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As chairman of Moore County’s school board, Robert Levy pushed a long list of ideas aligned with the Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” group that started in Florida during the pandemic and quickly rose to national prominence.
Under Levy’s leadership, the Republican-majority school board made the swath of the Sandhills adjacent to Fort Liberty a vanguard in the culture wars centered on public education, approving policies forbidding discussion of “gender identity and gender fluidity,” restricting access to certain books, and banning teaching about structural racism, among other things.
That vote history, and the area’s deep-pocketed Republican donors, made Moore County a focal point in Michele Morrow’s run for the state’s top K-12 education post on the same suite of issues.
But this year, voters didn’t vindicate that vision. Morrow underperformed compared with other Republican candidates in staunchly conservative Moore County and lost her race statewide. Levy, backed by the local chapter of Moms for Liberty as well as the county GOP, lost his reelection bid by almost 5 percentage points, more than 2,500 votes.
Levy’s challenger, Steve Johnson, campaigned on moving away from the infighting that had come to consume the school board’s majority and shifting its focus to “real problems,” such as poor staff retention and brown water at Carthage Elementary School. “I see the election results as the community asking us as an entire board to work on the important problems,” Johnson, a former leader of the district’s STEM programming, told The Assembly.
Levy sees his loss differently. He said he perceives no rejection of the vision for education he and several colleagues share with the Moms for Liberty. Instead, he primarily blames opposition from the local newspaper, The Pilot of Southern Pines—whose editorial board called him a “squabbler” and “ideologue” responsible for the board’s “descent into incoherence”—and what he calls a “last-minute hit piece” by his ally-turned-rival on the school board, David Hensley.
Hensley’s campaign committee, named Informed Republicans, sent out thousands of envelopes during early voting labeled “Moore County Republican Sample Ballot.” The ballots matched the party’s endorsements in all races except one: Levy’s. They endorsed Johnson, who is not affiliated with any political party or the Moms for Liberty.
Candidates and campaign volunteers across the political spectrum agree that some voters believed the mail came from the county Republican Party, whose endorsements typically lead to decisive wins in the nonpartisan school board races.
Even if the intra-GOP conflict makes it harder to discern the influence of the Moms for Liberty in Moore County, there are indicators that residents here and elsewhere in North Carolina have soured on the group’s vision for K-12 education. In addition to Morrow’s high-profile loss, five of seven North Carolina school board candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty chapters lost their races.
Voters appear to have chosen Robin Calcutt, a longtime Moore County educator who campaigned on putting aside such cultural fights, over Moms for Liberty-backed candidate Don Zawlocki. Zawlocki, a teacher at a private Christian school who also got the GOP’s stamp of approval, trailed Calcutt by 142 votes as of Friday.
The other Moore County school board seats up for election this year seem likely to be filled by Amy Dahl, a teacher who blames the current board for creating an “oppressive work environment,” and Hensley, who has recently advocated for the board to pursue a “viewpoint neutral” agenda.
Natosha Tew, until recently the chair of the Moms for Liberty’s New Hanover chapter, ranked last out of six candidates running for three seats on that county’s school board.
“I see the election results as the community asking us as an entire board to work on the important problems.”
Steve Johnson, Moore County School Board candidate
McKenzie Kelly, a mother of five who campaigned on her “pro-God, pro-life stance” and “commitment to keeping our children safe from inappropriate materials,” trailed her opponent by more than 7,000 votes for a seat on the Rowan-Salisbury school board.
Davidson County voters rejected Sheila Blower, who campaigned on removing “pornographic” books from school libraries, while strongly supporting Sherry Koontz, another Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidate whose campaign put a spotlight on her relief work in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
And in Gaston County, Janna Smith, who campaigned against “woke agendas,” ranked first among five candidates to represent Gastonia on the county school board.
The mixed outcomes reflect a continuation of Moms for Liberty’s spotty electoral record. Candidates in other states, such as Texas, also saw heavy losses. Last year, just 40 percent of the group’s endorsed candidates across the country won; in 2022, about half earned board seats.
A Florida-born Movement
Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice promised stepped-up involvement in presidential swing states for 2024, following requests from “investors,” the Associated Press reported earlier this year.
The group is organized as a 501(c)4 social welfare organization and doesn’t have to identify its donors. But some are known, including The Heritage Foundation, which organized Project 2025, the conservative movement’s vision for the next presidential administration. Publix grocery heiress Julie Fancelli gave the first donation to Moms for Liberty’s political action committee, and its affiliated super PAC has received at least $200,000 this election cycle from Richard Uihlein, the conservative megadonor and shipping supply magnate, according to federal filings.
It’s not yet clear from financial disclosures whether Moms for Liberty gave North Carolina candidates a significant boost in funding this year. The group’s federal PAC must submit a report early next month, and school board candidates’ fourth quarter reports aren’t due until January.
But one signal of its intention to pay special attention to the state was a town hall Justice hosted in Raleigh last April.
Justice, who has been floated as a candidate to be the next U.S. education secretary, highlighted that Morrow was in the audience. She also acknowledged Michael Logan, a Guilford County school board member, and New Hanover candidate Tew, among other current and aspiring public officials in attendance.
As attendees took their seats, photos of state legislators and the lieutenant governor at a microphone in front of a Moms for Liberty background were projected on a big screen. Some of the photos showed counter protesters.
Justice directly addressed backlash to the group in her introduction, playing a video that cast the group’s designation as an “antigovernment organization” by the Southern Poverty Law Center as evidence of its members’ heroism. In it, a woman bestowing an award on Justice and co-founder Tina Descovich says they established “a movement so powerful that they were called ‘domestic terrorists.’” Another clip featured former President Donald Trump declaring the group “the best thing that’s ever happened to America.”
Justice boasted that Moms for Liberty now has more than 130,000 members and 300 chapters across the country. In North Carolina, there are now 23 chapters, according to the Moms for Liberty website, up from 13 in June 2023.
The panelists at the Raleigh event highlighted the various ways Moms for Liberty had already been exerting influence here. Brooke Weiss, vice chair of the legislative committee, described the group’s lobbying at the General Assembly, which has included support for the Parents Bill of Rights, requiring schools to notify parents if their child changes their name or pronouns, among other things.
Mary Summa, general counsel of the N.C. Values Coalition, spoke about her support for the Buncombe County chapter’s lobbying for strict compliance with that legislation, which Republicans passed over the governor’s veto last year. “They kicked butt,” she said.
Though the town hall was aimed at parents, few who weren’t already involved showed up. There were about 50 people in the audience, including at least a dozen apparent critics. A handful wore shirts that said, “Ban bigots not books.” In the question-and-answer section, police escorted one protester out after she called the panelists “liars.”
Justice seemed ready for the outburst. “Here’s what I’m going to promise you,” she said after quiet was restored. “We are going to get a chair, and we are going to pull up a seat at every table as parents, and we are going to continue to advocate. We are just getting started, so buckle up.”
A Loss in New Hanover
On election night, Tew, the New Hanover candidate, spoke enthusiastically about the changes she wanted to make as a school board member.
Wearing sparkly American flag earrings, she explained that she wanted to increase special education program funding and bring more consistency to school discipline.
But as Tew would learn hours later, the five other candidates vying for the board’s three open seats had lured more votes. She would rank last.
“I wasn’t really looking to have a career in politics,” Tew told The Assembly. “This was not on my adult bingo card.”
She recounted her journey into politics. During the COVID pandemic, Tew said, school leaders kicked her teenage daughter, who has ADHD, out of class for not adhering strictly to mask rules.
“It makes my hair stand up thinking about it,” she said. “Every morning I dropped my daughter off with tears coming down her face because she knew she had to go sit in the hallway.”
As a firefighter and emergency manager coordinator, she had worked for the government her whole life. But now, she said, her trust in institutions was breaking down.
Tew began speaking at school board meetings and soon joined the budding Moms for Liberty movement, founding the local chapter.
She was removed from school board meetings for not following protocol, and the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote about her social media posts, concluding that she promotes anti-government extremism, often using symbols embraced by the militia movement.
An appearance on War Room, the podcast of Trump adviser and MAGA influencer Steve Bannon, got her even more attention. On the show, she sounded an alarm about the prospect of an alternative school being shut down and converted into a “newcomers” school serving refugees and other immigrants. The district had discussed a similar idea and announced plans to close the alternative school, but community backlash was fierce, so administrators reversed course and scrapped the plans.
“We are going to get a chair, and we are going to pull up a seat at every table as parents, and we are going to continue to advocate. We are just getting started, so buckle up.”
Tiffany Justice, Moms for Liberty co-founder
More controversy dogged her election campaign. She spread conspiracy theories, like tweeting that the government controls the weather in the wake of Hurricane Helene. And in September, her former campaign manager and the Moms for Liberty chapter’s vice chair, Justina Nicole Guardino, was arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol.
Tew said some people misunderstand her and the Moms for Liberty group’s advocacy. “I think they see our passion and they mistake it for extremism,” she said. “It’s our children.”
Tew attributes her election loss to demographic change in New Hanover. The region has “become infiltrated” with “folks from up north, bringing with them their disastrous, ‘progressive’ policies,” she wrote in an email to The Assembly.
She has also cast blame on the state GOP for Democrats performing as well as they did across the state in this election, writing on X, “The UNIPARTY ESTABLISHMENT backstabs #NCGrassroots Conservatives & make[s] behind-the-door deals with China-favored candidates.”
One week after the election, Tew and other conservatives called for a forensic audit of local results, calling a decision by New Hanover election administrators to delay counting roughly 1,500 absentee ballots “astounding.” “This ‘error’ is deeply egregious & casts an enormous amount of doubt on the election results,” she wrote. (Other county officials have also complained about the issue, but the state elections office has said some delayed ballot counting is normal.)
Heartened by Trump’s clear win in the presidential race, Tew has vowed to fight on from her position with Moms for Liberty.
And in the federal arena the group’s agenda still holds significant cachet.
It’s there that Morrow, the candidate for superintendent of public instruction, who also suffered a loss, sees opportunity. She recently emailed her supporters asking for their help promoting her candidacy for a spot in the new Trump administration—perhaps in an Education Department led by Moms for Liberty co-founder Justice.
Carli Brosseau is a reporter at The Assembly. She joined us from The News & Observer, where she was an investigative reporter. Her work has been honored by the Online News Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors, and published by ProPublica and The New York Times.
Johanna F. Still is The Assembly‘s Wilmington editor. She previously covered economic development for Greater Wilmington Business Journal and was the assistant editor at Port City Daily.