Putting fear into school board members

This week’s Shout Out Patriots podcast tells a real David-and-Goliath story of a mom in Bedford County, Va., who had a run-in with local school officials, decided to take on the local school board in free and fair elections, and actually PREVAILED, flipping the school board from liberal to conservative with a grass-roots write-in campaign.

Mary Catherine Bennett has an autistic child in the Bedford County Schools who had always been allowed to go maskless because of medical issues, including muscle-tone and sensory problems and drooling that made mask use unthinkable.

When school officials told her that being exempted from the mask policy meant providing all of her child’s medical records, on a continuing basis, and that a religious exemption required a written testimonial from her pastor, she decided to start getting involved.

Bennett started a Facebook group that soon ballooned to 2000 members, which in Bedford County is a substantial number. She (and they) started attending school board meetings, and the board soon voted 4-3 in favor of letting parents decide whether children should wear masks in school.

Liberal Democrat Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, however, on Aug. 12, the very day of the 21-22 school year open house, decreed that all schools suddenly had to follow CDC guidelines, and require masks. When this happened, key Bedford School Board members changed their votes to comply.

“We knew an election was coming and three board members were, you know, running again,” Bennett told Shout Out Patriots, explaining that she and other parents knew just which seats to target: Districts 2, 3 and 4.

The District 4 member had voted with parents, but Jason Johnson and John Hicks (2 and 3 respectively) had not. Hicks was retiring, and no one had filed to run for District 3.

So Bennett and her group organized, recruiting Matthew Holbrook and Dwayne Nelms, both veterans and business owners and fathers, to run as write-in candidates for those seats.

“We had an amazing team. God gave us a lot of wisdom,” she said.

Bennett was instrumental in getting both candidates approved by the Bedford County GOP, and in creating marketing materials like flyers and sample ballots to give out to people as they showed up for early voting.

“It was a lot of work,” she said. “I’m just going to be very honest. It was a lot of times my kids eating hot dogs and mac and cheese, because I did the majority of the graphics. I could not donate financially.”

Bennett said they came up with scripts before talking with voters, to persuade them in a peaceful, Christian and convincing way. They even had giant cutouts made of Holbrook and Nelms, since work responsibilities kept the men from being able to canvass during the 45 days of early voting.

When the votes were counted, write-in candidates Holbrook and Nelms WON their seats, and Bedford’s school board is now majority conservative.

It’s likely to stay that way, too, now that local people working together have notched such a victory, and the effect the win provides a model for people everywhere who find their school boards have been infiltrated by leftist academics, mask-mandaters, critical race theorists and advocates for transgenderism and homosexuality.

Hear her tell her inspiring story here!