In what was ostensibly a nonpartisan race, all three incumbent candidates for Mansfield school board — all of whom were recommended by the Republican activist organization True Texas Project — fell to challengers in the May 3 elections, perhaps indicating a shift in voter sentiment.

Jason Thomas defeated Craig Tipping for the Place 3 board seat, Ana-Alicia Horn defeated board president Keziah Valdes Farrar in Place 4 and Jesse Cannon II won the Place 5 seat over Bianca Benavides Anderson.

Tipping and Anderson had served on the Mansfield school board since 2022, and Farrar had served since 2021. She assumed the board presidency in 2024.

In addition to the recommendations from the True Texas Project, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as an anti-government organization, Tipping, Farrar and Anderson received support from the Keep Tarrant Red PAC, a Republican political action committee. In the 2022 election, Patriot Mobile Action, a conservative Christian political action committee, endorsed all three candidates.

“The community made it abundantly clear they don’t want politics in schools,” Place 5 winner Jesse Cannon said. He insisted it wasn’t a referendum on conservative principles as much as it was a response to partisanship.

In his conversations with Mansfield residents, Cannon said, he spoke to Republican and Democratic voters who were fed up with the way current board members had politicized school issues. He believes the majority of people just want to get back to focusing on teachers and students.

“Making the main thing the main thing again,” said Cannon, who is the director of visual and performing arts for the Fort Worth school district.

Tipping, Farrar and Anderson for comment did not respond to requests for comment.

What did the ousted incumbents say and do?

During their tenures, all three incumbents helped enact a policy that gives the school board final say on adding new books to campus libraries. Under that policy, there are limitations on the amounts and types of sensitive content in texts on elementary, intermediate, middle and high school shelves.

However, since the policy went into effect in 2023, the school board has not denied a book request, according to Mansfield school district records.

Additionally, all three ousted board members voiced opposition when it came to the other hot-button conservative topic having to do with schools: the education savings account bill, or “voucher bill,” which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law on May 3.

That bill, which provides public money to families for private school tuition and home school costs, worries some, who fear it will further erode public school funding. Texas ranks near the bottom 10 states nationally when it comes to per-pupil public education funding.

“Parents already have a choice in their children’s education, and if they decide to pursue private schooling, I fully support that,” Farrar said on her campaign website. “However, I do not support using taxpayer dollars to fund those choices. Public education is the backbone of our state, and its success is essential to the success of our communities.”

Nevertheless, Clayton Waters, director of the MISD Future PAC, which endorsed all three winning candidates, said the backlash we saw on May 3 had been brewing since 2022 when, he said, Patriot Mobile Action brought partisanship into the Mansfield political sphere with its candidate endorsements.

“A lot of people who consider themselves Republicans rejected the divisive rhetoric,” Waters said, referring to the most recent election results.

The Patriot Mobile Action website talks about the “sinister worldview behind the social justice movement” and references “corrupt” and “Marxist” organizations out to “indoctrinate” K-12 students.

Meanwhile, the True Texas Project, a self-described Christian Nationalist organization that began as the NE Tarrant Tea Party, has been accused of promoting hate speech. The group’s 15th anniversary celebration last summer at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden included a breakout session titled “Multiculturalism and the War on White America.”

The Fort Worth Botanic Garden initially canceled the True Texas Project’s reservation following a Texas Tribune report highlighting the anniversary event’s agenda. The city of Fort Worth forced the venue to reverse that decision, citing free speech.

The Keep Tarrant Red PAC says on its website that “deep-pocketed, liberal Democrats from California and New York are targeting Tarrant County.”

It was against this backdrop that Ana-Alicia Horn, the Mansfield school board Place 4 winner, said she decided to use an apolitical campaign strategy while running for office for the first time.

“That was very much by design,” said Horn.

While Horn didn’t label her opponent an extremist, she said Farrar and other board members who aligned themselves with organizations like Patriot Mobile Action and the True Texas Project were viewed by many in the Mansfield community as guilty by association.

Beyond that, Horn said former school board members focused too much on culture war issues, like the content of library books and student use of gender pronouns, while ignoring the “data-backed problems” in the Mansfield school district.

Last June, the Mansfield board approved a policy requiring educators to notify parents when a student wants to use different pronouns or the restroom for the gender other than the one listed on their birth certificate.

Horn also said Farrar made a strategic error by endorsing state Rep. David Cook, one of the Texas legislators who supported the school voucher bill. According to Horn, that was a hard pill to swallow for Mansfield voters, left and right, who wanted more funding for public education.

“People on both sides rallied around that issue,” said Horn. “My opponent came out pretty late against vouchers.”

After talking to former Mansfield board members from across the political spectrum, Horn said she realized it was possible to run a nonpartisan campaign and win as long as she focused on what she believed mattered most to voters: student outcomes.

“People had done it for decades,” Horn said. “I don’t have to consult a Republican Party agenda or a Democratic Party agenda when it comes to helping a third grader meet grade-level benchmarks.”