Labor Day launched the final drive to the Nov. 8 general election — never mind the widespread plague of early voting that begins its locust-like return, shockingly enough, on Friday, Sept. 23 in Minnesota. Republicans will spend the next 61 days fighting for control of one or two major political institutions, the U.S. House and Senate.
As the GOP redoubles its efforts, the 1776 Project PAC and its founder, Ryan Girdusky, already have shifted key governmental chambers from left to right.
This organization is more or less the Club for Growth for U.S. school boards. Like the Club for Growth, most conservatives focus mainly on winning seats on Capitol Hill — a vital concern. Girdusky, however, labors tirelessly to elect school board members who will help educate students in the basics. “Promoting Patriotism and Pride in American History,” proclaims its website.
Girdusky and his group push the three R’s and battle critical race theory, gender ideology, and the Left’s borderline pedophilic obsession with discussing sex, sex organs, and sexuality with children as young as 5.
“Gender is like outer space because there are as many ways to be different genders as there are stars in the sky!” according to a kindergarten-through-second-grade lesson plan for government schools in Portland, Oregon. As the Manhattan Institute’s intrepid scholar Christopher Rufo detailed in July, this grammatically challenged teachers’ guide explains: “Some people are nonbinary, which means they are not a boy or a girl. They are just a person.” Illustrated with genitalia-laden classroom-ready drawings, this presentation also instructs teachers to tell second graders: “All penises are different shapes and sizes and all vulvas are different shapes and sizes.”
Recognizing that primary school is neither the time nor place for such discussions, Oklahoma Secretary of Public Education Ryan Walters, a 1776 Project PAC endorsee, won the GOP nomination for state superintendent of schools on Aug. 24. This was the PAC’s first statewide victory. Walters faces Democrat Jena Nelson in November.
The 1776 Project PAC did far better in Florida that same night. It scored big league in a dozen Sunshine State jurisdictions. It elected conservatives to the school boards in the counties of Hernando, Hillsborough, Indian River, and Okaloosa. In even more significant victories, the PAC flipped seven school boards from liberal to conservative in these counties: Brevard, Clay, Duval, Martin, Putnam, Sarasota, and Florida’s most populous, Miami-Dade.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools is America’s fourth-largest K–12 system. Its almost 400 schools serve some 350,000 students. The school system’s new leadership will influence school districts from San Diego to Seattle to Seabrook. And the lessons its school board teaches now will be conservative. The Right just gained major new ground.
“The 1776 Project PAC played a pivotal role in school board races like mine across Florida,” said Sarasota school board member Bridget Ziegler. “Their efforts pushed Republican turnout and helped secure conservative victories in crucially important districts.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Moms for Liberty also backed many of these successful contenders.
Among the 49 candidates that 1776 Project PAC endorsed, 35 won on Aug. 24. This 71 percent success rate matches the 72 percent batting average that this outfit has earned since Girdusky launched it in May 2021.
The 1776 Project PAC delivers drone strikes for the price of bottle rockets. Girdusky spent $80,000 in Oklahoma and roughly $400,000 on these Florida contests.
This PAC did the unheard of in the Sunshine State: It elected powerful conservatives, each for an average campaign investment of $11,428. If any PAC can do so much with so little, it should stand up and be counted. (READ MORE: DeSantis Candidates Win for Children and Parents)
The Left also handed the 1776 Project PAC and its candidates fresh grenades to lob into leftist foxholes.
“In Indian River County, Florida, they have a policy that pushes equity in suspensions, and they’ve also created something called ‘alternative to suspensions,’” Girdusky told me. “Basically, to get the number of black and Hispanic students to have a lower rate of suspensions, they created alternatives so that all racial groups are exactly equal.”
So what if members of one group happen to misbehave more than others? If so, they deserve such punishment. Indian River has pursued a training-wheels version of the hug-a-thug policies that the Left offers grown-ups — often with fatal results.
In Clay County, parents stormed the warpath after Wendell and Maria Perez sued local school officials in federal court. With the assistance of the Child & Parental Rights Campaign, the Perezes point to Destiny Washington. They say that this counselor at Paterson Elementary School huddled weekly with their 12-year-old daughter to discuss her supposed gender fluidity.
The school kept the parents in the dark. Why? As their lawsuit states, “The school counselor responded that it was because of the child’s gender identity issue and that they knew her parents would not be in agreement because of their Catholic Christian beliefs.” School officials also cited “confidentiality rules” to justify excluding the Perezes from this major development in their little girl’s life.
But Paterson Elementary’s commitment to confidentiality collapsed vis-à-vis school personnel and this girl’s peers. The Perezes’ lawsuit alleges that administrators told staffers and students that the girl really was a boy, gave her a male name, and encouraged employees and pupils to call her by that male name.
The Daily Mail reported:
The identity changes allegedly increased bullying on campus, which resulted in a level of ‘distress escalated to the point of attempting suicide at school,’ and the girl attempted to take her life on both January 4 and 5, according to the lawsuit.
After the second time that the Perez girl tried to hang herself in a school bathroom, administrators finally rang her mother and father.
“They basically created a double life for my daughter,” Wendell Perez lamented to the Daily Mail. His attorney, Vernadette Broyles, said that school personnel, “took a healthy child and after months of meeting with her, in secret, they caused her to become so distressed and in conflict with herself that she felt the desire to end her life.”
The school district told the Daily Mail:
The district has performed a thorough and complete investigation into this matter as it was presented to us and has determined that the allegations made by this out-of-state organization are completely false, fabricated, and appear to be intended solely for the purpose of inciting the public.
All employees of the district consistently work to ensure that the best interests of all students are served. The district will have no further comment on this matter.
“Many people have claimed this is a parents’ revolution, but it’s larger than that,” said Girdusky. He continued:
This movement includes everyone because public education is a common good. We all invest in it, and we all want to see the best possible outcomes for children across the country. We at the 1776 Project PAC are committed to pushing out radical ideologies like critical race theory, critical gender theory, and equity that reduce merit and seek to indoctrinate children. This is part of our national effort, and it’s just the beginning.
