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At first glance, a group of candidates in the upcoming Durham Public Schools Board of Education election appears to be pretty typical. On its joint <\/span>website<\/span><\/a>, the \u201cBetter Board, Better Schools\u201d slate mentions a passion for education and the goal of preparing students properly for college or the workforce.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yet when Durham County resident Bill Busa took a closer look, he noticed some unusual things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Busa, director of the Democratic campaign data analytics firm <\/span>EQV Analytics<\/span><\/a>, first saw that the group of five candidates had all <\/span>filed<\/span><\/a> to run on the same day. They share the same campaign treasurer, Donald Stanger, a <\/span>precinct chair<\/span><\/a> for the Durham County GOP. Stanger\u2019s home address is listed as the campaign headquarters for each candidate. Each candidate is also a registered Republican.<\/span><\/p>\n None of this would be strange, except for the fact that the candidates\u2019 party affiliation is not mentioned in any campaign materials or on their website. Durham school board elections are, in theory, nonpartisan. This means that candidates\u2019 political affiliations are not listed on the ballot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In Durham, one of the most heavily Democratic <\/span>counties<\/span><\/a> in the state, Republicans rarely win public office.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Busa believes \u201cthey do not want people to know they\u2019re Republicans,\u201d he said in an interview with The 9th Street Journal. \u201cThey can only win through the ignorance of the electorate.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Busa shared his concerns in a recent <\/span>article<\/span><\/a> posted online, hoping to draw attention to the group ahead of the May 17 election. The article has since been shared widely over email and on local neighborhood listservs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike other races on the ballot in May, the Durham school board race is not a primary but a final election; the results will decide the composition of the school board.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018A Highly Organized Campaign\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n Members of the \u201cBetter Board, Better Schools\u201d group are not breaking any regulations by not listing their party affiliation in their campaign materials. Candidates in nonpartisan races are permitted to reveal and publicize their affiliation if they choose, but are not obligated to do so.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Each of the five candidates listed their affiliation as nonpartisan in their <\/span>campaign filings<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Busa and others are troubled by the omission. Busa describes the \u201cBetter Board, Better Schools\u201d group as \u201ca highly organized campaign\u2026 launched and supported by the Durham County GOP, in hopes of slipping a bloc of Republicans under the voters\u2019 radar.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The 9th Street Journal reached out to all five members of the slate for comment. One candidate, Curtis Hrischuk, responded by email.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think this is meant to distract from the fact that the current school board is failing the students and has failed them for years,\u201d Hrischuk wrote in response to the accusations in Busa\u2019s article.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI certainly wasn\u2019t recruited\u2026 Were there a bunch of people who connected us? Yes, but I think that was because we all talked about how bad the situation is and somehow found each other,\u201d he wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n Along with Hrischuk, who is running for the District One seat, the \u201cBetter Board, Better Schools\u201d slate includes Christopher Burns of District Two, Gayathri Rajaraman of District Three, Valarie Jarvis of District Four and Joetta MacMiller of Consolidated District B.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Some members have leadership positions in the local Republican Party.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n MacMiller serves on the leadership board of the <\/span>Durham GOP<\/span><\/a> and is listed as a precinct chair on the Durham GOP website. Jarvis, who is married to the Durham Republican Party <\/span>chairman<\/span><\/a>, is also listed as a party precinct chair.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The slate also recently <\/span>held a meet and greet fundraiser at 800 N. Mangum St., the official <\/span>headquarters<\/span><\/a> for the Durham GOP. Flyers advertising the fundraiser listed the street address, but did not mention that the building is the GOP headquarters.<\/span><\/p>\n In partisan elections, Durham voters lean heavily Democratic. <\/span>But the nonpartisan format of the school board election offers Durham Republicans a significant advantage, said longtime political consultant<\/span> and Duke University public policy professor Mac McCorkle<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n School board races also don\u2019t draw much attention, McCorkle said. \u201cThese are low information races,\u201d he said. \u201cSomebody might just be able to sneak in.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Candidates\u2019 Views<\/b><\/p>\n Busa\u2019s recent article criticizes the slate\u2019s \u201cradically conservative\u201d views, describing Hrischuk as an \u201canti-semitic, climate-denying, anti-vaxx creationist.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In an email response, Hrischuk termed those charges \u201ca load of nonsense.\u201d He said he believes human-caused climate change exists, but that there are also other causes of global warming, such as sunspots and volcanic activity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, in a pair of Facebook posts from 2011, Hrischuk accuses the \u201cgreen pseudoscience\u201d industry of manipulating the public for profit. \u201cMan-made global warming is a hoax,\u201d he wrote at the time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Asked if he believes in creationism, the notion that life was created by divine forces rather than through evolution, Hrischuk wrote that he supports teaching evolution in schools. \u201cIt isn\u2019t clear to me what \u2018creationist\u2019 is supposed to mean,\u201d he added. \u201cBut it is something that must be bad?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Hrischuk\u2019s signature appears on a <\/span>statement<\/span><\/a> entitled \u201c<\/span>A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism<\/span><\/a>,\u201d whose authors say they are \u201cskeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The statement was published by a subgroup of the <\/span>Discovery Institute<\/span><\/a>, an organization that promotes the creationist concept of intelligent design.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hrischuk said he decided to run for the school board after learning of an incident in Loudoun County, Va., in which a non-binary individual allowed to use the women\u2019s restroom was convicted of assaulting another student. He did not respond directly when asked if he supported or opposed transgender-affirming policies in schools.<\/span><\/p>\n MacMiller, meanwhile, appears on a list of <\/span>members<\/span><\/a> of the New Group of Patriots, a self-described \u201cgrowing populist movement\u201d that seeks \u201cto destroy the socialist takeover of our lives and the American dream.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She is also listed as a participant in the <\/span>NC Values Coalition\u2019s<\/span><\/a> Mama Bear <\/span>Workshop<\/span><\/a>. The workshop aims to educate parents on protecting children \u201cfrom harmful curriculum and indoctrination in school.\u201d The coalition\u2019s website calls for combatting \u201cprogressive activists [who] have targeted schools as a primary conduit of social change.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Issues such as support for transgender students and the teaching of critical race theory have become hot button topics in other school board races across the country. MacMiller did not respond to questions regarding her stance on those issues. The \u201cBetter Board, Better Schools” platform website states that the group is against \u201ccurriculum deviations” in Durham schools.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n North Carolina\u2019s Increasingly Partisan School Board Elections<\/b><\/p>\n McCorkle said the emergence of the \u201cBetter Board, Better Schools\u201d slate fits with a larger national trend.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is an area that the right wing, as articulated by Steve Bannon and others, think of as a good national strategy: to focus on school boards,\u201d McCorkle said. Bannon, a political strategist who served in the Trump administration, has <\/span>spoken publicly<\/span><\/a> about the conservative campaign to target school boards.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In North Carolina, state law is helping to facilitate that campaign, McCorkle said. <\/span>State regulations<\/span><\/a> make school board elections nonpartisan by default, but the North Carolina General Assembly has the authority to adjust that rule on a county-by-county basis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n According to McCorkle, the Republican-controlled state legislature has seized advantages for Republicans by making school board elections partisan in North Carolina\u2019s red counties. Out of 115 school districts, the number of N.C. <\/span>school boards<\/span><\/a> elected on a partisan basis grew from 16 in 2015 to 41 in 2022, according to data provided by the North Carolina School Board Association. Two additional districts are set to become partisan in 2024.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n