Partisan issues drove record turnout in Minnetonka school board election

Record numbers voted in the Minnetonka school board election this fall on races that candidates treated more like campaigns for the Senate than a suburban school board.

"We took it seriously," said newly elected Board Member Patrick Lee-O'Halloran. "The days of the school board being immune from outside political forces are gone."

District officials said that 11,775 voters — close to 40% of those registered — cast ballots, a turnout they believe topped previous board elections and nearly doubled the 6,034 who voted for the board in 2019.

Driving the turnout, candidates said, were partisan issues that played out in school board races across the country: race, equity and COVID-19 policies.

That translated into a half-dozen candidate forums — one of which was student-led and organized — as well as more door knocking, yard signs and money flowing into the campaigns of the eight candidates vying for three at-large seats.

"I'm glad I am running for mayor and not for school board," said Minnetonka Mayor Brad Wiersum, who won his race. "There's a lot of politics going on, on all sides."

Most conservative school board candidate slates in the metro that ran on platforms opposing mask mandates and critical race theory (CRT) weren't successful. In Edina, Wayzata, White Bear Lake and South Washington County school districts as well as in Minnetonka, candidates aligned with those platforms weren't elected to school boards.

The top vote-getter for the Minnetonka school board was Meghan Selinger, a former high school chemistry teacher who said the district would benefit from having an educator on the board.

When she first ran for the board in 2019, the number one issue she talked about was open enrollment. This year, Selinger was busy trying to diffuse inflammatory questions about COVID mandates and CRT, which isn't part of Minnesota's curriculum standards.

"I don't think a vaccine mandate should be left to a local school board," she said.

Selinger received just over 17% of votes while Lee-O'Halloran ran a close second with just under 17%. The only incumbent on the ballot, Board Chair Chris Vitale, captured 16% to win his re-election bid.

House Republicans claimed Vitale's re-election as a victory for conservative school board candidates. Vitale declined to be interviewed, but said in an e-mail that he "wouldn't want to speculate on what caused such a high voter turnout."

Running with Vitale was Jessica Reader, who campaigned against CRT; both were endorsed by current board members. Reader and Michael Salyards, who said masking and vaccines should be a family decision, fell short in votes but received the most contributions — more than $9,000 each, according to the latest campaign finance reports from late October. Neither attended a candidate forum organized by mostly high school students of color, part of the Minnetonka Coalition for Equitable Education.

Senior Jinhyoung Bang, who co-founded the coalition, said she was excited that two progressives who focused on equity issues, Selinger and Lee-O'Halloran, made it.

"Those issues brought more attention to the election," she said, adding that student engagement was also a factor.

Selinger and Lee-O'Halloran said they hoped that school boards can go back to focusing on educational issues — such as budgets and teacher contracts — rather than political issues. They believe election results show that voters in the district are ready to put the spotlight back on students.

"I anticipate that we will continue having school board meetings where people show up and have really strong feelings about one issue or another," Selinger said. "But I will keep diffusing it and refocusing it back on the students."

Kim Hyatt • 612-673-4751