When officials with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin reached out to Lodi School Board candidate Sarah Ripp offering to support her campaign leading up to the April 2 spring election, the first-time candidate was hesitant.
Unlike legislative and statewide elections, school board races are nonpartisan in Wisconsin. But that hasn’t stopped political parties and partisan groups from getting involved in down-ballot races — propping up their chosen candidates through endorsements or in-kind donations in the form of flyers or campaign resources like voter lists.
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“I really did think long and hard about whether I was willing to accept any type of endorsement, because I was certain I was going to get backlash,” said Ripp, assistant director for the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies program at UW-Madison.
Ripp, 49, is one of six candidates seeking three seats on the board, including Craig R. Giese, incumbent Terry Haag, Scott Pierquet, Theresa Valencia and William Wipperfurth.
Ripp said she ultimately accepted an in-kind donation from the state party that provided access to a mailing list of area residents who have historically voted for Democratic candidates. Later, she accepted an offer from DPW for a mailer highlighting her campaign goals.
“I was thinking this is a great opportunity to reach a lot more people who are probably like-minded who would be interested in voting for me,” Ripp said.
The flyer identifies Ripp as a “progressive candidate for Lodi schools” and highlights three campaign goals: ensuring schools have proper funding and resources, recruiting and retaining teachers and preparing students for success after graduation.
While none of those goals are expressly partisan, fellow Lodi resident Monica Simpson said she was troubled by text on the mailer indicating it was “paid for by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.”
“I probably do vote more Republican as I’m older and it concerns me if a candidate is being promoted by a party, whether or not they asked for it,” Simpson said. “That concerns me if the party is getting involved in the election, and I would say that about a Republican candidate too.”
Partisan support
Partisan involvement in school board elections is nothing new in Wisconsin, but Michael Ford, UW-Oshkosh associate professor of public administration, said it’s been a growing trend as national culture war issues like race, book bans and gender identity trickle down into local campaigns. Partisan interest in school board races also jumped in the years following the COVID-19 outbreak as school districts grappled with topics like mask mandates and remote learning.
“There’s certainly been a change from it being soccer moms, wrestling parents and people that are interested in the sports teams, to more explicitly the Democratic Party and Republican Party that are involved in our local elections,” Ford said.
An analysis of partisan endorsements by Ballotpedia, which tracks election data, found that 33 partisan groups or individuals have endorsed 190 candidates running for nonpartisan school board seats in Wisconsin’s April 2 election.
As of Monday, 77 school board candidates have been backed by Republican groups, including various county parties, while 28 candidates have been endorsed by Democratic groups, according to data provided by Ballotpedia.
In addition, New York-based national conservative group the 1776 Project PAC has backed 24 school board candidates in the state. Union organization AFL-CIO, which largely supports Democratic candidates, and its local branches have endorsed 56 school board candidates, while the liberal-leaning Wisconsin Education Association Council, the largest Wisconsin public school teachers union, has supported 74 candidates running for local school boards.
In a separate analysis of school board elections conducted between 2021 and 2023, Ballotpedia identified 142 school board elections in Wisconsin in which candidates took a stance on wedge issues like how race is taught, how schools or districts responded to the pandemic, or school-related sex and gender issues. That put the state second behind only California, where candidates in 307 school board races took a stance on those issues.
Clouding voters’ perception
“When you introduce explicit partisanship into a nonpartisan board, that’s going to increase conflict,” Ford said. “And that’s been shown to be the No. 1 negative impactor on overall board performance, because there is this additional barrier that now exists between elected officials and the people they represent.”
Infusing partisan interests into school board campaigns also clouds voters’ perception of what a school board member actually does, which is set policy for the district, as opposed to manage day-to-day operations.
“There’s not a Democratic way to make school board decisions versus a Republican way, there’s only a merit-based way and a non-merit-based way,” said Mordecai Lee, a professor emeritus at UW-Milwaukee. “There’s a deep logic to that approach. It’s just that it’s cracked, it’s falling apart, it’s lost its validity due to the partisanship of Wisconsin politics these days.”
Ripp said “there’s no secret agenda” to her campaign for the Lodi School Board and she’s willing to work with all members of the board if elected, regardless of party affiliation.
“When it comes down to it, what really matters is what’s good for the children in the school district and the people who work there,” Ripp said.
Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson Joe Oslund said the party offers support to candidates with shared values up and down the ballot by providing resources ranging from mailing lists to materials and flyers. County parties also often get involved in such races, he added.
“From the governor on down, we’re a party that believes what’s best for our kids is best for our state,” Oslund said. “I think we try to lift up candidates and causes … that live by that credo.”
Matt Fisher, spokesperson for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said the state party is not providing endorsements or donations to school board candidates this election cycle, though county parties are permitted to do so.
Both parties see arms race
Speaking with conservative talk show host Dan O’Donnell last week, Terry Dittrich, chair of the Waukesha County Republican Party, pointed to successes seen with the county’s WisRed Initiative, which launched in 2020 as a countywide effort to endorse and promote conservative candidates in down-ballot races.
The county party has endorsed more than 40 school board candidates in the April 2 election, according to Ballotpedia’s analysis.
In the Waukesha School Board race, for example, five candidates are running for three seats. Three candidates in that race have been backed by the Waukesha County Republican Party, while the other two have been recommended by the Waukesha County Democratic Party.
A note from Waukesha County Democratic Party chair Matt Mareno on the party’s website states that a recommendation is not an endorsement and backed candidates are “merely a better option given the massive drive by the Waukesha County GOP and their WisRed program.”
Dittrich said the WisRed Initiative has boosted turnout among Republican voters and resulted in conservative-backed candidates winning more than 85% of races in the county over the last four years. He said he’s pushed to expand the initiative statewide but with little success.
“This is something I’ve been trying to champion and run up the flagpole, is the fact that the Democrats, to their credit, have a permanent infrastructure in the state that is working 24/7,” Dittrich said. “We tend to think springtime is the time to get involved for a November election and frankly, that is pretty late.”
Oslund said the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s approach is a “top-to-bottom organizing effort” that’s built to operate all year leading up to the next general election.
“The work that we do in our spring races, yes it is in support of these local candidates, but it’s also in support of the work that we’re going to be doing toward November as well,” he said.