Moms for Liberty Has Lost Ground at the Polls, But It Still Wields Influence

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This article is part of The 74’s EDlection 2024 coverage, which takes a look at candidates’ education policies and how they might impact the American education system after the 2024 election.

Audra Christian, like many conservative parents in Pinellas County, Florida, was staunchly opposed to school district leaders issuing a mask mandate for students during the pandemic.

But in mid-2021, dismayed by screaming matches over COVID protocols that often broke out at school board meetings, she decided to meet individually with the board members to discuss her concerns. She found them kind and professional, so she encouraged leaders of her local Moms for Liberty chapter to do the same thing. 

“I said ‘I think you’d like them,’ and they said ‘Nope, we don’t want to do that,’ ” Christian recalled. “All of a sudden, I was the bad guy. It was very polarized.”

After initially attending some of their meetings and supporting their cause, Christian cut ties with Moms for Liberty. To her, the moment demonstrated the uncompromising way the conservative group became a force in today’s Republican party. Keeping divisive issues like sexually explicit books and lessons on racial discrimination in the spotlight was a winning strategy in 2022 as Moms for Liberty-endorsed school board candidates scored victories across the country, especially in Florida where the organization originated. 

Since then, the group hasn’t been able to repeat its success at the polls. But there are signs that taking control of school boards isn’t Moms for Liberty’s top concern right now. They’re spending money to mobilize voters for like-minded GOP candidates and labeling Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, an “anti-parent radical candidate.” Max Eden, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, suggested the group is focused on preparing “for the two alternative futures they stand to face.”

“If Trump wins, I expect that whomever he picks for [education] secretary will be tasked with a strong emphasis on the issues that they care about,” he said. “If he loses, there’s an expectation that Harris will double down hard on social issues from the left.”

Eden described Moms for Liberty’s recent strategy to join four Republican-led states in suing the Biden administration over the new Title IX rule as a “coup” from both an organizational and membership perspective. The revised regulation extends protections against sexual discrimination to LGBTQ students and gives transgender students the right to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. Moms for Liberty’s legal move spurred a federal court to issue an injunction, blocking hundreds of schools across the country from enforcing the new Title IX regulations. Moms for Liberty also used the ruling as an opportunity to recruit more members so they could block the new provisions in more schools. 

‘Outraged over something’

The success of Moms for Liberty’s endorsed candidates, however, is still a way to measure the future of a “parental rights” movement that seeks more control over curriculum and opposes attention to race and social-emotional issues in school.

Former Florida school board members Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich founded the organization in 2021. At the time, their primary cause was battling mask mandates. But their approach quickly resonated with many disillusioned parents in the wake of COVID school closures and the intense reactions to school equity efforts often labeled as critical race theory.

“It’s hard to think of another education advocacy organization that has grown to such national prominence so quickly,” Brookings Institution researchers wrote in March.

In the 2022 election cycle, the group took in more than $2 million, and roughly half of its endorsed candidates were elected. But in 2023, the percentage of Moms for Liberty candidates winning school board seats dropped to about a third, in part because other organizations mobilized to endorse their own candidates and slow down the group’s progress. This year’s results seem on track to mirror last year’s, but the group is not completely out of the running. 

Sue Woltanski, a school board member in Monroe County, Florida, has monitored and written about Moms for Liberty’s influence across the state, where it has joined forces with Gov. Ron DeSantis to endorse conservative candidates. A critic of their approach, she called Moms for Liberty members “people who have been outraged over something scary at their kid’s school.”

This year, the group targeted 14 school board races in Florida. Its candidates won just three of the open seats in the August primary. Another five are headed to November runoffs. In a statement, Justice and Descovich counted those candidates who advanced among their victories, saying they were “thrilled that Moms for Liberty saw a 60% win rate.” 

But the group’s tactics — like reading aloud the most salacious passages from sexually explicit library books at board meetings — often are aimed at making “people question whether it’s safe for their kids to go to public schools,” said Woltanski, who defeated one of their endorsed candidates two years ago. Moms for Liberty also embraces private school choice, which continues to take off in Florida, causing public school enrollment in several districts to decline. 

“In my little vacation community, if we don’t have high-quality public schools we’re going to just be a resort,” she said. A lot of school boards have conservative members, she added, “but they are still in favor of public education.”

‘Us-versus-them mentality’ 

Examining Moms for Liberty’s win-loss record is just one way to measure its impact. Researchers at Michigan State University watched hours of school board meetings to better understand the overall effect of the group’s presence on rhetoric and behavior during the convenings. 

If Moms for Liberty-backed candidates took the majority of seats following the 2022 elections, they often acted quickly to fire superintendents, place restrictions on books and issue bans on critical race theory or lessons on sex and gender. Members of the public “turned out in high volume” to both support and oppose their policies, the researchers said.

“Successfully winning a majority of seats on the board seemed to deeply entrench the us-versus-them mentality, leading to increased and divided engagement at meetings in the post-election period,” they wrote. 

But even in districts where Moms for Liberty didn’t “flip” the board, the researchers found an overall increase in insults, threats and disorder, like outbursts from the audience, compared to the period between late 2019 and early 2020. 

“I don’t really think they have any true plans to govern,” said researcher Rebecca Jacobsen. She called their style the “politics of disruption.”

There were more displays of anger — a speaker banging their first on the podium, for example — and an increase in incidents in which police intervened and removed protesters. Before the pandemic, they found that police only got involved once. But in 2021 and 2022, as Moms for Liberty chapters were spreading across the country, they identified nine board meetings across five school districts where the police intervened.

The Moms for Liberty website urges chapters to push for policy changes, but some critics, like Christian in Florida, say members are more focused on national issues than local concerns, like school safety, bullying and curriculum.

“I thought they were going to educate moms and dads how to stand up for their children,” she said.

‘Close ties to powerful individuals’

At Moms for Liberty’s Washington, D.C., summit in late August — which featured a lengthy conversation between Justice and Trump — there was no evidence that the group had lost its edge. Despite a poor showing at the polls in Florida, members had other victories to celebrate. 

Three of their leaders, Yvette Benarroch from Naples, Meg Weinberger from Palm Beach and Monique Miller from Brevard County, had won primary races for Florida House seats and made it onto the ballot in the general election.

“This is huge for us because it represents the momentum of change we are making across the country as we take our schools back from the union bosses,” the statement from Justice and Descovich said. Justice and Descovich declined The 74’s requests for an interview.

As the November election approaches, Moms for Liberty has further turned its attention to increasing membership and mobilizing more voters, spending $3 million in swing states, like Arizona and Georgia. With chapters in 48 states, the Brookings researchers said Moms for Liberty still carries a lot of influence.

“[Moms for Liberty] is a well-financed group with close ties to powerful individuals and institutions in conservative politics,” they wrote. The organization “represents a voting bloc that Republican political operatives are actively trying to court in the 2024 elections and beyond.”

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