People For's Alana Byrd is quoted on recall efforts on the Temecula School Board in this article from the 19th.
Joseph Komrosky’s time as the board president of the Temecula Valley Unified School District has come to an end, according to results from a special recall election against him.
A slight majority of voters in his trustee area — 51.09 to 48.91 percent — supported recalling him, an effort local and national activists launched a year ago after Komrosky drew national attention to the Southern California school district’s hard right turn in a blue state. Temecula is about 58 miles from San Diego and 85 miles from Los Angeles.
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Alana Byrd, national field director for People for the American Way, a nationwide progressive advocacy group that joined the recall effort, said that last year, she tempered her expectations about the campaign’s chances of success. She’d been told that “recalls are doomed to fail,” she said. “So we would do our best and be OK with any outcome, but I certainly didn’t expect to be sitting here almost a year later with a Democratic majority on the board.”
Byrd believes the recall race succeeded, in part, because of the efforts of women on the ground and because Temecula hasn’t historically had contentious school board elections.
“It was very much like this person was running on more money for athletic programs, and this person was running on greater literacy programs,” she said of the city’s past. “It wasn’t about banning CRT or calling major historical figures pedophiles. They snuck in under the radar, and that’s why this recall was successful, because people said, ‘Well, what the heck is this?’”
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