Following the Money in Local School Board Races
Chris Seaman
The disclosure of money in politics is central to the integrity of our democratic system. As the Supreme Court has held, campaign disclosure laws serve an vital informational function, revealing who is financially backing a candidate for public office and, in turn, how a candidate spends that money. Even conservative former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who generally disfavored limits on campaign contributions and expenditures, believed in the importance of transparency, stating that “the American people are neither sheep nor fools, and hence fully capable of considering both the substance of the speech presented to them and its proximate and ultimate source.” Voters deserve to know who a candidate is associating with when they accept a donor’s money and where they spend it.
The latest campaign finance disclosures for candidates for the Albemarle County School Board are deeply revealing, especially since school board races are ostensibly nonpartisan. Both Meg Scalia Bryce–the youngest daughter of Justice Scalia–who is running for the at-large seat, and Joann McDermid, who is running for the White Hall seat, received reportable contributions from John Lowery, the current chair of the Albemarle County GOP. Bryce and McDermid also received sizable contributions from Randy Zackrisson, the failed 2021 write-in candidate for the Samuel Miller seat who repeatedly attacked ACPS leadership for its anti-racism policy. In addition, Bryce reported a donation from Ann McLean, who was forced to withdraw as Governor Youngkin’s nominee to the Board of Historic Resources last year after she praised pro-Confederate monuments and argued that secession was not treason. Another Bryce donor, Donald Lee Woodsmall, has publicly made anti-Muslim statements.
Bryce and McDermid’s expenditures are also eye opening. Bryce paid $250 to the Noah Webster Educational Foundation (NWEF), a right-wing organization that openly seeks to “reclaim America’s education” by infusing our public schools with Christian nationalism, to attend a training session for “Virginia school board members with conservative values.” Among other topics, this training session featured a session on how to ban books from school libraries. Bryce later praised this training session–which had Gov. Glenn Youngkin as a featured speaker–as “excellent” and “inspir[ing],” which NWEF happily featured in its promotional materials.
Even more shocking, McDermid spent over $2500 in “consulting” fees to Rob Schilling, a right-wing talk show host who regularly spews hatred toward the LGBTQIA+ community and attacks public education (which he calls “government schools”). Most recently, Schilling aired an unauthorized video of children from Johnson Elementary in Charlottesville reading from a book supporting LGBTQ acceptance, which included words like “belonging,” “gender,” and “kindness.” This video was then picked up and shared by multiple national conservative news outlets, violating the rights of the kids and their parents, none of whom consented to being filmed or for the video to be shared. Since then, parents, teachers, and school leaders have been falsely accused of “grooming” and “indoctrination.”
Ultimately, if you want to know where School Board candidates stand, follow the money.
Footnotes:
1. McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93, 259-60 (2003) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
2. As the Supreme Court has explained, the act of donating money to a candidate for public office (and for candidates, accepting a donation) implicates the freedom of association protected by the First Amendment. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 15, 21-23 (1974).
3. If you are unfamiliar with NWEF, it is run by homeschool advocate and Republican political operative Melvin Adams, who made national headlines for being in the mob during the January 6th insurrection with his spouse, Sandy (although both deny entering the Capitol), and also later praised attendees as “patriots.” Sandy Adams is a staff member for ultraconservative Rep. Bob Good.
4. We are not going to drive traffic to Schilling’s hate-filled website by linking to it.