The book ban backlash has arrived just in time to mobilize voters

There’s a fight brewing in Temecula, Calif., with effects that could ripple well beyond the town’s borders. 

At the center are three ultraconservative school board members, the firing of a popular superintendent, a controversial book ban and a looming recall campaign launched by outraged parents. Meanwhile, political junkies nationwide are watching closely to see who will come out ahead, with possible clues to the 2024 elections in store.

It all started last November when three new members were elected to the Temecula Valley Unified School District board. The nonpartisan election was typically sleepy and turnout was low. But immediately after they took office, the new board members started doing alarming things. They passed a resolution against critical race theory, or CRT, a subject not taught in the district’s schools. They spent five figures to hire a consultant to lecture teachers against CRT. They fired a popular school superintendent — causing parents to be up in arms.

The ultimate overreach happened when they banned a history textbook that included LGBTQ rights leader Harvey Milk, a California icon. That was followed by an investigation by the state Department of Education and the recall effort that is gathering steam.

And in a very boss move, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that the state would buy the banned history book for Temecula students, and send the school board the bill.  

This is all happening, of course, while the media is lighting up with stories about Moms for Liberty, the national, politically powerful pro-censorship group. Not long ago, it looked like politicians hitching their wagons to this group were making a solid bet. A half-dozen presidential hopefuls attended the Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia this summer.

Now the bet those Republican politicians are making seems less sure. 

The campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), who is credited with inspiring a wave of book bans, is tanking. An April poll by Fox News — Fox News! — found a whopping 77 percent of parents are not happy about book banning in local schools. In this year’s school board elections in Illinois and Wisconsin, hard-core culture war candidates lost. And in the Albany, New York area, no school board candidates ran on the “parents’ rights” platform this year — after three dozen of them lost on that platform last year.

Meanwhile, Illinois just passed a statewide ban on book bans, and New Jersey could be next.

All of this risks making the Republican focus on book bans and censorship — with its especially persistent emphasis on LGBTQ identity and sexuality — look increasingly out of touch. And you know what? We could have told them.

The majority of Americans — not just those polled by Fox News — have been against book bans for years. Attitudes toward LGBTQ relationships have evolved dramatically; polls show a complete reversal on the issue of same-sex marriage, from nearly 70 percent opposed in 1996 to more than 70 percent in support today.

To put it another way, if the only people voting in 2024 were going to be Republican primary voters, being pro-censorship might be a winner.  But they won’t be. And for everybody else, other topics are top of mind, including a perennial leader — the economy — and the new and very serious issue of threats to democracy.  

And that brings us back to Temecula. The local recall effort is getting national headlines because it looks so much like major foreshadowing of how censorship fever will play out in the next elections, and who will benefit more: Republicans who support censorship or Democrats and others who don’t.

Right now, it looks increasingly like the rush to embrace book bans will backfire on the MAGA crowd. And that’s exactly how it should be.

Svante Myrick is the president of People For the American Way.