Will 2022 Be the Year of the Parents’ Revolt?

AMAC Exclusive – By Seamus Brennan

While parents’ rights in education developed into a major issue in the final months of the off-year election season last year, it has thus far proven to be a primary issue from day one in an all-important midterm cycle in 2022. And if recent attitudes and trends are any indication, this year could very well turn out to be the year of the parents’ revolt.

Although the debate over parental rights has cropped up in school districts and local elections almost everywhere throughout the country in recent months, particularly following the election of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia in 2021, it could prove to be a decisive factor in a handful of key races this fall. States like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, for instance—three perennial swing states with major gubernatorial and Senate races this November—have seen parental rights take center stage.

Among the parents on the frontlines of this political phenomenon is Paul Martino, a Pennsylvania father with two school-age children who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to school board candidates who embrace a platform of parental rights.

In an interview with AMAC Newsline, Martino said a parents group he started has contributed to races “all across the state,” including in “heavy blue” and “purple” parts of Pennsylvania. “Some of them we knew would win in a shoo-in; some of them we knew would get slaughtered. But we wanted to make sure that people knew we were paying attention across the entire state, to hundreds and hundreds of races.”

When asked about the origins of the parental rights grassroots movement, Martino said that “COVID woke parents up to the way in which their schools were run. And the inevitable conclusion of the parents being woken up by COVID—which was a jolt—was that they wanted to be more involved and have more oversight on things like curriculum process, shutdowns, et cetera.” Without COVID, he continued, Americans would not even be “having this conversation, because the vast majority of parents are still asleep about how important these issues are for our kids.”

In addition to COVID-related school closures and mask policies in schools, politicized curriculum, most notably the proliferation of Critical Race Theory-inspired education, has also become a major part of the parents’ rights movement.

Many Republicans have looked for ways to emphasize their commitment to de-politicizing education. In January, for example, Lou Barletta—the current frontrunner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Pennsylvania—signed “The 1776 Pledge to Save Our Schools,” a pledge from 1776 Action aimed at restoring “honest, patriotic education” in American schools. Barletta’s signing of the pledge indicates that the battle over parental rights could be a significant element in the general election this fall. Other gubernatorial candidates like Rebecca Kleefisch in Wisconsin and Kari Lake in Arizona have also signed the pledge.

“I think it’s going to be one of the top topics,” Martino said of parental rights in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race. “I just can’t imagine that these aren’t going to be topics we’re talking about in May for primaries as well as November in the general election.”

Parents received a much-needed wake-up call; he went on, “from Youngkin’s off-year ’21 election about the stuff that’s going to be important. I see no decline—I actually see an acceleration—of interest in these issues since last year, which means if you don’t have talking points on those areas, you’re going to be left behind.”

Noting that there’s nothing “unique here in southeastern Pennsylvania versus the rest of the country,” Martino predicts the 2022 midterm elections will be “a red wave to make ’94 look small by comparison” because “the level of disaffection with the policies over the past two years will basically punish” those on the left pushing ideas like CRT and advocating for blanket COVID mandates.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of moderate Democrats, and a lot of even liberal Democrats” vote Republican this fall, he predicted. “The anti-Democrat vote in 2022,” he continued, “is going to be severe to an extent we’ve never seen before in our lifetimes.”

Martino is far from alone in his advocacy for parental rights. The growing legion of disaffected parents in the United States has spread to school districts and city halls in all 50 states, a trend that only appears to be accelerating.

In Wisconsin, Republican gubernatorial candidates are structuring their campaigns in ways that mimic Youngkin’s successful anti-CRT platform, which made him the first Republican to win statewide office in Virginia in more than a decade. As NBC News reported in February, Kevin Nicholson, the leading candidate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in the Badger State, is “pushing hard on the issue, hoping [he] can emulate Youngkin’s success in the purple state.” Kleefisch, meanwhile, has endorsed nearly 40 school board recall efforts and has made opposition to CRT a “hallmark” issue of her campaign.

Likewise, in Arizona, Republican senatorial candidates like Mark Brnovich and Blake Masters have embraced strong anti-CRT positions, which they hope will lead to incumbent Senator Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) political downfall. Arizona legislators have also proposed a state constitutional amendment that would ban CRT in schools statewide.

Thanks to activists like Martino standing up for parental rights in education, 2022 appears to be shaping up to be the year of the parent. If Democrats ignore the lessons of the past several months and continue to push ideas like CRT and gender theory in K-12 curricula, the November midterms—which are already poised to be a pummeling for Democrats—will likely be all the more devastating for the left. Whether or not they choose to heed the lessons of last November remains to be seen.