Voters Oust Several Book-Banning Incumbents in School Districts Across Texas
Over the past weekend, several candidates in suburban Texas school districts who opposed book bans won their elections, defeating conservative officials who had supported and implemented such policies in recent years.
Book bans in the Lone Star State have largely targeted titles with LGBTQ themes, Black or Brown characters, or authors of the same backgrounds. In the 2022-23 academic year alone, around 625 books were banned within the state. The year prior, the state banned over 800 books, the highest number of book bans in the country.
Local elections were held throughout Texas this past weekend, including school board races featuring incumbent candidates who supported such policies. In many of those contests, voters chose to remove far right leaders who had pushed hardest for book bans.
In the Mansfield Independent School District (ISD), just outside of Dallas and Fort Worth, the board president, board secretary and another board member were all handily defeated by local candidates opposed to book bans. Ana-Alicia Horn, a data management professional, defeated Keziah Valdes Farrar, the incumbent board president who was backed by a far right mobile phone company called Patriot Mobile, attaining more than 60 percent of support from voters.
Mansfield ISD had watered down its book ban policies in 2023 in response to public outcry, but the new plan still blocked children from accessing multiple titles, shifting decisions on banning titles to a committee appointed by the school board that would review any complaint brought up by residents in the district.
On Saturday, Horn celebrated her victory, which came in large part from constituents opposed to book bans.
“Thank you to every voter, volunteer, and supporter who believed in a vision rooted in transparency, collaboration, and putting students first,” Horn wrote in a victory message. “I’m excited to get to work on behalf of ALL families in our district, and I promise to lead with integrity, accountability, and heart.”
Elections in Katy ISD, just outside of Houston, saw incumbent board president Victor Perez defeated by former principal James Cross. In addition to pushing for book bans (including pressuring a committee in the district to reconsider books it had already deemed acceptable), Perez supported a right-wing policy in the district to inform parents if their children asked teachers to use pronouns that differed from the gender they were assigned at birth, essentially outing kids without their permission. Such policies can often result in harm to children, who may have parents with transphobic views.
Cross, who campaigned on a platform of being a former educator “with a heart,” also promised to make the board more collaborative and less motivated by partisanship.
“My hope is that you see a shift (from politics) pretty quickly,” he said after his victory.
And in the Fort Bend ISD elections, Rick Garcia, a board member and backer of one of the state’s “most restrictive” book ban policies, was defeated by business owner and community organizer Afhi Charania.
Charania made the issue of book bans central to her campaign, addressing bans on her website.
“Book banning doesn’t protect students. It limits them,” Charania wrote, adding:
These policies risk isolating vulnerable students, compromising educator autonomy, and prioritizing control over compassion.
Book bans are unpopular across the country. Frank Strong, a Texas-based blogger and teacher, called the elections this past weekend a “drubbing” of candidates who support such policies.
“I’ve been covering Texas school board elections for seven cycles, and as I have documented over and over again, book bans, attacks on educators and public schools, and attempts to target LGBTQ students do not fare well at the polls,” Strong wrote on his Substack page.
“Voters across Texas clearly and consistently punished the people who have been restricting students’ reading and learning,” Strong added. “They delivered a message: Texans are sick of book bans, sick of attacks on educators and librarians, sick of leaders waging culture war battles at the expense of good governance.”