Geoff Diehl takes a page from Glenn Youngkin’s playbook on education

GOP governor hopeful Geoff Diehl announced an initiative this week that may have given some deja vu: “Parents for Diehl,” a move seemingly straight out of Virginia Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s playbook.

“The Youngkin election highlighted the fact that parents were pretty engaged in a big, big way,” Diehl, a former state representative, told the Herald, acknowledging the similar stratagem. “There’s parents’ groups out there that don’t feel like they’re being represented well, on either school boards or by state or local officials when it comes to their right to have to make their own healthcare decisions for them or their kids.”

Republican businessman Youngkin edged out former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe earlier this month in Virginia after making education a key component of his platform and attacking McAuliffe over the former guv’s assertion that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Trump-endorsed Diehl called local choice over school vaccine and mask mandates and curriculum decisions over sex education and critical race theory “non-partisan” issues, and is simply advocating for choice, he said. He added that he is vaccinated against COVID-19 himself.

Ashleigh MacKinnon, a Marshfield volunteer with Parents for Diehl, said she didn’t get involved in politics at any level until the pandemic struck. Shortly thereafter, she ran for Marshfield School Committee.

“COVID really made me take a wide-eyed approach to who gets to make the decisions, what decisions are being made, and what say parents have,” she said. “Parents, unfortunately, seem to have very little say in a lot that happens within the school districts and with these vaccine mandates.”

Although MassGOP Chairman Jim Lyons called the education message “a winning strategy,” others aren’t so sure. Pat Griffin, a longtime GOP consultant and current CEO of public affairs firm Merrimack, Potomac and Charles, said that McAuliffe’s approach to education made him look “elitist, out-of-touch and tone-deaf,” but “a maskless, unvaccinated, irresponsible group of parents who shout, scream and threaten the school board members” will not win in the Bay State, he said.

“That’s the constituency Geoff Diehl is talking about,” Griffin said.

In Virginia, McAuliffe’s comments, the COVID pandemic and curriculum debates, were already hot-button issues, but a Virginia school scandal involving a student sexual assault really made it boil over, said Chris Braunlich, president of the conservative Virginia think tank Thomas Jefferson Institute, who also served for several years on local and state school boards.

“(The incident) underscored all the angst that was taking place, I think, in the hearts of parents, because of COVID, because of their children, because suddenly, the future seemed uncertain for an awful lot of people,” he said. “They didn’t get the sense that the schools were trying to help make it certain.”

He added that a local scandal like that in Massachusetts could make schools a central issue in the governor’s race.

Democrats will likely still capitalize on education in the 2022 race, but in a different way. Jonathan Cohn, elections committee chair of Progressive Massachusetts, thinks school-related issues like broadband access, improved HVAC systems and equitable funding will be a rallying cry for Democrats over issues like mask mandates.

“I expect candidates would speak to (this) now for the rest of this academic year,” he said, “but as candidates are thinking about what the 2022-2023 school year looks like and beyond, let’s hope that we’re largely beyond the pandemic.”