Following the November elections, staffers from several dark money anti-public school groups — Moms for Liberty (M4L), Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and Parents Defending Education (PDE) — took to the media to tout the supposed success of far right school board candidates.
One IWF staffer described the results of local and state public education races as a bright spot for Republicans in an overall disappointing midterm, representing a “red undercurrent” where a “red wave” failed to appear.
In reality, right-wing school board candidates backed by such groups did not sweep their races, far from it. In particular, M4L, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that keeps its funders secret from the public, and its state PACs, which endorsed more than 500 school board candidates this year, lost the majority of the races the group endorsed in.
But the infrastructure that M4L and other dark money anti-public education groups have built up will likely […]