BOE election candidates 2024

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see Laura Stewart is bragging[/i] about her partisan affiliations. I can’t remember this ever happening in a school board race, which is nonpartisan, and I find it to be a real turnoff. I’m also still waiting for her to recognize MCPS’s management as an ongoing problem. Her posts about the council hearing all use the past tense when she talks about MCPS’s problems. A lot of senior leaders who McKnight hired are still there, so the bullying and cover-ups will keep happening.

Where?

It’s on her X account, the new one she created after she made her real one private (but that’s typical of a candidate who says she’s committed to transparency, right?). The first two positions she highlights are both partisan:

More about me - Current Positions:
[b]Montgomery County Women’s Democratic Club (WDC) Board (and past Prez)
Dem Party Precinct Chair
Communities United Against Hate VP
Safe Healthy Playing Fields Board

Does she not understand that this is a nonpartisan election or is she signaling that she’ll serve as a hard-core partisan? I find it off putting either way. The BOE is dysfunctional enough and partisanship rarely makes institutions stronger. She needs to do more to distinguish herself from Evans to make it worth the risk of voting for her. Change doesn’t improve things when the replacement is worse. I will vote for Evans unless Stewart gets specific on what she views as the problems and what she thinks needs to be done to fix them.

Stewart has a lot of support. She’ll easily beat Mandel in the primary and might even beat Evans. But this election is going to be nasty. Mandel will raise a lot of money, and a lot of that money will be used to attack Stewart and Evans. Mandel also gives extremists a reason to care about this election and they will try to bloody both Stewart and Evans.

Extremist reasons like not wanting males to play girls' sports?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There may be pro-Mandel folks denigrating Stewart, but I think it's more pro-Evans folks who are picking up that beat and drumming it, happy to associate Stewart's name with the left without mentioning that their own candidate. They hail from the same part of the spectrum, and, let's face it, one of them is going to win in this county -- just way too blue for it to turn out otherwise.

But Evans has the yoke of having been a multi-term, do-little incumbent, directly complicit in the morass of MCPS problems, while Stewart's been an unempowered advocate (yeah, connected, but PTA and the like, no matter what level, doesn't have a voting seat). Their focus is different, with different core constituencies or potential core constituencies.

Evans' people want her issues at the forefront, and know that there's a good chance that that performance over the past few years would mean she wouldn't win heads-up vs. Stewart in the main election. The primary winnows the field to two and it runs without party affiliation. In the currently tense, anti-incumbent climate they they hope to flip the typical political script, running to the center in the primary (by painting Stewart as the scary liberal and staying mostly silent on Evans, relying more on name recognition and their own core votes) and remaining to the left in the main (the only winning play in MoCo).

If they can push enough of the anti-incumbent MoCo middle to Mandel instead of Stewart in the primary while avoiding erosion by keeping Evans' name out of it, mission accomplished.

Mandel's folks know the general election is a hopeless cause, but they get a win just by making it past the primary to be on the big ballot, keeping her name out there longer and providing her a greater platform from which to spout to Fox & Friends.

Even if Evans is similar to Stweart it's time to give someone else a chance. These past few years were not that great.

Just to be clear, Evans is the current BOE member (incumbent). Stewart would be the someone else.

If by “someone else” you mean a MCCPTA and MCPS lifer who rubber stamped everything the BOE wanted to do.

Ah, now I see. The post was deliberately vague to try to confuse folks into thinking Stewart was the one culpable and Evans would be someone new.

Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There may be pro-Mandel folks denigrating Stewart, but I think it's more pro-Evans folks who are picking up that beat and drumming it, happy to associate Stewart's name with the left without mentioning that their own candidate. They hail from the same part of the spectrum, and, let's face it, one of them is going to win in this county -- just way too blue for it to turn out otherwise.

But Evans has the yoke of having been a multi-term, do-little incumbent, directly complicit in the morass of MCPS problems, while Stewart's been an unempowered advocate (yeah, connected, but PTA and the like, no matter what level, doesn't have a voting seat). Their focus is different, with different core constituencies or potential core constituencies.

Evans' people want her issues at the forefront, and know that there's a good chance that that performance over the past few years would mean she wouldn't win heads-up vs. Stewart in the main election. The primary winnows the field to two and it runs without party affiliation. In the currently tense, anti-incumbent climate they they hope to flip the typical political script, running to the center in the primary (by painting Stewart as the scary liberal and staying mostly silent on Evans, relying more on name recognition and their own core votes) and remaining to the left in the main (the only winning play in MoCo).

If they can push enough of the anti-incumbent MoCo middle to Mandel instead of Stewart in the primary while avoiding erosion by keeping Evans' name out of it, mission accomplished.

Mandel's folks know the general election is a hopeless cause, but they get a win just by making it past the primary to be on the big ballot, keeping her name out there longer and providing her a greater platform from which to spout to Fox & Friends.

Even if Evans is similar to Stweart it's time to give someone else a chance. These past few years were not that great.

Just to be clear, Evans is the current BOE member (incumbent). Stewart would be the someone else.

If by “someone else” you mean a MCCPTA and MCPS lifer who rubber stamped everything the BOE wanted to do.

Ah, now I see. The post was deliberately vague to try to confuse folks into thinking Stewart was the one culpable and Evans would be someone new.

Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!

Well, let's go over the issues and see what Stewart supports and doesn't support. I'll start. 1. Assigning kids to schools based on demographics - supports. 2) Allowing males to play girls' sports - supports
3) Teaching white hate - supports. 4) Forcing students to read gay / trans books against their parents wishes - supports.

Stewart sounds amazing. She's got my vote!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There may be pro-Mandel folks denigrating Stewart, but I think it's more pro-Evans folks who are picking up that beat and drumming it, happy to associate Stewart's name with the left without mentioning that their own candidate. They hail from the same part of the spectrum, and, let's face it, one of them is going to win in this county -- just way too blue for it to turn out otherwise.

But Evans has the yoke of having been a multi-term, do-little incumbent, directly complicit in the morass of MCPS problems, while Stewart's been an unempowered advocate (yeah, connected, but PTA and the like, no matter what level, doesn't have a voting seat). Their focus is different, with different core constituencies or potential core constituencies.

Evans' people want her issues at the forefront, and know that there's a good chance that that performance over the past few years would mean she wouldn't win heads-up vs. Stewart in the main election. The primary winnows the field to two and it runs without party affiliation. In the currently tense, anti-incumbent climate they they hope to flip the typical political script, running to the center in the primary (by painting Stewart as the scary liberal and staying mostly silent on Evans, relying more on name recognition and their own core votes) and remaining to the left in the main (the only winning play in MoCo).

If they can push enough of the anti-incumbent MoCo middle to Mandel instead of Stewart in the primary while avoiding erosion by keeping Evans' name out of it, mission accomplished.

Mandel's folks know the general election is a hopeless cause, but they get a win just by making it past the primary to be on the big ballot, keeping her name out there longer and providing her a greater platform from which to spout to Fox & Friends.

Even if Evans is similar to Stweart it's time to give someone else a chance. These past few years were not that great.

Just to be clear, Evans is the current BOE member (incumbent). Stewart would be the someone else.

If by “someone else” you mean a MCCPTA and MCPS lifer who rubber stamped everything the BOE wanted to do.

Ah, now I see. The post was deliberately vague to try to confuse folks into thinking Stewart was the one culpable and Evans would be someone new.

Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!

Well, let's go over the issues and see what Stewart supports and doesn't support. I'll start. 1. Assigning kids to schools based on demographics - supports. 2) Allowing males to play girls' sports - supports
3) Teaching white hate - supports. 4) Forcing students to read gay / trans books against their parents wishes - supports.

Stewart sounds amazing. She's got my vote!

How do you know all of this? I thought Laura Stewart made her twitter/X account private once she filed her paperwork to run for public office on a platform of experience and transparency. A shame, since she seems to have such a depth of knowledge and experience on relevant issues but instead of being able to see how she really felt about them in the moment, we will only get carefully crafted position statements released by her campaign in the midst of an election from here on out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There may be pro-Mandel folks denigrating Stewart, but I think it's more pro-Evans folks who are picking up that beat and drumming it, happy to associate Stewart's name with the left without mentioning that their own candidate. They hail from the same part of the spectrum, and, let's face it, one of them is going to win in this county -- just way too blue for it to turn out otherwise.

But Evans has the yoke of having been a multi-term, do-little incumbent, directly complicit in the morass of MCPS problems, while Stewart's been an unempowered advocate (yeah, connected, but PTA and the like, no matter what level, doesn't have a voting seat). Their focus is different, with different core constituencies or potential core constituencies.

Evans' people want her issues at the forefront, and know that there's a good chance that that performance over the past few years would mean she wouldn't win heads-up vs. Stewart in the main election. The primary winnows the field to two and it runs without party affiliation. In the currently tense, anti-incumbent climate they they hope to flip the typical political script, running to the center in the primary (by painting Stewart as the scary liberal and staying mostly silent on Evans, relying more on name recognition and their own core votes) and remaining to the left in the main (the only winning play in MoCo).

If they can push enough of the anti-incumbent MoCo middle to Mandel instead of Stewart in the primary while avoiding erosion by keeping Evans' name out of it, mission accomplished.

Mandel's folks know the general election is a hopeless cause, but they get a win just by making it past the primary to be on the big ballot, keeping her name out there longer and providing her a greater platform from which to spout to Fox & Friends.

Even if Evans is similar to Stweart it's time to give someone else a chance. These past few years were not that great.

Just to be clear, Evans is the current BOE member (incumbent). Stewart would be the someone else.

If by “someone else” you mean a MCCPTA and MCPS lifer who rubber stamped everything the BOE wanted to do.

Ah, now I see. The post was deliberately vague to try to confuse folks into thinking Stewart was the one culpable and Evans would be someone new.

Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!

Well, let's go over the issues and see what Stewart supports and doesn't support. I'll start. 1. Assigning kids to schools based on demographics - supports. 2) Allowing males to play girls' sports - supports
3) Teaching white hate - supports. 4) Forcing students to read gay / trans books against their parents wishes - supports.

Stewart sounds amazing. She's got my vote!

How do you know all of this? I thought Laura Stewart made her twitter/X account private once she filed her paperwork to run for public office on a platform of experience and transparency. A shame, since she seems to have such a depth of knowledge and experience on relevant issues but instead of being able to see how she really felt about them in the moment, we will only get carefully crafted position statements released by her campaign in the midst of an election from here on out.

If only there were other sources of information about candidates, in addition to a pre-candidacy personal Twitter account!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There may be pro-Mandel folks denigrating Stewart, but I think it's more pro-Evans folks who are picking up that beat and drumming it, happy to associate Stewart's name with the left without mentioning that their own candidate. They hail from the same part of the spectrum, and, let's face it, one of them is going to win in this county -- just way too blue for it to turn out otherwise.

But Evans has the yoke of having been a multi-term, do-little incumbent, directly complicit in the morass of MCPS problems, while Stewart's been an unempowered advocate (yeah, connected, but PTA and the like, no matter what level, doesn't have a voting seat). Their focus is different, with different core constituencies or potential core constituencies.

Evans' people want her issues at the forefront, and know that there's a good chance that that performance over the past few years would mean she wouldn't win heads-up vs. Stewart in the main election. The primary winnows the field to two and it runs without party affiliation. In the currently tense, anti-incumbent climate they they hope to flip the typical political script, running to the center in the primary (by painting Stewart as the scary liberal and staying mostly silent on Evans, relying more on name recognition and their own core votes) and remaining to the left in the main (the only winning play in MoCo).

If they can push enough of the anti-incumbent MoCo middle to Mandel instead of Stewart in the primary while avoiding erosion by keeping Evans' name out of it, mission accomplished.

Mandel's folks know the general election is a hopeless cause, but they get a win just by making it past the primary to be on the big ballot, keeping her name out there longer and providing her a greater platform from which to spout to Fox & Friends.

Even if Evans is similar to Stweart it's time to give someone else a chance. These past few years were not that great.

Just to be clear, Evans is the current BOE member (incumbent). Stewart would be the someone else.

If by “someone else” you mean a MCCPTA and MCPS lifer who rubber stamped everything the BOE wanted to do.

Ah, now I see. The post was deliberately vague to try to confuse folks into thinking Stewart was the one culpable and Evans would be someone new.

Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!

Well, let's go over the issues and see what Stewart supports and doesn't support. I'll start. 1. Assigning kids to schools based on demographics - supports. 2) Allowing males to play girls' sports - supports
3) Teaching white hate - supports. 4) Forcing students to read gay / trans books against their parents wishes - supports.

Stewart sounds amazing. She's got my vote!

How do you know all of this? I thought Laura Stewart made her twitter/X account private once she filed her paperwork to run for public office on a platform of experience and transparency. A shame, since she seems to have such a depth of knowledge and experience on relevant issues but instead of being able to see how she really felt about them in the moment, we will only get carefully crafted position statements released by her campaign in the midst of an election from here on out.

If only there were other sources of information about candidates, in addition to a pre-candidacy personal Twitter account!

Exactly! What kind of transparency do people expect? Access to her easy to view, formerly public, real-time impressions of news and events as they happened? That’s crazy. Go dig through BOE testimony records if you want a glimpse of that. Give me the well manicured campaign statements to judge how Stewart really feels about issues.

[Anonymous]

Considering the people who are talking smack about her shutting down her private x.com account are known local x.com trolls and bullies, I think she probably made the right call.

Smallballs watchdog, the whiner dude, stone cold loser, and dirtyslate golf pro have been saving screenshots of her accounts for years anyway, they don't need access now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Considering the people who are talking smack about her shutting down her private x.com account are known local x.com trolls and bullies, I think she probably made the right call.

Smallballs watchdog, the whiner dude, stone cold loser, and dirtyslate golf pro have been saving screenshots of her accounts for years anyway, they don't need access now.

Yep.

[Anonymous]

Oh look, it's the Bethany Mandel supporters going after Laura Stewart on DCUM (anonymously) just like they're doing on Twitter (semi-anonymously).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh look, it's the Bethany Mandel supporters going after Laura Stewart on DCUM (anonymously) just like they're doing on Twitter (semi-anonymously).

This Laura Stewart/Bethany Mandel race between ultra partisans on the left and right is going to be exhausting. It’s troubling that the BOE race is going to be so partisan. For all of her faults, at least Shebra Evans seems to stick to the issues that are relevant to the BOE and more middle of the road on issues that aren’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh look, it's the Bethany Mandel supporters going after Laura Stewart on DCUM (anonymously) just like they're doing on Twitter (semi-anonymously).

This Laura Stewart/Bethany Mandel race between ultra partisans on the left and right is going to be exhausting. It’s troubling that the BOE race is going to be so partisan. For all of her faults, at least Shebra Evans seems to stick to the issues that are relevant to the BOE and more middle of the road on issues that aren’t.

What issues does Shebra stick to? What does Shebra believe in? I've been waiting years to find out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh look, it's the Bethany Mandel supporters going after Laura Stewart on DCUM (anonymously) just like they're doing on Twitter (semi-anonymously).

This Laura Stewart/Bethany Mandel race between ultra partisans on the left and right is going to be exhausting. It’s troubling that the BOE race is going to be so partisan. For all of her faults, at least Shebra Evans seems to stick to the issues that are relevant to the BOE and more middle of the road on issues that aren’t.

What issues does Shebra stick to? What does Shebra believe in? I've been waiting years to find out.

You can watch the years of BOE meetings that Shebra has been a part of to find out. Unlike the other 2 ideologues in the race, she doesn’t take to twitter to comment on everything going on in the country, so you won’t be able to find out that way.

Although I guess you could say the same about Laura Stewart, who made her formerly public twitter page private once she decided to run for office. I wonder what historical posts she was so worried about that made her take down the whole page and keep it out of view.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh look, it's the Bethany Mandel supporters going after Laura Stewart on DCUM (anonymously) just like they're doing on Twitter (semi-anonymously).

This Laura Stewart/Bethany Mandel race between ultra partisans on the left and right is going to be exhausting. It’s troubling that the BOE race is going to be so partisan. For all of her faults, at least Shebra Evans seems to stick to the issues that are relevant to the BOE and more middle of the road on issues that aren’t.

Um...riiiiighhht. On cue, here are the Evans folks picking up the Mandel folks' drum beat about Stewart, hoping to keep the latter out of the top 2 in the primary. Evans has been a no-oversight/no challenge rubber stamp for just about everything MCPS has put in front of her, especially those left-partisan issues.

Among a right-partisan candidate and two left-partisan candidates in the current environment, give me the one on the left, not wanting to tear things down, who actually analyzes data, shares that with the community and gives public testimony in ways that ask MCPS relevant questions/highlight relevant issues (mostly without answer, of course, as she hasn't been on the board to force a reply).

That would be Stewart, not Evans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh look, it's the Bethany Mandel supporters going after Laura Stewart on DCUM (anonymously) just like they're doing on Twitter (semi-anonymously).

This Laura Stewart/Bethany Mandel race between ultra partisans on the left and right is going to be exhausting. It’s troubling that the BOE race is going to be so partisan. For all of her faults, at least Shebra Evans seems to stick to the issues that are relevant to the BOE and more middle of the road on issues that aren’t.

Um...riiiiighhht. On cue, here are the Evans folks picking up the Mandel folks' drum beat about Stewart, hoping to keep the latter out of the top 2 in the primary. Evans has been a no-oversight/no challenge rubber stamp for just about everything MCPS has put in front of her, especially those left-partisan issues.

Among a right-partisan candidate and two left-partisan candidates in the current environment, give me the one on the left, not wanting to tear things down, who actually analyzes data, shares that with the community and gives public testimony in ways that ask MCPS relevant questions/highlight relevant issues (mostly without answer, of course, as she hasn't been on the board to force a reply).

That would be Stewart, not Evans.

+1 Go to Laura Stewart’s campaign website to learn about her campaign priorities/slogan of ACT: Accountability, Collaboration and Transparency*

*except when it comes to Transparency about her twitter page, which was open to the public until she decided to run for office and no longer wanted to be held Accountable for the views she expressed there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh look, it's the Bethany Mandel supporters going after Laura Stewart on DCUM (anonymously) just like they're doing on Twitter (semi-anonymously).

This Laura Stewart/Bethany Mandel race between ultra partisans on the left and right is going to be exhausting. It’s troubling that the BOE race is going to be so partisan. For all of her faults, at least Shebra Evans seems to stick to the issues that are relevant to the BOE and more middle of the road on issues that aren’t.

What issues does Shebra stick to? What does Shebra believe in? I've been waiting years to find out.

You can watch the years of BOE meetings that Shebra has been a part of to find out. Unlike the other 2 ideologues in the race, she doesn’t take to twitter to comment on everything going on in the country, so you won’t be able to find out that way.

Although I guess you could say the same about Laura Stewart, who made her formerly public twitter page private once she decided to run for office. I wonder what historical posts she was so worried about that made her take down the whole page and keep it out of view.

Shebra doesn’t share any concerns or priorities in meetings. She just congratulates MCPS staff on the amazing job they’re doing and what a wonderful school system we have.