GOP's 'fear campaign' targeting parents failed throughout the country -- even though it succeeded in Virginia: analysis

Republicans pulled off a victory in Virginia on Tuesday night, winning all three statewide offices and gaining control of the House of Delegates, after running a campaign attacking Democrats as soft on parental rights in schools and undermining history curricula with so-called "critical race theory."

But according to the Associated Press, in local elections throughout much of the rest of the country, Republicans ran a similar playbook — and got less fruitful results.

"The political tracking website Ballotpedia identified 76 school districts in 22 states where candidates took a stance on race in education or critical race theory, which holds that racism is systemic in America's institutions," reported Heather Hollingsworth and Carolyn Thompson. "The National School Boards Association says it is not taught in K-12 public schools."

According to the report, while a few right-wing activists won races in Texas and Iowa, many more of these races ended in failure for the conservatives — including in some states that will be critical for deciding control of Congress in 2022.

"In Wisconsin, four members of the Mequon-Thiensville School Board held off a recall challenge that cost anti-critical race theory backers nearly $50,000," said the report. "In Minnesota, three conservative candidates failed to win a seat on the board in Wayzata. They ran on a 'Vote for Three!' platform that denounces 'harmful ideologies like CRT,' political indoctrination and 'controversial medical mandates.' In Connecticut, a slate of five five candidates opposed to critical race theory lost the board of education race in the Guilford school system, where a racial reckoning began years ago, first with an episode in which a student wore blackface to a home football game, followed by a fraught debate over the elimination of its mascot, the Indians."

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