Pennsylvania conservatives are about to test the voltage of education politics. 

School board elections are set to occur across the country on Tuesday. But few of these once-quiet contests have become as vicious, sophisticated, expensive and injected with dueling endorsements from political committees and national organizations quite like campaigns in the Keystone State.

A venture capitalist put up hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend conservative control of his hometown Philadelphia-area board and support other school campaigns. A Republican political committee is supporting candidates in Cumberland County, a red-leaning area west of Harrisburg where Democrats made gains during recent gubernatorial and presidential elections.

Local chapters of Moms for Liberty, a national group that’s grown into the biggest name in Republican school politics, and the conservative 1776 Project PAC have endorsed candidates in counties throughout the state. Progressive organizations, teacher unions and groups linked to federal Democratic lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are fighting back through races in State College and big-city suburbs.

All that action has turned low-level school board campaigns in a swing state President Joe Biden and his Republican challenger likely need to win next year into a laboratory for the vitality of education-drenched politics.

“For children in Pennsylvania, this is the most high-stakes election of their entire lives,” said Susan Spicka, the executive director of the Education Voters of Pennsylvania nonpartisan group. “Because once you get five people on a school board who are going to operate as a bloc, they can do pretty much anything they want.”

Conservatives galvanized by Covid-shuttered schools have made book restrictions and LGBTQ student expression into a live wire in this election. A recent Brookings Institution analysis concluded Pennsylvania was one of Moms for Liberty’s biggest strongholds outside of Florida and New York, following the group’s raucous summertime rally with GOP presidential candidates in Philadelphia.

There are problems beyond culture wars, too: This year, a state judge underscored a long-running crisis by declaring Pennsylvania’s school funding system unconstitutional.

Now the resources needed to compete in these school board races look a lot like bigger-profile campaigns.

“You need mailers, you need signs, you need training for poll workers, you need Facebook ads, you need websites built — it’s all of that stuff,” said Paul Martino, a venture capitalist who formed a political committee to bankroll school board candidates dedicated to school reopening in 2021.

“2021 was the year it all got changed, and this is the world we’re now in,” said Martino, who this year has used his committees to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in board races throughout the state, but mostly a conservative slate running in a Bucks County district where his wife is also a candidate. “My guess is that we’re going to see a turnout of 45 percent, in an off-year election. Like, nobody sees that.”

Some operatives say Pennsylvania’s school board elections are also testing a new kind of “upballot” momentum, where motivated voters first look to local boards before directing their attention to critical municipal, judiciary and legislative seats higher on the ballot.

“We’ll learn a lot from Pennsylvania,” said Hannah Riddle, the director of candidate services for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is backing local candidates throughout the state, plus Ohio and Virginia, on the Nov. 7 ballot. “We’ll learn a lot not just on what to expect in school board races next year, but what to expect up and down the ticket as well.”

This dynamic is playing out in Virginia’s Loudoun County, where pandemic-era fights over critical race theory and transgender students upended the once-mundane politics of school governance near Washington D.C. Voters are now in line to reshape that school board with help from competing Democratic and Republican party endorsements.

In Ohio, the 1776 Project PAC has endorsed 16 candidates running for office in suburban communities near Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus while supporting conservatives in Kansas and Virginia. Moms for Liberty chapters are also endorsing in Iowa, Ohio, New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere on Nov. 7.

Roughly 30,000 board seats are estimated to be up for election in 2023, including races earlier this year that saw mixed results for conservative candidates in Wisconsin, Illinois and other states.

Yet board elections from the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs to smaller central Pennsylvania communities will further test the potency of conservative school politics ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Look to Bucks County, one of the swingiest counties in one of America’s swingiest states, for ample examples.

Conservative board members won a 6-3 majority in the Central Bucks School District outside Philadelphia in 2021. Passionate fights over library book restrictions, curriculum and student gender identity have not seemed to stop at the state’s third-largest school system since.

Following searing public debates, the Central Bucks board in July 2022 adopted a library book policy that limited the presence of “sexualized content” and allowed any district resident to formally challenge library materials “on the basis of appropriateness.”

Board members also began revising prohibitions on school-based political organizing that fall in a way that now bars district employees from showing flags, banners, posters, signs, stickers or similar materials that advocate “any partisan, political, or social policy issue” on school property or during district activities. That includes a classroom ban on Pride flags.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania pressed Biden administration authorities last October to investigate the school district’s “hostile environment” and “overtly discriminatory actions” against LGBTQ students. The Education Department’s civil rights division soon launched an investigation, and the ACLU this year filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Central Bucks teacher who was allegedly disciplined for providing information to the department.

Now Pride flags and book disputes are key flashpoints in the Central Bucks race.

The Stop Bucks Extremism committee led by Republican operative Bob Salera has sent thousands of fliers to voters that reprinted explicit images from titles pulled from school shelves and described a “Neighbors United” slate of five liberal school board candidates as “fighting to keep these books in our middle school and high school libraries.” 

Martino told POLITICO he gave Salera’s organization “a seed check” at its launch, in addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars he contributed to his own committees this year. That includes Bucks Families For Leadership, which supports five conservative “Central Bucks Forward” candidates.

Bucks Families For Leadership has in turn directed tens of thousands of dollars in spending to consulting and canvassing work from Republican operatives, campaign filings reviewed by POLITICO show, including Axiom Strategies and the Breakwall Group founded by former National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Chris Pack.

Pennsylvania’s largest state teachers union has meanwhile given nearly $30,000 to the Neighbors United slate, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer tally that concluded the Central Bucks race has garnered more than $600,000 in political spending through Oct. 23 — with Democrats scraping together the largest share.

“This campaign is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” said Karen Smith, an incumbent Central Bucks board member and former Republican now running with the Neighbors United slate.

“I have 50 volunteers who are doing everything from door knocking, to making phone calls, to making signs,” she said in an interview. “The amount of money that’s being spent on this race, the amount of volunteerism is like nothing we’ve ever seen here before. But then the negativity, the vitriol, the intensity, and the lying is like nothing I’ve ever seen or could have imagined.”

Stephen Mass, Smith’s Republican opponent, likened the election’s scrutiny and competition to a “double-edged sword.”

“The bad part is we get riled up a little bit too much,” Mass told POLITICO. “I don’t know why it’s gotten that vicious. The good part is people are paying attention. They should be. It’s unfortunate that it’s come with a lot of real negativity and divisiveness.”

Similar issues have torn at other districts in Bucks County, where more than a dozen districts have Nov. 7 elections scheduled. But at least one local Republican operative worries some board candidates are running their races in an overly partisan way.

“Some people who don’t know what they’re doing and taking advice from longtime political operatives — not only are they not necessarily getting the best advice, but they’re spending a hell of a lot of money potentially for it,” said Lois Kaneshiki, a Republican consultant who founded the Take Back Our Schools PAC, once served as Moms For Liberty’s state coordinator in Pennsylvania, and is backing conservative Cumberland County candidates.

“I don’t believe they should be run like a state house or a state senate campaign,” Kaneshiki said of school races. “If you run them too partisan, you’re going to lose. You’ve got to run them differently, and the left understands this. They are very good at it, and I would say we are not.”

Amy Lindgren

If you’ve been eying a corporate leadership position or if you’re in an executive role now, you know how complex the work can be. There’s a reason people at this level gobble up relevant books and podcasts: Smart leaders know they need input from a variety of sources to stay on track, both for themselves and for their organizations.

If you’re planning your next read, one of these books might be just what you’re looking for.

Head & Heart: The art of modern leadership, by Kirstin Ferguson, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2023, $22.95. As an executive herself, and a former Air Force officer (in her native Australia), Ferguson describes modern leadership as a balance between head and heart. Accordingly, she provides four key attributes of the modern leader for each category. Then she further redefines leadership by assigning the principles to anyone, at any level who acts as a leader. As she explains, leadership is a series of moments, not a position of authority.

While Ferguson’s argument is compelling, U.S. readers might also appreciate the fresh perspective offered by an author whose examples range from the Pacific Rim where she is based, all the way to North America.

The Unlocked Leader, by Hortense Le Gentil, with Caroline Lambert, Wiley, 2024, $30. Can you finish this sentence? “One in five CEOs…” Gold stars (and a look of surprise) if you guessed “…now seek therapy.” By supplying this data in the first paragraph, Le Gentil sets the tone for what follows. Hers is a refreshing and frequently surprising look at issues that can limit the success of leaders — and everyone else, for that matter. Included in that list are what she calls mindsets that turn into “mindtraps,” as well as trauma, and even inherited trauma.

Le Gentil builds the case for these obstacles and their impact, then switches gears to shifting mindsets (“mindshifting”) and redefining oneself in terms of an empowered approach to leadership (“mindbuilding”). This is a quick read that’s likely to stay with you.

All Pride, No Ego: A queer executive’s journey to living and leading authentically, by Jim Fielding, Wiley, 2023, $28. As a baby boomer who knew that he was gay since he was six, Fielding describes always feeling excluded, different and “less than” his peers. When he could no longer tolerate living a double life, Fielding sought roles where he could be himself, culminating in top positions at places like Dreamworks and Disney Stores Worldwide.

In All Pride, Fielding demonstrates why the personal can’t be separated from the professional, and how the professional is enhanced and even directed by the personal. As he says, “There are not a lot stories or books about Queer Leadership.” He also notes that his “leadership style and philosophy are unique and represent an important perspective and voice that is lacking in this genre.” Agreed. This book provides that voice while also presenting leadership counsel that can be appreciated at any level.

To the Top: How women in corporate leadership are rewriting the rules for success, by Jenna C. Fisher, Wiley, 2023, $28. By now there have been dozens, perhaps hundreds of leadership books written by and for women, and each no doubt contains at least a handful of valuable insights. This book joins the genre, but with a most welcome modern twist. In To the Top, Fisher embraces multiple aspects of today’s workplace, including remote and hybrid schedules, and presents strategies to help women leverage the same in their climb to the top.

Fisher’s advice spans topics ranging from pay raises to finding board roles, always from the perspective of rewriting the rules that have shut women out in the past. For women in the corporate world, this book is a good refresher on some standard advice but also a refreshing take on standard practices that are beginning to crumble.

Dream Big and Win: Translating passion into purpose and creating a billion-dollar business, by Liz Elting, Wiley, 2024, $28. Last but not least in this roundup of leadership books for executives: A title about creating your own executive role. It’s not exactly the fast track, but the rewards can be out-sized. As the co-founder of a translation company that generated $1.16 billion in revenues last year (yes, that was a “B”), Elting has secured No. 71 on Forbes’ 2023 list of Self-Made Women. It hasn’t been all roses and honey, however — as witnessed by the fact that Elting had to sell her share of TransPerfect after a bitter lawsuit with her ex-partner. This is a fast and fun read about building, leading, losing and recouping, all within your own executive suite.

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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

Richard Adam “Dick” Bielski, a Baltimore Colts place-kicker who later became a team coach, died of cancer Oct. 15 at his Ruxton home. He was 91.

“He grew up in East Baltimore during the 1940s, a chunky Polish kid who used to bound down the marble steps of his family’s home on Madeira Street and race the half-block to Patterson Park to play pickup football games until dark,” The Sun wrote about him in 2014. “If I was there alone, I’d take the ball, kick and chase after it,” Mr. Bielski told the paper.

He was the son of Adam Bielski, a stevedore, and Stella Kuchtaik, a homemaker.

Mr. Bielski starred at was then called Patterson Park High School and went on to the University of Maryland. He was a first-round draft pick in the NFL.

“Irv Biasi [Patterson Park’s then coach] stopped me in the hallway one day and said, ‘How come you’re not out for football?’” Mr Bielski said in 2014. “I told him I worked at Phil’s Bakery on Gough Street after school. So he got my work hours changed.

“After that, I’d get up at 4:30 every morning, load the truck and deliver buns and bread to Curtis Bay and Locust Point. Then I’d go to school and then to practice. I barely had time to brush my teeth. But if Irv hadn’t made me play, God knows where I would have been. That man molded my life.”

At Patterson Park, Mr. Bielski led a team that won 29 games straight, trampling Baltimore City College and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and whoever else would face the Clippers. The 1948 team was not scored on, The Sun’s 2014 story said.

Mr. Bielski said that then University of Maryland coach Jim Tatum came to the Bielski family home and told his mother if he played for the University of Southern California, which was offering a scholarship, he’d “get involved with all of those starlets.”

“When he left, Mom said, ‘You’re going to Maryland,’” Mr. Bielski told The Sun.

He helped the Terps to 35 victories in 41 games, a national championship in 1953 and a Sugar Bowl victory his freshman year.

Mr. Bielski was the ninth player chosen in the 1955 draft and signed with the Philadelphia Eagles, who converted him to tight end. He then went to the fledgling Dallas Cowboys, where he made the Pro Bowl in 1961.

He moved to the Baltimore Colts in 1962 and caught 15 passes — two for touchdowns — and made 11 of 25 field-goal attempts, four of them against the champion Green Bay Packers.

He then became the team’s wide receiver coach in 1964.

“He worked under head coach Don Shula defeating the Cowboys in Super Bowl V,” said his daughter, Debbie Bielski.

In 1973, he joined what is today the Washington Commanders before returning to Baltimore as wide receiver coach.

In 1983, he served as the offensive coordinator for the Washington Federals in the United States Football League and in 1984 became the team’s head coach.

“I remember the 1970 Super Bowl [between the Colts and Cowboys], which came down to rookie Jim O’Brien’s field goal. I coached the kickers, and when Jim lined up for the [32-yard] kick, I leaned over to [assistant coach] Bobby Boyd in the press box and said, ‘This is a lock, we are champions!’” Mr. Bielski said in 2014.

He met his future wife, Johan “Jo” Mazzadri in high school and they married in 1952.

“The were school sweethearts and they had a lifelong love story,” said his daughter.

He is survived by two daughters, Debbie Bielski and Jody Bielski; two sons, Ricky Bielski and Randy Bielski, all of Baltimore; a sister, Stephanie Bielski, of Hurlock; nine grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren. His wife died in 2018.

Services were held Oct. 21 at the Ruck-Towson Funeral Home.

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In 2021, three major league teams lost at least 102 games. Two years later, two of them — the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers — will meet in the World Series.

The Orioles complete that trio of past losers, and although an American League Division Series sweep at the hands of the Rangers prevented them from reaching that same stage, their regular season featured more accomplishments than either club. After going 52-110 in 2021, Baltimore won 101 games and the AL East in 2023, enjoying what was comfortably MLB’s largest two-year improvement over the past century.

If Texas claims its first championship, it will have only two more victories across the regular season and postseason than the Orioles managed, while it’s not possible for Arizona to catch Baltimore in that regard. Yet, the Rangers and Diamondbacks are in the World Series, and the Orioles are at home.

Both teams, though, offer templates for Baltimore heading into the offseason. At his end-of-the-season news conference about 36 hours after the Orioles were eliminated, executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias had little to say when it came to how he’ll approach the winter, saying that it was too early and not necessarily beneficial to dive into details. But aspects of the last two clubs standing exemplify checklist items for Elias and Baltimore’s front office this offseason.

Add legitimate pitching

Before Wednesday’s waiver claim of left-hander Tucker Davidson from the Kansas City Royals, here were the pitchers the Orioles had acquired directly onto their 40-man roster over the past year: free-agent signees Kyle Gibson and Mychal Givens; trade acquisitions Darwinzon Hernández, Cole Irvin, Danny Coulombe, Shintaro Fujinami and Jack Flaherty; waiver claims Jacob Webb and Jorge López; and Rule 5 draft pick Andrew Politi. Collectively, the group cost the Orioles about $20 million and five prospects Baseball America ranked among their top 30 at the time of the trades, though all were outside the organization’s top 10.

None of those pitchers started a playoff game. Politi, Givens, Hernández and López didn’t make it to the end of the season in the organization. Irvin and Fujinami were left off the ALDS roster. The two highest-paid pitchers on it, Gibson and Flaherty, were used as long relievers when the Orioles were being blown out. Webb surrendered a game-deciding home run in Game 1 and a grand slam that broke open Game 2. Acquired for cash from the Minnesota Twins on the cusp of the season, Coulombe was the only member of this group to be worth at least one win above replacement in the regular season using the methodologies of both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.

Comparatively, among the pitchers the Rangers have added in that same span are multitime Cy Young Award winners Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer; veteran left-handers Jordan Montgomery and Andrew Heaney; and dominant postseason pitcher Nathan Eovaldi. All have made at least one start during the playoffs except deGrom, who in six starts before Tommy John elbow reconstruction produced as many wins above replacement, according to Baseball-Reference, or more than all of Baltimore’s additions other than Coulombe.

The Diamondbacks were relatively tame, though their trade to acquire closer Paul Sewald from Seattle has paid off handsomely in the postseason. Their top starter, Zac Gallen, was acquired in a 2019 trade and has since blossomed into a Cy Young Award candidate; the Orioles perhaps have their own version of that in Kyle Bradish, who leads their core of early-career starters.

But as the ALDS showed, greater fortification is needed. Baltimore has shown reluctance to make splashy moves, but one wouldn’t necessarily be required. Eovaldi, who pitched seven innings of one-run ball to knock out the Orioles, signed for a guaranteed two years and $34 million, a deal structure Elias said the Orioles have had on the table with players they were unable to acquire.

“Those pursuits will be on the menu again,” he said. “We’re trying to win.”

Extend a young star

The Diamondbacks aren’t going to the World Series because they signed rookie outfielder Corbin Carroll to an eight-year, $111 million extension before this season. But it could help the possibility of returning throughout the 2020s.

Including a club option for 2031, the agreement goes for three seasons beyond Carroll’s initial period of team control. As Arizona fans have watched him shine in the postseason — including three key hits against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series — they do so knowing their prized phenom will be a Diamondback for years to come.

Orioles fans do not have the same certainty. In nearly five years under Elias, the only guaranteed multiyear contracts Baltimore has given out have been two-year pacts with pitchers recovering from Tommy John surgery. None of those agreements bought out any would-be free-agent seasons.

Infielder Gunnar Henderson, Carroll’s AL counterpart as the favorite for Rookie of the Year, has five more years of club control remaining, and catcher Adley Rutschman, the runner-up for that honor last year, has four left. In that sense, there’s not exactly a rush to ink the pair — Elias’ first two draft picks with Baltimore and the club’s top position players by wins above replacement in 2023 — to long-term contracts. But several other teams have reached extended agreements with their phenoms, and the continued absence of such a deal with Henderson or Rutschman adds to the looming possibility they spend much of their careers elsewhere.

Any such thoughts among the fan base have been induced by the organization itself, with not only its lack of action but also its words. In August, Orioles CEO and Chairman John Angelos told The New York Times the franchise would struggle financially to retain all of its young talent.

“When people talk about giving this player $200 million, that player $150 million, we would be so financially underwater that you’d have to raise the prices massively,” Angelos said.

Asked about the veracity of that comment after the season, Elias said, in his experience, “things don’t [always] come out exactly how you meant them” when speaking with media before saying the front office “quietly” examines extension possibilities.

“We are very focused on keeping this organization as successful and healthy as possible within the constraints of reality,” Elias said. “Obviously, we have players here that we love, and you look at it right now and you go, ‘Boy, I wish we had those guys under contract for longer than they currently are,’ and a big part of the calculus of keeping this franchise healthy, is pursuing or examining opportunities to possibly keep some of these guys longer. I’ve said it over and over. We quietly work on this in the background. I don’t want to be the one out talking about it, but obviously, that’s a part of our job as a front office to tackle that subject.”

Maximize playoff odds

Much was made of MLB’s playoff format when the four teams that won at least 99 regular-season games combined for one playoff win against 11 losses.

But the 90-win Rangers, the AL’s fifth seed, facing the 84-win Diamondbacks, the NL’s sixth seed, shows the importance of just getting into the field. Either team surely would have preferred a bye of the wild-card round and home-field advantage throughout the postseason en route to the Fall Classic, but they won enough in the regular season to get to the postseason, then won enough there to reach the World Series.

The Orioles’ approach to the 2022 trade deadline — when Elias focused more on future playoff pushes than the one in front of him — doesn’t need to be relitigated, especially given how well it has seemingly paid off for Baltimore’s long-term future. But it’s worth noting the 2023 Diamondbacks won one fewer game with a run differential one run worse than the 2022 Orioles. Cracking the field with a mid-80s win total gives a team as much of a shot of a World Series as triple-digit victories.

Perhaps that justifies Elias’ modest approach to both the offseason and trade deadline, acknowledging his intent was to put the Orioles in the postseason. They of course managed to exceed expectations, but they could have won 10 fewer games and made the playoffs regardless. Maybe the format devalues the regular season, but it also reinforces the importance of taking advantage of every opportunity to get beyond it.

Of course, teams such as Arizona are the exception, not the rule. According to FanGraphs, the Diamondbacks rank 20th in the majors in payroll, with a sizeable portion of theirs devoted to players no longer in the organization. Since 2008, the World Series winner has, on average, ranked in the top eight among the league’s 30 teams in payroll, with the average participant ranked in the top 12, according to data from Spotrac. Arizona is only the third team in that span ranked 20th or lower, with Tampa Bay’s pennant-winning clubs in 2008 and 2020 ranked 28th.

Each opponent the Diamondbacks beat to reach the World Series had a higher payroll, with Arizona going 9-3 as clubs with lower payrolls otherwise went 7-17 through the first three playoff rounds. That includes an 0-3 showing from the Orioles, who ended 2023 ranked 29th, against the eighth-ranked Rangers.

But the Orioles got in, and an offseason spent devoted to increasing the probability they do so again could be enough to find Baltimore playing at this time next year.

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