I think it's not a win in that the far right took advantage of school boards as a kind of undefended opportunity starting with the Tea Party--a bit like town meetings in New England or county boards and zoning commissions--and that era seems to be over, thankfully. Once people start paying attention to local government, the one thing that most of them don't want is a lot of unnecessary culture-war hassles. But as you say, the folks who are fully 'in' on culture-war are now pretty intensely against everything that passes for business-as-usual.
Not sure why you think the GOP didn't do that badly in local elections--the Moms for Liberty folks are not the first to stir shit up, but they lost wherever they weren't running in a solid red locality, because people are really tired of the shit-stirring. (When that isn't stirring, things revert to the "all politics is tribal" status quo that kept you from being elected--sorry!)
The GOP caught the car that it was fake-chasing for decades and mostly the old operatives were correct that they didn't really want to catch it.
So, in my town, the Ladies for Liberty people ran two candidates. While being extremely committed to their cause, they also did not campaign at all. They were never serious candidates. I'm not sure why they went to the trouble at all. And actually, they were very nice people, btw. I liked them. They managed to get 600 votes each out about 5,000 total votes. And they forced all of us to have to come up with answers to topics that we didn't care about. I suddenly had to have soundbites on parental rights, sex education, and book banning, when I really wanted to talk about reading scores and equity. They diverted attention for five minutes to their topic.
The conservative websites must have been really indoctrinating the public. I had to deal with some very hostile people when I was handing out flyers outside the supermarket and knocking on doors. One guy was so threatening that I was concerned for my safety.
While they didn't win any elections, they got their issue on the agenda for a few minutes and spent very little money to do it. Is it a win? idk. They got something out of this effort. Maybe it was an attempt to start mobilizing their people for next year's presidential run.
I think it's not a win in that the far right took advantage of school boards as a kind of undefended opportunity starting with the Tea Party--a bit like town meetings in New England or county boards and zoning commissions--and that era seems to be over, thankfully. Once people start paying attention to local government, the one thing that most of them don't want is a lot of unnecessary culture-war hassles. But as you say, the folks who are fully 'in' on culture-war are now pretty intensely against everything that passes for business-as-usual.
Not sure why you think the GOP didn't do that badly in local elections--the Moms for Liberty folks are not the first to stir shit up, but they lost wherever they weren't running in a solid red locality, because people are really tired of the shit-stirring. (When that isn't stirring, things revert to the "all politics is tribal" status quo that kept you from being elected--sorry!)
The GOP caught the car that it was fake-chasing for decades and mostly the old operatives were correct that they didn't really want to catch it.
So, in my town, the Ladies for Liberty people ran two candidates. While being extremely committed to their cause, they also did not campaign at all. They were never serious candidates. I'm not sure why they went to the trouble at all. And actually, they were very nice people, btw. I liked them. They managed to get 600 votes each out about 5,000 total votes. And they forced all of us to have to come up with answers to topics that we didn't care about. I suddenly had to have soundbites on parental rights, sex education, and book banning, when I really wanted to talk about reading scores and equity. They diverted attention for five minutes to their topic.
The conservative websites must have been really indoctrinating the public. I had to deal with some very hostile people when I was handing out flyers outside the supermarket and knocking on doors. One guy was so threatening that I was concerned for my safety.
While they didn't win any elections, they got their issue on the agenda for a few minutes and spent very little money to do it. Is it a win? idk. They got something out of this effort. Maybe it was an attempt to start mobilizing their people for next year's presidential run.