It looks like the good guys generally won yesterday in low-turnout elections.

Joe Beveridge defeated AFP-supported Robyn Essex in Olathe. In Blue Valley incumbent Pam Robinson defeated private school parent Alana Roethle who is using a lot of the same rhetoric we see from AFP. Sara Goodburn defeated Mark Ellis, who cites Dave Trabert as a reliable authority on school funding. Auburn-Washburn incumbent Tom Bruno defeated Mark Leenerts, who cites the Kansas Policy Institute. Voters recognized that if a school board candidate is supported by Americans for Prosperity, supports the block grant, uses KPI talking points or sends their children to private schools, they should ask some questions.

Watch for increased efforts to move elections to the fall and make them partisan in the remainder of the legislative session. Turnout was low, but mail-in ballots could improve that. Drowning these local races in fall campaigns involving larger state and federal elections is not the answer.

Update on May 24th: That was the last school board election to be held in the spring. Last week, the bill to  move all local elections, including school board elections, passed the House over the objections of over 200 school boars and many patrons. It had already passed the Senate.