2,747
Write-in: 65
At-large four-year term
Nate Martin: 5,285
Thomas Mullan: 3,834
Write-in: 81