Who’s grooming who? School board candidates fight ‘agenda’ of inclusivity

The Moms for Liberty member passionately demanded that the Clark County School Board ban a book detailing the author’s struggles with their coming-of-age story.

“If you don’t remove this book tonight, you’re a pervert or you don’t care about kids. Remove this book tonight or you’re a pervert because only a pervert wants these kinds of things,” said Cristiane Mersch, the chairwoman for the local Moms for Liberty chapter during a board meeting last September.

The book — “Gender Queer,” by Maia Kobabe — was published in 2019 and received the library association’s Alex Award for best young adult literature. That wasn’t good enough for school systems in Florida, Texas and other states led by conservative lawmakers who banned the book. It’s still available here.

The back and forth in September could become a regular occurrence between board members because two candidates for the school board in November’s general election are part of the Moms for Liberty chapter.

The standard-bearers of the local chapter and their progressive opponents on the school board have at least one thing in common: Accusing the other of having an agenda dangerous to the district’s 300,000 students when it comes to issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, of sexuality and gender and race.

The Moms for Liberty brand has taken a hit over local school board losses in several states over the past year. But in Nevada, Lorena Cardenas Biassotti is bullish.

Biassotti, the Moms for Liberty of Clark County vice chair and one of the two candidates vying to represent a swath of Las Vegas that includes Summerlin, said the group’s influence is not waning.

“As more time goes on, there’s more extreme ideals taking place in society, and they are infiltrating our public schools. So I think as long as those things are happening, parents are going to need support from each other,” she said.

Parents find that support in Moms for Liberty, she said.

If the group’s momentum fades, it’s “because we’ve been successful at these issues no longer being in our schools. And that would be a good problem,” Biassotti said. “But what I see now in society and in our culture, there is a huge need for Moms for Liberty.”

With only one of the four board races featuring an incumbent, the makeup of the board is guaranteed to change in a few months. Biassotti was a close second in her June primary race for District E, with fewer than 500 votes separating her from top finisher Kamilah Bywaters.

In District B, in the furthest north urban and rural corners of the county, Moms for Liberty member Lydia Dominguez was the runaway primary winner, taking 2,400 more votes over second-place finisher Eileen Eady. (Additionally, Moms for Liberty “senior adviser” Tim Underwood was one of only two people to file for District 1 of the Nevada State Board of Education, meaning he automatically advanced to the general ballot without a primary.)

In an outreach to some of those rural community members, Biassotti and Dominguez were invited to the Mesquite Republican Womens’ Club on Wednesday to discuss their candidacies and inform attendees on what they feel are threats against their children.

Dominguez, whose district includes the small town on the banks of the Virgin River, is a U.S. Air Force veteran, mom of two and member of the CCSD attendance and zoning committee. She explained how simple it is to request a vaccine exemption and to file public records requests with the school district.

Biassotti is much more focused on anti-LGBTQ rhetoric than her counterpart. The mom of four spent almost all of her time in Mesquite discussing how to fight an “agenda” of inclusivity and giving a primer on how to fill out forms that could lead to book bans.

For Biassotti, the most frustrating part of her movement — and part of what motivated her to pursue the school board seat — is that the school board is “intolerant” of her views.

“I’ve come across a school district that’s not willing to meet me halfway, or meet parents halfway — you’re just shunned,” Biassotti said during the Mesquite meeting.

Linda Cavazos, one of the most-tenured sitting CCSD board members, said when Moms for Liberty-affiliated commenters started to accuse CCSD of advocating for “genital mutilation,” a reference to gender-affirming surgery, she couldn’t find common ground.

Cavazos is a frequent target for Moms for Liberty members and like-minded people.

“I can’t even count for you how many times I’ve been called a pedophile,” said Cavazos, a family therapist and former teacher who has been a school board member since 2017.

What started as excoriating criticisms during the peak days of the COVID-19 pandemic — when Cavazos was the board president leading discussions on distance learning, masks and vaccines — has shifted to demands to remove library books with sexual and queer content, limit sex ed materials and repeal a state-mandated district policy to provide individualized support plans for students with diverse gender identities and expressions.

According to the policy, the plans may contain information on names, pronouns, dress, restroom and locker room access, and overnight field trip accommodations that correspond to the students’ identity. The plans require support teams that include the students’ parents, school personnel, and representatives from community groups, including faith groups, at parent request.

Every public school in the state must allow gender support plans under a law signed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval in 2017.

“Being a therapist, I first look at people when they first approach me, or the school board, as, let me hear what you have to say. What is your rationale? Where are you coming from? Maybe I’m wrong about what I’ve heard about the organization,” Cavazos said. “What would alarm me is that if someone who has these beliefs that teachers and trustees ... are so-called, using their term, groomers, and that we are pedophiles, simply because we want to have a truthful conversation, school-age appropriate, with materials and books that are informational. It would be very disturbing to me to have somebody sitting on the dais spreading that information.

“They have their own agenda, and their agenda is not in the best interest of our children,” she added.

School board member Lisa Guzman, who is not running for reelection after her term expires this fall, wrote on X this spring that CCSD needs “people who actually care about our children, the law, and where the district is going. These candidates will hurt our children, not follow the law and take the district in the wrong direction.”

‘You want to silence me’

Moms for Liberty was founded in Florida in 2021 as a response to pandemic mitigation measures. Locals who would align with the Clark County group had, at that time, the same criticisms.

Mask mandates fell in 2022. Then the baseless pedophilia claims began. They haven’t stopped.

Here’s a few:

“Superintendent Jesus Jara, trustees Lola Brooks and Linda Cavazos and the other trustees who voted for this gender chaos are morally debased child abusers who should resign today, forfeit their pensions, publicly apologize and leave education and public life,” Underwood intoned at a May 2022 meeting, referencing the gender support plans. “The power to indoctrinate is the power to destroy.”

Last September, members of the by-then newly established Clark County Moms for Liberty attended a school board meeting with enough allies to fill nearly every seat and require an overflow room. One of the attendees was John Amanchukwu, a far-right pastor from North Carolina who travels the country to act as an agitator at school board meetings.

School board president Evelyn Garcia Morales cut him off partway through his “10 realities of LGBTQ” because he was using vulgarities.

“We’re not going to do this,” she said as he continued to argue and the audience rumbled.

“You want to silence me. You want to shut me up, because you don’t want to hear the other side,” he said. “We heard from the perverts. We heard from the wicked people. We heard from the sexual deviants and predators. Can we now hear from people who have common sense?”

Security eventually escorted Amanchukwu out.

“Pronouns are cultural Marxism to reprogram our youth. You’re trying to punish kids for believing their eyes, for believing the truth. There is no ‘your truth’ or ‘my truth,’ there is only the truth. Stop lying to children,” Cardenas, not yet a school board candidate, said at the same meeting. “By affirming gender dysphoria instead of treating it, you’re normalizing mental illness. Pedophilia is also a mental illness. With so much inclusivity, why would you leave out pedophiles?”

When she continued to talk, then shout, past her time limit, Morales had her removed, too.

Biassotti is a frequenter of CCSD’s school board meetings and has been removed several times for outbursts, including being escorted by police on one occasion. While her appearance at the Mesquite meeting was more leveled, her appearances at the school board have been impassioned, often delivering heavy accusations against her political adversaries.

“If you still feel like fighting parents who want to remove these books that rape the innocence of our children, make no mistake, you are a sick and perverted individual,” Biassotti said during a January board meeting.

‘It breaks a certain barrier of innocence’

Biassotti’s language at school board meetings and with Moms for Liberty’s national rhetoric have been criticized heavily for their divisive and sometimes bigoted nature. The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the organization as extremist.

At the Republican National Convention in July, Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich described political opponents as “enemies” seeking to harm children.

Describing teachers, librarians and other school staff as “groomers” and “pedophiles” has led to an inundation of threats and harassment, Cavazos said.

“As soon as you use the word ‘enemy,’ as soon as you say, this is all sexualized content ... (it) changes the whole dialogue into something that becomes a war instead of being solution-oriented,” she said. “It’s actually quite amazing that they cannot see that if they would use a different language, they might actually get some of the things that they want.”

She said that if both Biassotti and Dominguez are sworn in on the school board, they might not necessarily form a majority bloc, but they could influence what is placed on the agenda, and with only two more colleagues, pass damaging policies.

She also pointed to drama in the Washoe County School Board, where a single conservative member has had such a combative, litigious relationship with the rest of the board that the district set aside $500,000 to defend against future lawsuits.

Biassotti and Dominguez said they don’t regret their divisive language, and feel their stances are more popular than some might expect.

“I think it’s very telling how our numbers were in the primary,” Dominguez said. “If the people don’t agree with those values, they wouldn’t have voted us in” to the general election.

Dominguez cleared a six-point lead over her opponent in the primary despite being outspent almost two to one, and Biassotti was less than 1 1/2 points behind her opponent, who raised more than five times as much as her.

With only one opponent each in November as opposed to the several in the primary, both of their races have become competitive, and both received donations during the event Wednesday evening.

Biassotti said that when she became active in CCSD affairs, she was “furious.” As a “mama bear,” she said she was in “protection mode.” One of her daughters was 13 when the schools shut down and it sent the girl into a severe depression. She said the people who were supposed to help her child hurt her.

“I do think things have calmed down. I know that being on the school board means that I will be on a table with different opinions and views, and that we do have to maintain a moderate and civilized tone, because we do have a common denominator, which is concern for kids,” she said.

The votes and donations are indicative of the support they’ve received, as conservatives have rallied around Moms for Liberty and the growing parents’ choice movement. In Southern Nevada, Biassotti’s mixed messaging about tolerance has been met with as much support as pushback.

“I think the tolerance is putting too much focus on, ‘you are different,’ rather than, ‘we’re all different,’ ” said Sue Zarubin, president of the Mesquite Republican Womens’ Club.

When asked how schools should provide support for gay and transgender kids who may feel targeted or unseen, Biassotti said they should seek therapy and immediately notify parents.

“I would say to offer professional help counseling,” Biassotti said. “They need to talk, and bring the parents in. What I don’t like about the gender support plan is that it begins affirming. It takes another course of action, which is affirming and assigning that type of thing.”

The “innocence” of schoolchildren is something Biassotti and Dominguez covet and said books they brought to Mesquite — which include sexual content and scenes of suicide and sexual assault — are a bridge too far.

“When you make children hyper-aware of these issues that are cultural issues, but they’re in the classroom, I think it breaks a certain barrier of innocence,” Biassotti said. “When children start seeing the world in a different perspective, most of the time they’re not ready for those types of issues.”

Biassotti said “anything that hurts my child is my enemy.”

Dominguez said “this push to bring the sexualized content into the kids’ education, into the classroom, (is) the enemy. I see it as something evil when you’re trying to bring sexual content to children in the classroom.”

In September, the school board appointed several new members to the sexual education advisory committee. One is a gay man who provides LGBTQ+ affirmative mental health services.

One commenter said he might have an illness and called him a groomer. She said she was grateful for Moms for Liberty for moms like herself.

Garcia Morales said commenters needed to maintain decorum and not “misuse information about individuals.” School board member Lola Brooks advanced his nomination.

“Sexual diversity is a fact of life,” Brooks said. “It is based on science and research does support it.”

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