In N. Virginia, endorsement primaries point to increasingly politicized school boards
School board races in Virginia, like most of the country, are nonpartisan. There’s no Democrat or Republican label next to candidates’ names. But, for years, local political parties around the state have endorsed school board candidates to signal to voters which candidates match their political ideology.
The vote usually happens among a small group of official party members. Endorsed candidates appear on the slate handed out at the polls. In some cases, those not endorsed are expected to drop out.
What’s emerged in Virginia’s most populous county this year is a new approach to expand the process to more voters: A de facto primary run by the Fairfax County Democratic Committee as an open election for any Democrat to vote on who receives the party’s endorsement.
In blue Fairfax County, winning a school board seat is difficult without the party’s stamp. So for many school board candidates in the suburbs of Washington, the stakes are not in the days leading up to Nov. 7, they are here, in the private endorsement race to get their name on the party’s slate.
On Saturday, the only day of in-person voting in the party’s endorsement election, Sims’s opponent Mateo Dunne stood outside a local government center in a bright blue T-shirt printed with his name. He and a handful of volunteers eagerly handed out fliers to a single voter. By mid afternoon, the polling site had only seen 17 voters.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/05/21/fairfax-school-board-political-endorsement/
