Hatch Act

The Douglas County Board of Education election, it seems, still isn’t over. Early this week, Douglas County informed the Douglas County School District that it would not be able to certify the election in time to swear in the new slate of charter school-friendly, Republican-backed, “reform” candidates for the next board meeting.

In what some might see as a revealing small chapter of contemporary U.S. politics, an ugly school board election in Douglas County has seen the local Republican Party use hard-line ideological arguments to promote preferred “freedom-loving” Republican candidates over teachers’ union-endorsed “liberal” Republican candidates. In a race that sees Republicans eating Republicans, the point seems to be less about the candidates than it is about the kind of school system a right-wing GOP would like to install in Douglas County.