Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
A political action committee that works to elect conservatives to school boards nationwide is backing several slates of Philadelphia-area Republicans in next week’s local election. The 1776 Project PAC is spending money and working to support Republican candidates in Bucks and Montgomery Counties. As Election Day approaches, the endorsements are drawing strong rebukes from local Democrats and bringing national politics into a largely quiet school board election cycle. The PAC — which is supporting GOP candidates in the Central Bucks, Centennial, Pennridge, Perkiomen Valley, and Lower Merion School Districts — was founded to “combat indoctrination in the classrooms,” said executive director Stefano Forte. Campaign finance reports disclosing the PAC’s spending in local school board races, due Friday, were not yet available on the counties’ websites Monday. Local Democratic committees are not happy, but Bucks County Democratic chair Steve Santarsiero said he’s not all that concerned by the PAC’s presence. “The people of Bucks County have seen what happens when right-wing ideologues take over their school districts,” Santarsiero, who is also a state senator, said in a statement to The Inquirer. “In 2023 they voted overwhelmingly to reject those candidates. I believe that they will again this year.” Here’s what to know about the PAC and the local races in which it is endorsing Republican candidates. What is the 1776 Project PAC? The 1776 Project PAC aims to help the Republican Party own education issues, Forte said, and he believes his group is on the “right side of what parents want.” Some of its priorities, according to the group’s website, include “Protect Girls Spaces” and standing “Against Indoctrination” — representing that it does not support policies that help transgender students, such as allowing students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, or teaching diversity, equity, and inclusion. It also stands for transparency, parental rights, and improving reading scores. The PAC sells bumper stickers reading “My kids aren’t your social experiment” and has a portal on its website for visitors to report names of teachers who are celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death. The culture-war issues that the PAC takes a stance on have been debated in Philly-area school districts. In Central Bucks, a GOP-led board passed policies that made national news, including banning Pride flags in classrooms in 2023 and passing a library policy in 2022 prohibiting “sexualized content” in books. The policies sparked backlash from residents who said the board was imposing a partisan agenda on classrooms, and Democrats flipped control of the board in 2023 and reversed those policies. This year, many Republican candidates are shying away from public discussion of culture-war issues — but the 1776 Project PAC has reignited some of that debate. Forte said the PAC has a 69% win record in Pennsylvania as a whole but did not provide a district breakdown. Who is behind the 1776 Project PAC? Ryan James Girdusky, a writer and conservative commentator, founded the 1776 Project PAC in 2021. He serves as an advisory board member for a group that was named a coalition partner for Project 2025, a conservative initiative that worked to suggest an agenda for President Donald Trump’s second term. Girdusky was banned from appearing on CNN last year after making a racist remark on air. He also founded the 1776 Project Foundation this year, which aims to research and develop education policy and become the “NRA of conservative education,” according to a news release announcing its creation. Forte said that the PAC’s involvement in this year’s school board races in Pennsylvania and other states compensates for Republicans’ lackluster candidate recruitment, and that his group is a voice for concerned parents. “While the woke left is talking about these insane issues, we have been talking about the things that really matter to parents,” Forte said. What has the local reaction been to the PAC’s endorsements? In Lower Merion, Republican candidates Talia Nissim, Deena Pack, and Omer Dekel — part of the “Together for Tomorrow” slate — said they sought an endorsement from 1776 Project PAC, as well as from other groups across the political spectrum. The candidates said they disagreed with the PAC on culture-war issues but aligned with them on other topics, like supporting parental involvement in schools and greater transparency. When the PAC endorsed the slate and became its only outside endorsement, it set off a firestorm in Lower Merion, a majority-blue community where Democrats are favored to win next week’s election. Jacob Rudolph, another school board candidate, posted on social media that he “left my former slate mates” over the PAC’s endorsement to be “free of ideological purity tests and outside interference.” Robert Paul, chair of the Lower Merion and Narberth Democratic Committee, said in a statement that the Republicans’ acceptance of this endorsement “shows a lack of judgement” and aligns with an “extremist agenda fundamentally at odds with the values of our community.” The backlash prompted Nissim, Pack, and Dekel to release a statement explaining why they — as self-described “moderates” who aim to support students of all backgrounds, including transgender kids — wanted 1776’s endorsement. The endorsement “does not change who we are,” Pack said in an interview last week with her fellow GOP candidates, also noting the campaign’s focus on local issues. “It does not change our profile and everything we’ve stood for the entire campaign.” Now, images of mailers with the Republican candidates’ names — paid for by 1776 — are plastered on local Democratic Facebook pages. “We sort of got derailed into another conversation,” Dekel said. In Central Bucks, voters have received similar mailers from the PAC. Republican Central Bucks candidate Drew Miller said: “Our community has been through a lot of division in recent years, and while some issues have gained national attention, I believe it’s time to move forward. I don’t think ongoing ‘culture wars’ serve our students or strengthen our schools.” Diana Leygerman, communications director for CBSD Neighbors United, the Democratic slate, said by accepting the endorsement, Republican candidates are “inviting chaos into Central Bucks, into our lives, into the taxpayers’ lives, into our classrooms.” Forte, for his part, said that his PAC is not pushing culture-war issues and that “anybody that agrees with somebody else 100% of the time is absolutely insane.” “We will never find the candidate who is going to be able to recite our exact policy points from our website,” Forte said.
