Moms for Liberty candidates won less elections in 2023, but is winning the group’s goal?

Moms for Liberty, a parental rights organization founded in 2021, is known for its federal super PAC and conservative influence on public education. But a new report found its ability to get candidates elected may be overstated.

The group made headlines for leading charges to end mask mandates, ban library books, and when the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled it “extremist” and “anti-government.” In 2022, its members dominated school board discussions across the country.

However, in 2023, fewer than one-third of school board candidates who earned the group’s endorsement won their election, according to a Brookings report.

M4L has yet to release a list of its endorsed candidates this year but the decreased win rate in 2023 could foreshadow a shift for the group to focus more on policy issues than school board elections in 2024.

Win rates for endorsed school board candidates dropped in 2023

A declining share of M4L-endorsed candidates won electoral races last year. Brookings found that in 2023, 33% of M4L candidates were elected in comparison to 47% in the 2022 election cycle.

Last year, the group’s candidates faced losses across the board in cities, towns, and rural areas. The largest change was observed in the suburbs, where the report found the win rate dropped from 54% to 34%.

Maurice Cunningham, a retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and author of “Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization,” attributed some of the voter drop-off to M4L’s association with library book bans and scandals.

“Their brand has become toxic,” Cunningham said. “I think there's awareness and there has been organized efforts in many places to contend against them.”

In 2023, the group endorsed 74 candidates in politically liberal counties, 26 in moderate counties, and 64 in conservative counties. M4L candidates fared best in moderate and conservative counties. Last year, win rates hovered around 42% in red and purple communities and stood at 22% in blue areas, according to the report.

M4L co-founder Tiffany Justice said she is proud of the organization’s local chapters for encouraging civic engagement and supporting candidates, 83% of whom had not run for office before.

“We don’t go and pick counties where we are going to endorse to get a win rate,” Justice said in an interview with USA TODAY. “We want to be actively vetting and endorsing candidates.”

However, M4L has its own numbers. The organization’s website showcases a win report claiming 90 of 202 endorsed candidates, or 45%, were elected in 2023. Brookings researcher Jon Valent says that M4L’s numbers do not line up.

Justice said, no matter the win rate, she is proud of the impact M4L has made since it began endorsing candidates in 2022.

“Whether it is 43% or 35% or 10%, as far as I’m concerned, that’s one more person that has been elected to a school board that is going to do the will of the constituents – of the parents – and that’s a win,” Justice said.

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Report says Moms for Liberty lacks transparency

By Valent’s and other researchers’ count, M4L officially endorsed only 166 candidates last year. They say of those, 54 won.

“Moms for Liberty’s endorsement record remains difficult to study because of a lack of organizational transparency,” the report reads. “We don’t know how M4L came to that number of 202 endorsed candidates, nor the 90 wins that it claims among that group."

Valent said this is not the first time the group’s numbers have not matched those of independent researchers. Valent said his team tried contacting the organization several times over months to question their ideology and did not receive a response.

Justice said she was unaware that Brookings researchers attempted to contact M4L and suggested maybe they had the wrong email address due to recent staffing changes.

Valent used the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to identify what names appeared on the M4L website’s list of endorsed candidates ahead of the November 2023 elections as shown below.

That list is no longer on the M4L website. In its place is the 2023 win report.

Justice said M4L recently switched its website to a new hosting platform and that not all pages were transferred.

“We would never take out elections or anything,” she said. “That's just not what we do.”

Justice told USA TODAY the candidate endorsement list on the M4L website last year was not exhaustive and that an internal spreadsheet shows the organization's win rate last year was 43%, contradicting both the Brookings report and M4L 2023 win report.

M4L has yet to update their candidate endorsement page for 2024.

More: 'Fight this battle piece by piece': Concerned moms are shaping culture wars and 2024 race

Winning elections isn’t Moms for Liberty’s only goal

Only three of six strategies M4L shares on its website for “how it fights” are related to ensuring like-minded politicians are elected. The remaining half are dedicated to a more intangible battle involving spreading concern about government overreach and promoting liberty.

Cunningham said he thinks M4L used to be focused on winning elections but has since switched gears to sowing distrust in public education in general. He referenced a 2022 speech by conservative strategist Christopher Rufo in which he said, “To get universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public-school distrust.”

“They’re not great at winning but they’re great at creating chaos,” Cunningham said. “It’s a lot easier to break stuff than it is to build stuff and they can still have a role in breaking stuff.”

Justice says M4L movement promotes parental choice at all levels of government. While every parent might not want to run for office, she believes they should be empowered to speak out on issues and practices they're against.

"One person raises a torch of liberty. They attract other people toward them," Justice said. "Somebody stands up and says, 'Hey, you know what, this isn't okay with me.'"

Brooking's Valent thinks M4L’s 103,000 members across 278 chapters in 45 states have been successful at spreading their message.

“An organization that speaks very harshly about a lot of public schools and the way public schools are governed is important in that context," Valent said. "Because they have a voice that is potentially shaping people’s opinions.”

Rachel Barber is a 2024 election fellow at USA TODAY, focusing on politics and education. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, as @rachelbarber_

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Moms for Liberty candidates lost in 2023, but it's focused on distrust