How Virginia school boards are being weaponized to help elect a GOP governor

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Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
1. The "grassroots" parent uprising in Virginia is supported by dark money groups connected to the Koch political network and integrated into Republican Glenn Youngkin's campaign for governor

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How Virginia school boards are being weaponized to help elect a GOP governor
"I am a concerned parent. I am not a plant. I am not an activist. And as anyone who knows me, I've always been identified as a Democrat," Virginia resident Harry Jackson said on an October 14...
popular.info
5:28 AM · Oct 18, 2021

https://popular.info/p/how-virginia-school-boards-are-being

"I am a concerned parent. I am not a plant. I am not an activist. And as anyone who knows me, I've always been identified as a Democrat," Virginia resident Harry Jackson said on an October 14 appearance on Fox News. Jackson has been outspoken at school board meetings in Northern Virginia's Fairfax County, which is a key battleground in Virginia's upcoming gubernatorial election.

Jackson is a parent. He was recently elected president of the Thomas Jefferson High School Parent Teacher Student Association. But that is not the full story.

Jackson is also part of the "Leadership Team" of Parents Defending Education (PDE), a dark money group created earlier this year. In its first tweet, PDE said its intention was to "build a grassroots army to begin reclaiming our K-12 schools."

Parents Defending Education
@DefendingEd
THREAD: We are delighted to announce the public launch today of Parents Defending Education, a national, nonpartisan group that will build a grassroots army of parents to begin reclaiming our K-12 schools from political activists and extremists. 1/
March 30th 2021

While PDE claims to be non-partisan, it has deep ties to the right-wing Koch political operation. The president of PDE is Nicole Neily, who also serves as the president of Speech First, another self-proclaimed "grassroots" organization that targets college campuses. Neily has refused to disclose Speech First's donors but its board includes "a former head of a Koch-backed trust and two conservative attorneys from Koch-funded programs." Neily previously worked at the Independent Women's Forum, another dark money group funded by the Charles Koch Institute, and Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which Columbia Journalism Review reported in 2013 was "the Kochs’ leading media investment to date.”

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