Bethany Mandel, the controversial right-wing pundit, home-schooling advocate, and prolific social media poster, is running for county school board — as a Democrat.
Though the school board race in deep-blue Montgomery County, Maryland, is technically nonpartisan, Mandel’s campaign published a graphic on Tuesday listing her as a Democrat. The move quickly raised eyebrows online, and prompted a community note on X (formerly Twitter) stating, “Bethany Mandel has identified as a Republican numerous times on her personal Twitter account.”
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Those who know Mandel recognize her for writing molten-hot takes and far-right political commentary. The most infamous was a column, published in the wake of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, titled “We Need to Start Befriending Neo Nazis.” (Mandel is Jewish.) Her content can be cringey, like her column defending Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife: “If Casey DeSantis is a Karen, she’s our Karen.” She’s posted dehumanizing rhetoric, too. “Not nuking these fucking animals is the only restraint I expect and that’s only because the cloud would hurt Israelis,” she’s written about Palestinians.
As a gently raised Canadian I too was very confused.
But then the whole “registered party member”, primary voting thing doesn’t really exist here either. Like parties have internal democratically held meetings to figure out their best candidates… But I could technically go to and participate in every party meeting if I wanted to figure out their schedule. People just can’t run for office for multiple parties in an election.
Personally I find it a little fucked up that you register your intentions and essentially choose your political circular mail during the initial voting process in the first place. It would not be out of character from this outsider’s perspective if school boards in the US were a partisan affair because there’s already more infrastructure to create a distinct two party supremacy down there then we of the north are used to.
Just explaining our electoral system to my American friends usually has them very jealous at the general lack of extra steps. Complaining that we still have very much have proportional representation issues to address on the Canadian side usually falls on deaf ears.