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LOADINGERROR LOADING WASHINGTON – Everyone knows the headlines from Tuesday night’s Democratic sweep in the 2025 elections — governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, a big redistricting referendum in California, Zohran Mamdani’s historic win in the New York City mayoral race. But some of the party’s most astounding wins played out down lower on ballots, and they won’t get as much national attention. These were races for things like school boards, city councils, state legislative seats and an obscure public service commission. They may not sound as sexy as a governor’s race, but these are the elections most connected to local communities and reflective of how regular people are feeling there. Advertisement Here’s a look at some of Democrats’ wildest wins at the local level. School boards There were lots of school board elections on Tuesday, in red and blue states like Pennsylvania, Washington, Kansas, Idaho, Colorado and Texas. School boards are almost always elected in nonpartisan races. But candidates’ endorsements give voters a sense of their policy positions and their alignment with parties, and school boards have been dragged into ugly culture wars in recent years. That’s largely due to the far-right group, Moms for Liberty, aggressively recruiting its members to run for seats on school boards around the country to enact anti-LGBTQ+ policies in schools. Two of Tuesday’s school board elections were in Bucks County, Pa., which was considered “ground zero” for right-wing groups’ takeover of school boards in 2021. A few years ago, conservatives on these boards in Pennbridge and Central Bucks districts were using their roles to pass policies targeting LGBTQ+ students and banning books. Advertisement Democrats flipped control of both boards in 2023, and on Tuesday, they ousted every Republican from both of these boards, except for one. The Pennbridge school board is now 8-1, with Democratic members in control. The Central Bucks school board is 9-0. In Washington state, all four conservatives on the Douglas County school board were up for reelection, and progressive candidates were leading in all of these races as of early Wednesday. This seven-member board is now poised to flip to Democratic control, a shift from the 4-3 Republican majority it’s had. In Colorado, all of the union-backed candidates for Denver’s school board are leading as of Wednesday, meaning they will likely retain their majority on the 11-member board. Advertisement Even in deep-red Idaho, voters ousted a West Ada school board member in favor of a new candidate who centered her campaign on supporting inclusive classroom signs and opposing school vouchers. This district made national news earlier this year when school administrators ordered a teacher here to remove a poster that featured multiracial hands and read, “Everyone Is Welcome Here.” In Houston, Texas, three candidates broke the conservative majority on the Cypress-Fairbanks school board, which represents one of the largest school districts in the state. This board has been dominated by the Christian right, and local parents rose up to change it, angry about book bans and vaccine curricula being stripped in schools. Advertisement Conservatives held a 6-1 majority on this board before Tuesday. Now they’re outnumbered by liberals, 4-3. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the message from Tuesday’s school board elections was clear: parents are done with the politics of division. “Last night, we saw voters support their local public schools in towns, counties and cities across America, including important school board wins in Albuquerque; Wichita; Nashua, N.H.; Douglas County, Colo.; Cy-Fair, Texas; and Bucks County, Penn.,” she told HuffPost in a statement. Advertisement Weingarten noted that voters supported public education funding on Tuesday, too, by approving things like a continuing funding referendum in Avon, Indiana over the opposition of the state’s sitting lieutenant governor. In Colorado, voters approved a tax increase on high earners to fund free breakfast and lunch for all public school students. “They want leaders who believe in safe and welcoming public schools where every child can learn and have a shot at success,” she said. “There’s a deep desire to move beyond discord and invest in the future of our students and communities.” State legislative races Democrats in the Mississippi state Senate appear to have picked up two new seats on Tuesday — and throttled the GOP’s supermajority hold of the Senate for the first time in 13 years. Advertisement Votes are still trickling in, but unofficial county election results show Democrats leading in both seats. The apparent Democratic victories come after two Republican-held districts were redrawn after a court ruled they unfairly diluted Black people’s representation. When a party has a supermajority status, they can easily cut the other party out of having any say in what gets done. That includes things like overriding a governor’s veto and proposing constitutional amendments. Mississippi Democrats can now serve as a check, at least, on some of the more extreme things Republicans may try to do in the state legislature. These two races may not have been officially called yet, but top Democrats are already hailing them as victories. Advertisement “Historic,” Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin said on a Wednesday call with reporters. “We broke through the Republican supermajority down there.” Democrats expanded their majorities in two other state Houses on Tuesday, too. In New Jersey, Democrats have picked up at least three new seats and may gain more as election officials process late-arriving mail ballots. Those three new seats mean Democrats will control at least 55 of the chamber’s 80 seats, and will have more than a two-thirds supermajority in the House for the first time since 2019. Advertisement In Virginia, Democrats boosted their majority in the state House from 51 to 64 seats, with one race still undecided. They pulled this off by flipping key districts in communities near Richmond, Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said every one of Virginia’s 100 state House districts saw a shift to the left. “It cannot be understated that we swept nearly every target on our map,” Williams said on the Wednesday call with reporters. “We created a historic majority in Virginia and New Jersey.” Advertisement County seats Democrats won county seats all over Pennsylvania. They flipped four seats on the Luzerne County Council and retook the majority. They swept all five contested county offices in Bucks County, and in the process, flipped seats for county sheriff and for district attorney. In Erie County, voters elected a Democrat to the County Executive’s Office and pushed out a Republican incumbent. “Last night in Pennsylvania and across the country, folks came together to reject the chaos, higher prices and attacks on our foundational rights coming from Washington and chose a better path forward,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) said Wednesday on social media. Advertisement “Including in counties and communities President Trump won just last year,” he said. Georgia’s Public Service Commission Have you even heard of Georgia’s utility board? It doesn’t matter ― all you need to know is two Democrats just trounced Republican incumbents in a statewide race in Georgia, marking the first time Democrats have won a statewide constitutional office here since 2006. Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard defeated GOP incumbents by more than 20 points for seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission. Advertisement Both ran on a campaign of “affordability” — the new mantra of the Democratic Party — and will now sit on the five-member utility board, which sets electricity rates and regulates other utilities. Longtime Georgia political reporter Greg Bluestein observed on social media that it’s easy to read into a race as obscure as this one, but these Democratic victories “mark a genuine breakthrough for the party.” City Councils City councils, like school boards, shifted left all across red and blue states. Democrats in South Carolina flipped all three seats on the Georgetown city council. In Orlando, Florida, voters removed the one remaining Republican city council member and voted in a Democrat. Advertisement For the first time since 1999, voters in Charlotte, North Carolina elected a Democrat to a city council seat long held by a Republican. Advertisement “That’s bullshit,” he said. “We won in red counties, blue counties, purple counties.”
