In the end, New Jersey voted for moderation. 

That’s my take-away on yesterday’s legislative and school board elections: While Republicans banked on the culture wars— scare tactics about parental rights in schools, LGBTQ issues, and book bans—they didn’t take into account voters’ preference for equanimity. In addition, they failed to muster strong candidates or compete with Democrats on fund-raising. As Joey Fox at the Globe ruminates, “financial disparity allowed Democrats to simply drown out any Republican attacks with their own messaging on abortion, property tax relief, and other Democratic-friendly issues.”

That’s not to say that all school board candidates aligned with conservative groups like Moms for Liberty and the New Jersey Project were losers last night. Some won. But, says Matt Friedman of Politico, “Republicans decided to focus on the school culture wars. That was a huge flop. Trans student issues, sex education and books that include frank depictions of sex sure riled up some school board meetings, but it doesn’t look like they did anything to help Republicans at the polls.”

“It looks like a pretty bad night for Republicans,” Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist told NJ Spotlight Tuesday night. “In fact they’re losing some of the gains they made two years ago.”

One of those loses was  in Westwood, where a slate of school board candidates that ran on a “parental rights” platform lost badly. And in Sparta, three candidates who opposed the current Board’s conservative policies swept away the competition.

But in Hanover and Roxbury —the former one of four school districts currently being sued by the State Attorney General for refusing to adopt a policy that protects LGBTQ students—these candidates won. 

“Our team is troubled by the inability to notify parents on the mental health concerns of their children occurring in school property,” the Hanover ticket of William McCabe, Christopher Mattessich and Michele Stricchiola declared during the campaign.

“We do not believe in keeping secrets from parents” was the calling card of Roxbury’s “Back to Basics” slate, which swept three seats from an opposing ticket more willing to follow state guidelines.

The Record reports that the Moms for Liberty Morris County chapter had “mixed results,” with only five of their 12 candidates winning in Washington Township and Parsippany; their candidates lost in Pequannock, Harding, Rockaway, and West Morris.

So, some wins. Yet it appears that New Jersey voters value balance and some candidates figured that out. Example: after the Murphy Administration’s State Board of Education narrowly approved Policy 5756 that requires schools to keep gender identity a secret from parents unless the child is in danger, Democratic Senators Vin Gopal, Nicholas Scutari, Joe Lagana, and Assemblyman Craig J. Coughlin all came out against the policy as an assault on local control and calling it a political attempt to “mislead parents with outlandish accusations of schools teaching children inappropriate things with zero evidence of that taking place across over 600 school districts throughout the state.”

They all won.

Gopal’s challenger, Steve Dnistrian, went big on that controversial DOE gender policy, shouting, “Democrats are insisting that parents not be part of the discussion if kids express questions about being LGBTQ!”

He lost. 

After Gopal’s victory became clear last night in District 11, a competitive district that leans conservative, he told nj.com that voters were embracing “civility and decency.” (It’s worth noting that Gopal opposes the Murphy Administration’s lawsuit against districts that didn’t adopt Policy 5756.) “Voters did not want to hear about Bob Menendez,” said Gopal. “They did not want to hear about attacks on our teachers and saying inappropriate things are happening in our schools. They want to talk about the issues that matter.”

And it’s just not voters in New Jersey who want elected leaders to focus on “issues that matter.” In Pennridge (Bucks County, PA), which Forbes calls “ground zero” for Moms for Liberty and where the school board hired ultra-conservative Jordan Adams as its superintendent, “all five open seats on the board were won by candidates who ran on opposition to culture wars, secret agreements, poor policies, and the adoption of the curriculum recommended by Adams.”

Let’s look back to Sparta, where there are more than twice as many registered Republicans (36%) than Democrats (17.5%). (Forty-six percent are unaffiliated.) There, the school board slate called “Stop Raising Taxes” swept the election over candidates who supported the district’s rescission of the state transgender policy and banning a book called “The Upside of Unrequited” which features an interracial family and LGBTQ characters.

The victorious slate told the New Jersey Herald it wanted to address the board’s “reckless fiscal management,” highlighted by a 5.8% tax increase in the budget approved earlier this year. “By focusing on the actual issues facing our Sparta district over dog-whistle political movements, we strive to redirect the Board’s focus to fund allocation, facilities, staff retention, and our declining district rankings,” the team said.

Now that’s a winning message.