This article originally appeared in The 19th.
Originally published by The 19th
President-elect Donald Trump is not the only conservative candidate to make a comeback on Election Day. In Temecula, California, former school board chairman Joseph Komrosky was re-elected as a trustee after losing a recall race in June following a series of controversies that brought national attention to the school district about an hour northeast of San Diego.
By just over 200 votes, Komrosky secured a victory over his union-backed opponent, David Sola, to gain a seat on the governing body of the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD), which has approximately 26,500 students. Three other seats on the five-member school board were also up for election. Conservatives won most of these races, returning the school board, which made headlines for its controversial policies on race, gender and sexuality, to a right-wing majority.
The results of school board elections and other elections across California won’t be finalized until Dec. 3 because state laws and mail-in voting procedures require more time to process ballots. In major elections, officials have up to a month to announce the results.
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Across the country, school boards and states have enacted policies in recent years to ban critical race theory (CRT), censor books, exclude LGBTQ+ youth, or ignore the boundaries between church and state. Temecula is a city with a large number of Republican voters, and its school board has adopted policies that are more aligned with the rightward shift in red-state public schools than with California’s liberal ethos. The trustees banned the curriculum described as CRT and all flags except the American flag, which was widely seen as a way to prevent Pride flags from being displayed on campuses. The board rejected a social studies curriculum in May 2023 for its mention of gay historical figure Harvey Milk, drawing criticism from California Gov. Gavin Newsom. It also backed a plan that would require school staff to “release” transgender students to their families. As a result of legal action, or the threat of such action, most of these policies were reversed, but the election results put the new Conservative administration in an excellent position to come up with more divisive proposals.
“We did it! We won!!! Praise the Lord,” Komrosky said in an Instagram post after the election results were certified. “Thank you Temecula for having my back again. I would like to thank everyone who supported me during this campaign, because without you I could not have done this. That said, I will continue to protect the innocence of your children at TVUSD.”
Komrosky did not respond to The 19th’s request for comment on his victory, which was a blow to local and national organizers who mobilized for the recall campaign against him. After joining the five-member school board in 2022, Komrosky and two other conservatives moved to adopt policies that sparked public outrage, with images of parents being ejected from heated school board meetings in Temecula going viral on social media and gaining national attention settled on a city of nearly 111,000 previously known for its wineries. The board also faced criticism when it fired TVUSD Superintendent Jodi McClay without cause. In November, McClay started as superintendent of the St. Helena Unified School District near San Francisco.
The three conservatives were all elected with help from Pastor Tim Thompson’s Inland Empire Family PAC, which aims to fill school boards with members of the Christian Right. In May, Trump’s son Eric Trump and Kash Patel, his pick to lead the FBI, traveled to Temecula to headlined a May fundraiser for the political action committee. That month, Patel also appeared on Thompson’s program “Our Watch With Tim Thompson.”
The successful recall of Komrosky and the departure of another conservative board member who moved to Texas caused the Temecula school board to lose its right-wing majority for much of this year. But now that Komrosky has been re-elected, along with two newcomers who have been described as right-leaning and a liberal-leaning incumbent, Komrosky’s opponents predict the school board will likely again adopt policies that will divide the community and generate negative attention for the city.
One of them is Jeff Pack, co-founder of One Temecula Valley PAC, a political action committee created with the goal of uniting community members across partisan lines.
“The dangerous thing is obviously that Komrosky is back on the board,” he said. “We’re disappointed about that because we… think he’ll be even more vengeful this time.” All he has to do is say a few buzzwords that scare people, and we have to thread a whole series of needles to convince them not to show pornography in schools.”
Pack foresees more book bans by the school board, efforts to blur the separation of church and state and possibly the expulsion of teachers who don’t support administrators’ views.
Edgar Diaz, president of the local teachers union Temecula Valley Educators Association (TVEA), hesitates to guess what policies the newly elected conservative board members might pursue. However, he emphasized the importance of all school board members prioritizing the educational needs of students.
“That’s all we’re really focused on, and we hope to work with every school board member, as we did last time, that would help move these goals forward and chart a path that allows our district would enable us to continue to be successful in educating the students of the community,” he said.
Diaz said TVEA is made up of teachers of all political persuasions, but did not discuss why he thought only one of the three union-backed candidates, incumbent Steven Schwartz, had won their races. Fellow incumbent Allison Barclay lost her seat to Melina Anderson, backed by the Riverside County Republican Party. A third TVEA-backed candidate, Gary Oddi, lost his race to Emil Roger Barham, also backed by the Riverside County Republican Party. Two conservative candidates, Komroksy and Jon Cobb, were endorsed by the Inland Empire Family PAC, but Schwartz defeated the final contender.
Community division over the Temecula school board has attracted activists from Grandparents for Truth, a project of People for the American Way, a national progressive advocacy group. Grandparents for Truth tries to give students the ‘freedom to learn’ by, among other things, combating censorship and advocating diversity in the classroom.
Alana Byrd, national field director for People for the American Way, fears that far-right conservatives could use the same playbook to implement policies, such as religious education in public schools, broadly in districts across the country. She said the group is following efforts in states such as Oklahoma and Texas to include Christian Bibles in classrooms and Christian stories in the curriculum, respectively.
“As an organization committed to religious freedom, we do not preach against the Bible. We don’t preach against religion at all,” Byrd said. “The problem is that the separation of church and state, when it’s mandated or financially incentivized to teach a specific religion as this kind of state-sponsored religion, that’s where it really becomes concerning. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there seems to be a playbook, if next on Komrosky and his colleagues’ list is to introduce some kind of religious mandate or a thinly veiled mandate.”
Despite the success of the recall campaign, Pack said it was an uphill battle for One Temecula Valley and the Temecula Valley Educators Association to keep Komrosky and other right-wing candidates from entering the school board. Not only do Republicans make up a majority of the electorate in Temecula, but voters in Riverside County, where it is located, narrowly supported Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race. California may be a blue state, but it is home to millions of red voters, with some communities, especially outside the state’s major cities, known for their dense concentrations of Republican supporters.
“We’ve done a fantastic job,” Pack said of the effort to elect non-extremists to the board. “I think it’s historic for all the candidates; all the effort, money, time and effort that went into getting these candidates elected has never been done here. We are proud of that effort and we came very close. Hopefully we can get them over the line in the future because I think the community is going to see some of the damage that has already been done and it’s going to have an impact on the children and the schools.”
He said the tight race between Komrosky and Sola shows how important it is for the public to vote in school board elections. Some people probably voted for president but not for the school board because they felt local race didn’t matter or because they didn’t have school-aged children, Pack said.
“Our mantra has always been that a failed school district is a failed city, a failed community,” he said. “If the school district collapses, you’re going to see the consequences, even if you don’t have children. So yes, local local elections really do matter, especially at the school level.”
Because taxpayer dollars support schools, all community members should feel included in school board races, Diaz said.
“Everyone has a voice in that, just like everyone has a voice in who should represent their neighborhood on the city council,” Diaz said.
Although Byrd is upset about the outcome of the Temecula school board races, she said the work to hold the new administrators accountable and improve the rights of all students in the district must continue.
“The One Temecula Valley PAC and the activists on the ground, as well as Grandparents for Truth, will continue to monitor what policies they might introduce and continue to fight back against anything that doesn’t support diversity, doesn’t support students, doesn’t.” I don’t support the teachers, I don’t support the families,” she said.
