The election for Crook County School Board is usually a boring, nonpartisan, procedural affair, but the campaign for the three seats up for grabs in the May 16 election has become a political spectacle chock-full of insults, accusations and attack ad campaigns.

The three current board members running for reelection next month were surprised when they learned three right-wing candidates running in tandem would vie for the positions some have held for over a decade. They’re also learning they are up against candidates backed by a top Oregon political consultant whose wife is the Republican leader of the Oregon House.

From Warner: The suddenly hot school board race in Crook County is not unusual. The Oregon School Boards Association reported in 2021 that between 2005 and 2017, most school board members ran unopposed and members with decades in the position were common.

In Oregon and elsewhere, that’s changed.

Conservative groups, sometimes working with Oregon Right-to-Life, began running candidate slates in Albany, Hillsboro, and Newberg. The Oregonian reported in 2021 that Oregon Right to Life had sent a flyer to members of the group stating, “School boards are becoming increasingly important to the state’s political landscape.”

According to Education Week magazine, the national pace of conservative organizing for school board races received a boost when schools were closed during long periods of the COVID-19 pandemic emergencycq – the pandemic isn’t over, just the state and federal emergency declarations Parents who opposed vaccinations and masking rules, along with others who were angered with the stay-at-home virtual school, galvanized around local control of school boards over state officials and agencies.

When schools reopened, the groups remained organized and refocused energy on a wider range of conservative issues. Groups such as the 1776 Project, Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, and Patriot Mobile Action, have helped finance and often recruit candidates to run for school boards as a way to promote their views on parents’ rights, against teaching that accepts LBGT+ people, and opposes critical race theory. Like attempts to run candidates for local library boards, a key goal is oversight of books and other learning materials.

Education Week said conservatives see themselves as challenging a status quo of teacher-union backed groups and liberal activists. Progressive groups have stepped up their response. Groups such as Stand for Children, the Campaign for Our Shared Future Action Fund, Education Reform Now, have worked to find and finance candidates to retake school boards won by conservatives or to buttress candidates who are targeted by insurgent slates.

Current board members are concerned their challengers are leveraging national political divides and distracting from the task of educating children. They said their opponents lack a cohesive plan or vision for the school district which they said has flourished over the past decade. They said they view the campaign as a coordinated statewide initiative to place more right-wing candidates into local positions.

The three candidates running against the incumbents are campaigning on a platform of rejecting what they call sexualization in schools and critical race theory – an academic theory that considers history through the lens of racism. In their ads, the candidates claim the current board is “driven by agendas that have been designed to divide us and our kids,” but current board members say these accusations are unfounded and only distract from the job of educating children.

Battle lines drawn

The current board members on the ballot in May include Doug Smith, Patti Norris and Jessica Ritter. Ritter has served on the board for almost two years, and Smith and Norris have served on the board for 14 years each.

The trio is being challenged by Cheyenne Edgerly, a small business owner and substitute teacher who serves on the Crook County Library Board of Trustees; Jessica Brumble, a stay-at-home mom and former tutor at Crook County High School; and Jennifer Knight, who formerly worked as an instructional assistant at Crook County Middle School. The three women are known locally and referred to in their campaign ads as the “Mama Bears.”

Note from Gary Warner: “Mama Bears” is a variation on the “Mama Grizzlies” tag coined by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in 2010 when calling on conservative Republican women to “take the country back” from Democrats. During her unsuccessful bid for vice-president in 2008 as the running mate of GOP presidential nominee John McCain, Palin referred to herself as a pit bull. At the 2010 speech to the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, Palin said she was switching to bears.

“You don’t want to mess with moms who are rising up,” Palin told the group “If you thought pit bulls were tough, you don’t want to mess with mama grizzlies.”

Edgerly, who is running against Smith, Brumble, who is running against Norris, and Knight, who is running against Ritter, did not respond to questions emailed to them by The Bulletin, and left phone messages requesting comment unanswered.

Edgerly, the most publicly facing of the three candidates, is known in Crook County for being involved with a failed attempt to segregate LGBTQ+ books at the local public library. Edgerly was recently featured in an article published by the far-right media website, Church Militant, detailing her efforts to “rid her rural Oregon town’s library and school of crude books and gender ideology,” the website said in March.

The article said Edgerly opposes material within the school district’s curriculum that is sexual in nature and material that contains “Marxist race theory.” The article stated Edgerly along with Brumble and Knight, are running for the school board seats to “take back the woke school board from the Left.”

School boards are supposed to be boring

aha!!!! this section needs to move up. In one campaign ad for the “Mama Bears,” which, according to Oregon Secretary of State records was paid for by Crook County for Better Education PAC. The three women’s photos are featured above text that reads, “We don’t co-parent with the Government. Let’s restore wholesome education in Crook County.”

from Warner: The Secretary of State Election Divsision reports that Crook County for Better Education PAC is operated by longtime Prineville political consultant Bryan Iverson. His wife and former partner in the campaign management business is Oregon House Minority Leader Rep. Vikki Breese-Iverson, R-Prineville. Bryan Iverson was paid over $1.8 million from Republican legislative candidates and political action committees in 2022. Along with the legislative races, Iverson was the consultant for Deschutes County Commissioner Tony DeBone’s successful 2022 re-election.

Since 2010, some of Iverson’s local clients have included Bend-La Pine School Board Member Andy High, and the Bend city council campaigns of Casey Roats, Chris Piper, Scott Ramsay, Mark Capell, Edward McCoy, and Victor Chudowsky.

Vikki Breese-Iverson worked in the political consulting business with her husband prior to being appointed to the House in 2019. Breese-Iverson replaced House Minority Leader Mike McLane, R-Powell Butte, who was appointed to a circuit court judgeship by Gov. Kate Brown that he later relinquished to return to private law practice.After less than two years in the House, she was chosen leader of the minority Republican caucus in Nov. 2021.

As of press time, Bryan Iverson had not responded to a list of questions emailed to him by the Bulletin regarding his involvement in the Crook County school board races. his support of the “Mama bears.”

The campaign ad states the trio hopes to educate, not indoctrinate, ensure parental rights in education and curriculum transparency, and that they reject use of critical race theory, also known as CRT. is this campaign ad the only “attack”? your language elsewhere suggetsts multiple personal attacks

Another ad, specifically for Edgerly’s campaign, claims the current school board voted for “the most controversial curriculums in the country because of its graphic sexual content and use of critical race theory.” The ad accused the board of excluding parents from the decision making process.

According to board members, the curriculum, known as the Wit and Wisdom English language arts curriculum, was chosen by the board because it is a strong phonics and reading program and is superior to the current program. They also said it has nothing to do with critical race theory or any of the other topics the “Mama Bears” claimed it contains.

Critical race theory not a school topic

Scott Cooper, school board director representing Zone 2 said, critical race theory, which refers to an academic theory that posits racial bias is inherent in many legal and social institutions in Western societies, has no place in a high school classroom. He said the district has never incorporated the CRT in its curriculum and never will, and that the accusations lobbed against the board are unfounded and only complicating the work at hand.

“I believe that the role of the school board is to be boring. And that we should not solve cultural issues at the board table. We should be solely and exclusively focused on schools and community and parents and staff,” Cooper said. “We should be looking at what is good for teaching kids to read, write, do science and social studies and those conversations don’t generally lend themselves to being really exciting and that is fine with me. I’d like to have a really boring board.”

The idea that politics have no place on the school board is shared by the rest of the board members running for re-election, who have collectively banded together as Crook County Together for Kids.

Jessica Ritter, who represents zone 4, said she is proud of the progress the district has made and that she is particularly proud of the district’s near perfect graduation rate. She said the successes at the district are abundant and the kids are thriving.

“My heart is for this community and I am constantly seeking wisdom, common ground and goodwill. That is the kind of leader I strive to be,” Ritter said. “This has unfortunately become a very divisive election and I pray our community can re-unify and take a collective sigh of relief once it is all over. The incumbents are doing all we can to keep the race dignified.”

A concerted political effort

The three current board members running against the “Mama Bears” said the accusationswhat accusations? against them and the district are unfounded and only distract from a job that takes a lot of time and commitment.

“All I can say in terms of their motives is from what I’ve seen and from what their campaign states, and it doesn’t state a plan or anything positive for kids going forward. It just complains about their perception of a bunch of politically motivated things that those of us that know what is going on in the schools know aren’t true,” said Norris, a business owner and professor of business and computer science at Central Oregon Community College who serves on the board representing Zone 3.

Norris said she believes the “Mama Bears” are part of a concerted political effort to place far-right candidates in nonpartisan positions in towns across Oregon. Norris said this upcoming election will be her fourth election and only once before does she recall having an opponent. When it comes down to it, she does not want to compete, she’d rather do the job she says requires a lot of time and energy.

“I just want to do the work, I don’t want to play the politics game,” Norris said. “There is a political agenda here to take over all of the nonpartisan positions. And it is not just local. The language that you are hearing from them was not developed in Prineville,” Norris said. then where?

I’m considering a graph here to give some context on the broader efforts of Republicans across the state to influence school board election based on grievances tied to national politics. Thoughts? //WARNER: I ADDED POSSIBLE GRAFS UP TOP – HAVE TO TIE THIS TO STATE AND LOCAL TREND. THIS IS A BIG DEAL IN US POLITICS AND CROOK COUNTY IS LATE TO THE TARGET LIST.

Character assassination

Doug Smith, 66, spent 42 years as vice president of product strategy for Les Schwab Tire Center, and has been on the school board representing Zone 1 since 2009. Smith, a Republican, has deep roots in rural Crook County, and will serve this year as the Grand Marshall at the Crooked River Roundup in Prineville this summer.

Smith has been the target of attack ads against his reelection to the school board. One such ad was sent out to residents via text message and features a graphic that claimed Smith voted for CRT, blocked parents from participating in decision making processes, and reduced educational standards.

Smith denied all of these accusations and said he and his colleagues are focused on getting a new curriculum for reading and math to improve their students’ outcomes. He touted his role in balancing the district’s finances, and improving graduation rates.

“When I go into the school board, I take all my political stuff off, and I advocate for students. And I don’t pick and choose students, I am there to advocate for something that will work for all of them,” Smith said. “And we are going to get better. That is why I want to run for reelection, because we want to get better,” Smith said.

Smith said a school board race should not be a local front for national politics and should be about providing opportunities for kids. Despite the attacks he is confident he will prevail in the election with his reputation intact, Smith said.

“I am 66 years old. I have spent a lifetime creating a reputation in this community and I see that reputation being challenged for a nonpartisan, unpaid position. I’m thinking, what is their agenda?” Smith said. “I’ve been here a long time…I have a lot of friends and a lot family in Crook County and I’ll probably be hard to beat.”

A schism forms as a community divides

One of the three candidates running against the incumbents, Jennifer Knight, posted on Facebook after a mailer was sent out promoting the three candidates. The mailer went out to community members and made some of the same claims against the current school board as previous ads. According to Knight’s Facebook post last week, she was unaware of the ad that was sent out on her campaign’s behalf.

“Let me start off by saying that I am disgusted, mortified, humiliated and heartbroken by this mailer,” Knight wrote. “In no way shape or form is this how I wanted to be perceived in our community. I DO NOT stand by this, I DO NOT approve it and I DID NOT give permission for this. This is no the image I want to be painted into the parents’ heads of this community as we try to move forward in the school board and better the education of our kids.”

In Knight’s post, she said the mailer was sent by an “unknown third party,” which turned out to be the King City-based Oregon Family Farm Association PAC whose treasurer is listed as David Hunnicutt according to Oregon Secretary of State records.

One side of the mailer used similar wording and graphic design as ads paid for by the Crook County for Better Education PAC causing community members to speculate online if the two ads were part of a coordinated effort.

“My husband and I have lived here almost our entire lives and chose to raise our kids here because we love this community and the people in it. I understand if you choose not to vote for me after this but I am telling you in all honesty that this blindsided me as much as it did you,” Knight wrote.

An alternative choice

Eddy Howard, a newcomer to the race, is also running for zone 4 against Ritter and Brumble. Howard said he plans to stay above the political fray and only hopes to make a difference by advocating for more fiscal transparency when it comes to school board activity.

“I got a little frustrated in the years past not knowing where my tax dollars were going,” Howard said. “We have to get the word out on what we are actually doing, what money we are asking for, what money we are receiving and how we are using those funds.”

When it comes to all the politics at the moment he said he is proud of the fact that he is not asking for or accepting donations to his campaign. He also said he has never seen anything quite like the current situation.

“I’ve lived in Crook County since I was 7 years old. Since the 70s. I went to school and graduated here and I have never seen this anonymity and hatred for others,” Howard said.

NOTE FROM WARNER: NOTES MODED STUFF BELOW IS BACKGROUND DETAILS AND EARLIER WILLAMETTE WEEK CITATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN REPLACED WITH MY OWN NUMBERS UP TOP. THIS IS NO LONGER NEEDED AND CAN BE DELETED FROM THE FILE:

Iverson Media Group received added attention by guiding Sen. Dick Anderson (R-Lincoln City) to a close win in 2020. Breese-Iverson was listed as a shareholder” in Iverson Media in legislative financial disclosure documents in 2020. In 2021 and 2022, she reported the company was owned by Bryan Iverson.

From Warner: Bryan Iverson received over $1 million in expenditures from Rep. Raquel Moore-Green, who made a close but unsuccessful bid for a Salem-area Oregon Senate seat in 2022. Eric Lauer of Troutdale spent over $350,000 with Iverson on a close but failed bid to unseat Rep. Zach Hudson, D-Troutdale. was paid over $158,000 in 2022 to run the legislative campaigns of the Leadership Fund, the political arms of the Senate Republicans, which is overseen by Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend. Evergreen Oregon PAC. Iverson’s wife oversees Evergreen Oregon PAC, the political arm of House Republicans, which paid Bryan Iverson $106,000 in 2022.

, From Warner: Bryan Iverson was also the consultant for Deschutes County Commissioner Tony DeBone’s successful 2022 re-election. Earlier, Iverson managed or consulted for Bend-La Pine School Board Member Andy High, and the Bend city council campaigns of Casey Roats, Chris Piper, Scott Ramsay, Mark Capell, Edward McCoy, and Victor Chudowsky.

Willamette Week magazine in Portland reported last November that what documents in the Secretary of State’s Elections Division office identify as Iverson Media Group has kept electronic campaign spending records in 2007, clients have spent $2.04 million with Iverson Media. Of that, $1.6 million of it – through early November – came since Vikki Breese-Iverson became minority leader. One of the largest expenditures has come from the Republican Senate’s political action committee, which is controlled by Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, the Senate minority leader.

The magazine reported that when Breese-Iverson replaced former state Rep. Christine Drazan, R-Canby, as caucus leader last year, she took control of the House Republican’s political action committee, Evergreen Oregon. That was in addition to her own campaign finance committee, Friends of Vikki. Records also showed she is co-director of the AG First PAC. The magazine reported that through early November, the three PACS had spent $193,000 with Iverson Media Group in 2022. Friends of Vikki PAC had also spent $47,000 with Iverson Media since 2020.