Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
On Tuesday, the majority of voters in the Harrisburg region will see a ballot that contains at least one school board race. These contests can often be confusing, with multiple little-known candidates — or sometimes none at all. The broad trend in school board races this year largely depends on which side of the Susquehanna River you’re on. Few, if any, school districts in Dauphin County appear to have a contested board race (barring any concerted write-in campaigns), and in several cases there are open seats with no one on the ballot. The West Shore suburbs of eastern Cumberland County, however, are a different story. Several districts have hotly-contested races that have pulled in sizeable amounts of money that would’ve been considered unusual just five or ten years ago. But the trickling down of state and national politics to the local level has made school board contests far less anodyne than they once were. In Cumberland County, a significant amount of the effort – and finances – going into the races is driven by a liberal backlash to the wave of conservative pressure on school boards in the last several years. The difference between the two sides of the river can’t be entirely explained by campaign finance reports. But generally speaking, the Cumberland County suburbs are growing much faster and are much wealthier than those in Dauphin, with an increasing number of active political groups. Cumberland Valley School Board Cumberland Valley School District, Cumberland County’s massive suburban district, has four school board seats up for grabs. Brian Allen, who won both the Democratic and Republican nomination in the May primary, is now running unopposed in the general election for a seat representing Silver Spring Township. A board seat representing Middlesex and Monroe townships is contested between Democrat Emily Rosengrant and Republican Cathi George. Two board seats are on the ballot for Hampden Township with three candidates; Democrat Asheleigh Forsberg, Republican Selena Ling, and Mike O’Brien, who won both a Democratic and Republican nomination. O’Brien is widely known for his 2024 Democratic Congressional run, and his campaign is significantly more sophisticated than the average school board candidate. O’Brien reported raising almost $30,000 this year through his campaign committee, nearly twice as much as any other CVSD contender, including a $5,000 contribution from Democratic Majority Action, a major national party campaign fund. O’Brien has also funneled thousands of dollars into a separate political action committee (PAC) called CV Residents for Change, which has promoted O’Brien alongside Forsberg, Rosengrant, and Allen as more moderate slate of candidates relative to Ling and George, who are portrayed as more right-wing. Also spending dollars in the district is a PAC called Cumberland Valley Citizens Unified for Responsible Schools (CVCUReS), which has reported spending several thousand dollars on text message advertising. The PAC encourages Republican voters to support the aforementioned four candidates, even though Allen is the only registered Republican among them. CVCUReS is largely supported by local dentist Mike Verber, who has also donated $10,000 directly to Allen and another $5,000 to O’Brien. Also of note is the Turn South-Central PA Blue PAC, which has donated several thousand dollars between Rosengrant, Forsberg, and O’Brien; the PAC is operated by local activist and Pennsylvania Democratic Committee member Alex Reber. Ling and George have, until recently, had much more limited campaigns, raising only small fraction of the cash available to their opponents. Ling received $2,500 from the campaign committee of Rep. Barb Gleim, R-Cumberland County, and $1,000 from the Pennsylvania Prosperity PAC, a campaign group largely funded by state Sen. Greg Rothman, R-Cumberland County. George also reported benefitting from campaigning done on her behalf by Take Back Our Schools PAC, an “anti-woke” conservative group that was influential in electing a right-leaning majority in the West Shore School District two years ago. The PAC has thus far been much less active than it was in 2023. On Tuesday, the conservative mega-PAC The 1776 Project filed an independent expenditure report showing over $27,000 in spending to support Ling through mailers and text messages. Independent expenditures are those made without coordination with the candidate themselves, and have much looser reporting and disclosure requirements. In a Facebook post, Ling said she “had no idea this was happening, but I’m honored that [The 1776 Project] chose to stand with me.” Further, Forsburg and others on social media have posted images of text messages being sent to voters encouraging them to oppose herself, Rosengrant, O’Brien, and Allen. The messages claim that the four candidates “are taking credit for a state budget proposal that will bankrupt Pennsylvania…while only giving pennies more” to CVSD. The messages state they are from Responsible Government for Central PA, which first registered as a PAC in late September and has not yet filed a campaign finance report. The PAC lists its chairman as “Robert Bransletter,” which appears to be a misspelling of longtime Pennsylvania Republican campaign consultant Bob Branstetter. [Branstetter could not be immediately reached for comment.] In early October, the Democratic-majority state House passed a proposed compromise budget that included increases to state K-12 assistance and a cap on the per-student remittances that districts make for students who opt into cyber charter schools. With the new funding and the cyber savings, CVSD would come out $4.6 million ahead for the current school year, according to House appropriations tracking sheets. O’Brien, Forsburg, Rosengrant, and Allen have pushed for lawmakers to accept the plan, which would help CVSD stave off further tax increases and handle it’s looming budget deficit. The Republican-majority state Senate opposes the deal, saying that the deficit spending — while lower than Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget — would spend down the state’s reserves far too quickly. The issue remains at the center of the ongoing state budget impasse, with the rhetoric surrounding it now bleeding into the CVSD race. West Shore School District As mentioned previously, the 2023 school board race saw a five-member conservative bloc take control in WSSD, sparking controversy by abruptly firing the district’s attorney (a process for which the board was successfully sued) and holding a meeting with the right-wing Independence Law Center, which has pushed policies targeting transgender students and certain classroom materials. The bloc was opposed by the other four board members, two Democrats and two more-pragmatic Republicans. Those latter two — Brian Guistwhite and Chris Kambic — are running for re-election unopposed. Kambic is one of two candidates running in a district with two open seats, and is joined by Democrat Mary Dankosky, who will likely replace retiring board member Abigail Tierney. Conservative board member Heidi Thomas recently resigned, leaving the board evenly split, and the 2025 election could tip the balance solidly against the conservative bloc if current board president Kelly Brent is unseated. Brent, who secured the Republican nomination, is facing a well-funded challenge from Democrat Teri Mickle. Although Mickle has only raised about $6,500 individually, she has received much more in support from the West Shore Students First PAC, which has reported raising almost $66,000 this year and spending large sums on advertising and campaign events, putting up numbers much higher than any other political organization in the area. West Shore Students First has endorsed Mickle along with Dankosky, Guistwhite, and Kambic. The group has several large local donors, along with roughly $12,000 in cash contributions and another $6,000 in in-kind campaign support from a fund organized by the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), which pools donations from union teachers across the state. Brent reported putting up roughly $2,400 of her own money, and raising another $15,000 through a committee titled Leadership for WSSD. That committee received funds from a number of conservative leaders, including $2,000 from the campaign of state Sen. Dawn Keefer, R-York County, and $1,000 from the campaign fund of former GOP state Sen. Mike Regan and his chief of staff, Bruce McClanahan. Brent’s committee also received $2,000 from Fairfield Township Supervisor Larry Cox, the husband of WSSD board member Brenda Cox and leader of a group trying to raise money for a new sports stadium that Cox wants the district to build at Red Land High School. East Pennsboro School District East Penn has six candidates vying for four district-wide seats. Yvette Wevodau and Pedro Black each won both a Democratic and Republican nomination; Michael Alsher and Chuck Gatten won Democratic nominations only, and Cindi Ward and Leah Renteira round out the Republican nominees. Despite being a contested partisan race, spending has been far lower than neighboring Cumberland Valley and West Shore, and done almost entirely through local party groups. Wevodau, Ward, and Renteira each reported receiving a little over $400 in-kind support from the East Pennsboro Township Republican Association campaigning on their behalf. Alsher and Gatten likewise received support valued at around $1,600 and $1,800, respectively, from the East Pennsboro Democratic Club. Both organizations sourced most of their funds from Camp Hill and Enola-area donors, although the East Pennsboro Democratic Club also received donations from a handful of Democratic lawmakers from across the state, the largest being a reported $10,000 contribution from the campaign of state Sen. John Kane, D-Delaware County. Dauphin County In contrast to the handful of hot races in Cumberland County, Dauphin generally suffers from a dearth of candidates. In Lower Dauphin School District’s second board region, only one person will appear on the ballot for two open seats. Millersburg Area School District, located in Dauphin County’s rural north, has no candidate running for a two-year seat to replace a board member who left. In nearby Williams Valley School District, nobody is running for a board seat representing Rush Township and part of Tower City in Schuylkill County. In Steelton-Highspire School District, voters will find a ballot with four candidates for four four-year seats. But one of those candidates is also the only person nominated to fill a two-year vacancy seat, and will be unable to occupy both.
