School board races across Texas deal losses for many conservatives

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Conservative school board candidates across Texas suffered an array of defeats in Saturday’s local elections, marking a clear setback for the Republican-aligned movement to shape how grade school curriculums and library books confront issues of race, sex and gender.

The sweeping losses for conservative school board hopefuls also served as an early sign of potential backlash to the nascent administration of President Donald Trump, ahead of a 2026 midterm in which a number of statewide offices will be on the ballot. Midterm elections historically have spelled trouble for the incumbent president’s party in down-ballot races.

Saturday’s elections saw the defeat of numerous conservative school board trustees in the Tarrant County suburbs surrounding Fort Worth, the epicenter of the state’s recent culture war fights over how students should learn about race and gender. All seven school board candidates in contested races who were endorsed by the Tarrant County Republican Party lost their elections.

The fight dates back to 2022, when a network of conservative donors and groups led by Patriot Mobile Action — a North Texas Christian nationalist PAC funded by a cellphone company — backed a slate of 11 school board candidates around the area, 10 of whom won their elections. That included major gains on the Mansfield ISD board, where the newfound conservative majority gave itself oversight over which library books could be added to school shelves, presaging a proposal now making its way through the Legislature.

All three Mansfield ISD trustees up for reelection Saturday had been backed by Patriot Mobile Action and were endorsed this year by the Tarrant County GOP; all three lost their reelection bids. The party’s pick for Mansfield mayor, Julie Short, also failed to unseat incumbent Michael Evans.

Conservatives also racked up losses on the nearby Arlington, Grapevine-Colleyville and Keller ISD boards. Keller ISD trustees have drawn statewide attention over a 2022 policy that, in practice, allowed community members to block proposed book purchases.

Conservative activist Carlos Turcios called the results “horrible news.”

“The Radical DEI Left has flipped the conservative school board. Mansfield ISD has capitulated to the DEI-LGBTQ Left. Prayers,” Turcios wrote on social media, adding that Mansfield “has gone to Hell.”

Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French said the losses came after an election in which the party “did more than we have ever done in terms of voter contact.”

“We will have to analyze who turned out and who didn’t before we know everything. But, it seems the average Republican just doesn’t care about local elections,” French said, adding that he believes some GOP voters felt “no urgency locally” after Trump’s election, “because Trump is winning on so many issues.”

Though school board elections are nonpartisan and have traditionally been sleepy, low-budget affairs, they have been seized by the hyperpolarized and partisan fervor once restricted to national politics — making Saturday’s elections all but nonpartisan in name only. Still, Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, cautioned both parties against reading too much into the results, given that this weekend’s scant voter participation was not indicative of who will turn out in next year’s midterms.

“I'm not convinced that somehow, reading the tea leaves, this will be a big year for the Democrats in ‘26 because of what happened in local elections with 3% to 7% turnout,” Taylor said. “That said, if I were the Republicans, I would be at least a little bit worried that in a low-information, low-turnout election, the doctrinaire, far-right, almost Christian nationalist conservatives didn't fare well.”

The conservative school board wipeout also extended to the Houston area, where the Katy ISD board president, Victor Perez, was ousted by a longtime educator who campaigned on shifting the board’s focus away from culture war battles. Perez’s tenure on the board has been defined by book bans and policies requiring students to use the bathroom that aligns with their sex assigned at birth, along with requiring school staff to tell parents if a student asks to “be identified as transgender, change his or her name, or use different pronouns at school.”

Such policies typically passed on 4-3 votes, with Perez among the majority.

In nearby Fort Bend ISD, voters also ushered in a new majority coalition that opposes the far-reaching book removal policy approved by the board last year.

Texas Republican Party Chair Abraham George acknowledged the party's poor performance but vowed the GOP would rebound.

"The local elections, endorsements, we didn't do very good. But we will continue to fight that battle in Texas," George said in a livestream on social media Monday. "We will continue to work with the local county parties to continue to have good candidates on the ballot. And it's a process. Nothing is overnight."

Runoff in San Antonio

It was not universally bad news for conservatives, who will have a chance for redemption in the San Antonio mayoral race after Rolando Pablos — a former Texas secretary of state who has framed himself as the top fiscal conservative option for voters — advanced to a June runoff. Pablos was appointed secretary of state by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2017 and was tapped for the Public Utility Commission by Abbott’s GOP predecessor, Rick Perry. His campaign has been bolstered by a local conservative group, the Texas Economic Fund, whose political strategist previously served as Abbott’s political director.

Running in a field of 27 candidates, Pablos received nearly 17% of the vote in Saturday’s contest — good for second place and a spot in the runoff against first-place finisher Gina Ortiz Jones, who tallied 27%. Jones is a former Democratic congressional candidate who served as undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force under the Biden administration.

Pablos wasted no time framing Jones as a continuation of the status quo under the current city government helmed by term-limited Mayor Ron Nirenberg. In a statement Saturday evening, he pointed to the poor showing from incumbent San Antonio City Council members running for mayor — none finished higher than fourth — as evidence that voters had rejected “business as usual.”

“San Antonio now has a clear choice, and I am confident they will reject Gina Jones for what she represents: more of the same, failed leadership from the San Antonio political machine that has left poverty rates in stagnation and caused businesses to pass over the Alamo city due to the radical, misplaced policy priorities that are completely out of line with the values of San Antonians,” Pablos said in the statement.

Jones kept her election night watch party closed to media and did not issue a public statement Saturday, though she told the San Antonio Report that “we know the work is not done.”

“We’ve got 30 [days] ahead of us to continue to show voters what I look forward to doing, in concert with the rest of the City Council, to make sure we move our city forward,” Jones said.

Taylor said Jones is not actually a City Hall “insider” and noted that, no matter who wins, the next mayor will be the first without prior City Council experience since Phil Hardberger, who was first elected mayor in 2005. Regardless, Taylor said, Pablos’ attack linking Jones to the “political machine” could play well among his base in the conservative areas of San Antonio, where participation tends to be more reliable in low-turnout municipal races.

“Those are the kind of voters that are likely going to turn out in higher numbers than the younger voters Gina Ortiz Jones has been focusing on,” Taylor said.

Disclosure: Texas Secretary of State and University of Texas at San Antonio have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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