This "Cringy Conservative" is Running for the School Board
Maybe I should just pick up some hobbies.
I always know when the online world has crossed into the real world when I hear about something from my cousins out in Arizona. They are my barometers for real people, and the other day, one of them sent me a story she saw in Rolling Stone.
The headline read:
Social Media’s Cringiest Conservative Is Running for School Board — As a Democrat
Who is that cringy conservative? Yours truly. Despite the brutal headline, the actual piece wasn’t that bad, considering the author was tasked with writing a takedown.
There was, unsurprisingly, a much fairer interview on FoxNews.com that came out earlier this week. I told Kendall Teitz,
Despite the dire state that she believes the county and the country is headed in, Mandel said there is no sense of urgency or accountability from the school board to ask: "Why did this happen?" or "How did this happen?"
While she said her opponents want to make her campaign for school board about the "culture wars," Mandel said her goal is to bring the focus back to the basics of education, not social emotional learning, diversity, equity and inclusion or gender ideology. She said that naturally comes up as part of her frustration around the state of education in the county because that's where the focus has been in recent years.
"It sort of is tangentially about the hyper focus on the LGBT stuff," Mandel said. "But the fundamental reason that I'm running is because of the mismanagement, and it's because of the lack of urgency about the state of the county."
I was also on Fox News at Night on Monday night talking about my run:
I have a fantastic website online with information about why I’m running.
Now comes the ask: A lot of this fantastic media coverage happened before I got my fundraising online. Local school board races don’t raise a lot of money, but money goes a long way. The first step is a primary in mid-May (anyone in Montgomery County can vote, please take the time to vote if you’re local!) and the turnout will be very low.
I can win with just a few hundred votes, but I need to get out the word in order to make it past that stage. If I do, I’ll move onto the general election in November. A little bit goes a long way in terms of digital ads, printed signs and more. I would be extremely grateful if you kicked in as much as you feel comfortable.
Thank you!